New forum guidelines - please read

[Paul]

Hi all, I just wanted to bring your attention to the recently updated forum guidelines.

https://www.netweather.tv/forum/guidelines/

The major change to the guidelines is the addition of a new 'account standing' status, which will be tied into access of parts of the forum:

Quote

Account in good standing definition
You may see that parts of the community are limited to members who's accounts are in 'good standing', which applies the vast majority of members accounts. For your account to not be considered as being in good standing, you will have had a warning during the past six months, or a posting block/suspension during the last 12 months. 

 

 

 

 

 

As it says above, the 99.99% of community members won't be affected by this, but for those who do find themselves having to be warned for regular or significant problems, it will result in some parts of the forum being unavailable. At the current time these items are:

• All forums in the community area (serious discussion, the lounge, sports, the techies, travel, and photography).
• The ability to create or reply to status updates
• The chatroom

As the primary focus of the community is weather, these additional areas are there as an added benefit for the community, so as such those who do cause problems will lose those benefits, which in turn will enable all those other members to enjoy them without disruption. On top of this, we have found that sometimes problems in the serious discussion, chat room and status updates can take a disproportionate amount of time to remedy, and are often caused by a small number of individuals, which this change will hopefully limit. 

A transparent, team-based decision on warnings
With this change, we also felt we needed to put a transparent process in place when it comes to warning a member, as that would obviously result in that person's account falling out of the 'good standing' group for a period of time. 

Please bear in mind, the odd off topic post or whatever would never even come close to warranting a warning, so we're not going to suddenly start dishing them out left, right and centre or anything. But whenever someone is frequently causing disruption to threads, or creates a major problem, the team member dealing with it will raise it with the team. At that point, the situation will be discussed, and also voted on across 24 hours. At the end of that, if more than three team members have voted to issue the warning, with a majority of at least 2, then the warning would be issued. 

With a range of viewpoints and personalities within the team, what this will also do is create a failsafe against human error, misjudgements and personality clashes from having any bearing. 

We don't want to warn anyone!
Ideally, we'll never have to use this new process, and as the vast majority come here to enjoy the discussions, and contribute positively to the community, apart from seeing this info will never need to think about warnings and the like again. But for those who do consider causing problems, we hope this will act as a deterrent, and for those who go ahead anyway, we hope we'll be able to limit any disruption much more quickly and effectively. 

As ever, if you do spot something you think isn't on, likely to cause disruption or offence, or anything else untoward please hit the report button and let us know.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to pm me, or anyone else in the team if you'd like to ask any questions or discuss this further.

Paul