Staffing What can we do away with?

[Rune 1,099]

You know all the stuff that every site has in their rules or those trends that can hurry up and die already...

 

Like saying that "powerplay" and "godmode" is against the rules. Of course it is. It's something everyone should know. 

"No politics or religion discussed." Again: Everyone knows. 

 

These things are, more or less, the Golden Rules of forum RP... So we should be able to do away with them, right? What do you think we can toss out with the trash?

 

(Bear in mind that this isn't a thread for arguing why these things are still in every rule set. But more so a look at what gets redundant when we've seen it fifty thousand times.)

[Jaxx 317]

Rules: 

That you don't allow baiting, bullying, homophobia, or racism. Or that you're POC/LGBTQ/disability friendly. 

That you have a welcoming or friendly staff. 

That staff and friends of staff are held to the same rules as the newbies. 

That you can't make an all powerful character as your first on the board. 

 

Trends: 

Making characters with the same traits or history as either the faceclaim or another character the faceclaim plays. 

War plots, especially when it focuses on something like werewolves and vampires always hating each other. Bonus points if there's no canon explanation and "it's just like that". 

Using song lyrics for category/forum titles so that I have no idea what's in there until I look at the topics. 

Guests who complain about aspects of the rules or setting that they want you to change, especially as their first post in your chatbox/Discord. 

Gifs or ticker tape at the top of the board. 

[CovertSphinx 710]

I nominate "No advertising in the C-box" as an addition to the redundancy list. 

[Sage 289]

Advertising rules in general. "You can only bump once a month" or "we must be able to link back" or "we only accept jcink" etc. Who actually cares?! Does anybody ever actually read those?? 

[Meushell 18]

On 7/29/2018 at 1:25 PM, Sage said:

Advertising rules in general. "You can only bump once a month" or "we must be able to link back" or "we only accept jcink" etc. Who actually cares?! Does anybody ever actually read those?? 

 

Lol, no. I had an html code board years ago. I made that known right above advertisement board in huge, bolded font, along with a link to a bbcode to html code converter. Most people still posted in bbcode, and a few even posted, then got angry when the codes didn’t work.

[CovertSphinx 710]

Baiting, Flaming, and Harassing rules. I feel like I reached an age where it's automatically mentioned, but none of the really young ones really knew the "battle stories" of old

[Icewolf 258]

Some obvious things that people shouldn't do, but frequently do anyway, like -

 

- Not pestering people for replies when they're busy.

- No instant shipping characters (espeaically popular male canons, which seem to bare the brunt of this) without the other writer's permission.

- No creating non canonical relatives (long lost ones, love child, siblings, etc) for canon characters without talking over with the writer(s) affected first. The same could be true in non-fandom rps as well, but it seems to get abused in canon rps quite a lot.

- Not to double post/send multiple posts to a thread which the other person hasn't had a chance to reply to.

- I don't know if this is a common problem on forums, but it is on twitter where people post nude/sexy images and gifs that make people's eyes pop, though I don't know how you could stop people doing that on a chat like platform, but it's very difficult to filter out for those who don't want to see it.

 

[Kajes 40]

Those statements of "Remember, RP is a hobby and we're all here just to have fun!" are completely redundant and could be stripped out of every rule set. If you feel the need to remind your community that we're all just having fun, there's something wrong with your or your community's headspace around RP... If you don't feel the need to remind them of this obvious fact, then why is this pointless line included in your rules? Redundant.

[Rune 1,099]

Can we do away with sites having ratios? Like, "You must roll 1 male for every 2 females!"

 

Fuck you. I play what I want. I'm gonna roll 15 males but they're all gay. Fuck your ratios.

[Uaithne 543]

- Obsessions with playbys and who has "claimed" a face and who has "rights" to use it.

 

- Post templates since we are a world that is oftentimes posting from phones.

[kjSage 81]

On 8/3/2018 at 3:47 PM, Rune said:

Can we do away with sites having ratios? Like, "You must roll 1 male for every 2 females!"

 

Fuck you. I play what I want. I'm gonna roll 15 males but they're all gay. Fuck your ratios.

This. I mean, I keep those numbers on my board but I could never understand enforcing a ratio. (Though it's nice to see how many people are in faction x or species y)

 

11 minutes ago, Uaithne said:

- Obsessions with playbys and who has "claimed" a face and who has "rights" to use it.

 

- Post templates since we are a world that is oftentimes posting from phones.

I have begun to seriously, seriously hate playbys. Even more those people who are so obsessed with them. It's unhealthy. I'll agree with posting templates to a point, there are some super nice, responsive ones floating around and on some sites they can definitely make the post easier to read if the board has one of "those" skins.

 

-Codewords in rules, I still see the occasional site using them.

 

Disability/minority/lgbt+ friendly. I see that and x out so fast. It's not something you should have to state so openly.

 

-This idea that characters aren't allowed to be "evil" or "bad" I saw a site with it in the rules and just... why? (The vast majority of my own characters lean towards darker shades of gray.)

[Lawman 88]

Rules concerning civility. Cause well, these are no-brainers. I don't think anyone older than what, 6, needs to be told that if they can't ever express disagreement without resorting to name-calling, sarcastic remarks, passive aggression or threats they probably don't belong to a social circle. Plus, it probably reinforces the myth that views that are bigoted or intolerant in nature should be tolerated as long as the person expressing said views is being "civil" in their -isms/phobias.