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[Havohej]

It just can not be ic positions for player characters if even the veneer of neutrality is to be preserved.
No one needs to know who exactly pulls the trigger on a mod action, but the team behind it needs to be known.

Fair enough.

I don't think Spotlight would be too 'wat' though.  =/

[Mizhara]

Spotlight would not be too wut, but neither does it really make much sense ic I think. Safer to forgo the stage puns or it runs the risk of being "a silly thing" rather than a separate ic forum.

I imagine it would also help with the ic/ooc separation to be free of too obvious connections.

[Lyn Farel]

Let's try it from scratch shall we.

@ Havo : believe it or not, i'm actually concerned (a little) since i'm watching this with interest, and have been since day one it has been discussed. Not just because I find the initiative intriguing (and very risky), but also because who knows, it could bring something unexpected out of the equation. If some players remain on these boards it's not only as a mean of communication with old friends, but also out of interest in the game, that could be interesting as a way back into the game.

@ Morwen : Actually I do think there is always a reason to know who is behind every account, as it prevents abuse of authority and provides a level of sous-veillance to balance out surveillance. It is also a very delicate point as you all probably know since we are dealing with internet RP communities and not governmental democracy, that's definitely true. I'm myself not very fond of democratic boards and enjoy swift and unbiased authority a little too much for my own good. This is a community as any inside the general Eve community as a whole, and this community is supposed to be shared by people who share common values, which is RP.

Well apparently, as I have seen in EVERY RP community I have been in, every RPer doesn't tend to get along with his brethren very well, and cliques emerge. Cliques are either dealt with by splitting communities between cliques that will stop communicating between them, or by a community that share compromise and is actually talking (ah and it's also solved by eradicating the enemy clique in minority too, that works). For instance on these forums, cliques have never been so present in the past months and probably a lot of people do not really dare to speak up to share their mind, either out of fear to be ostracized, or else, since they know that no matter what they do, the people in power plug their ears or just answer very dismissively.

Well with that said, I do believe that accounting is required for any sane moderation job, even with the added charges and the potential abuse from members. I don't think those abuses are very hard to tell either, and when they are, maybe that's because their concerns might be valid. The main issue with most moderation teams is most of the time that they can't get past what plagues most people on the internet as a whole (heh, me being the first) which is a clear refusal to admit one's wrongs. Anyhow, that's supposed to be part of the moderation job, me thinks, and being a volunteer should actually not mean taking the mod role for granted, but knowing that's going to be a burden and actually imply being devoted to the community and not to cliques.

Well you may disagree of course, but I also do not trust humans to be right and just when handled a position of power, and that position of power should always be held in check.

[Ché Biko]

Stage puns make sense ooc. Ic it would be a big fucking wut. Let us not make this a big joke right out of the gate, yeah?

Awh....just one more, just because the most obvious one has not been mentioned yet:...
[spoiler]Upstage[/spoiler]
 
Amiright?orAmiright!?

[Anyanka Funk]

Could there be an in-game event for the creation of the new ic forum? Then whatever it ends up being called would have ic signifigance.

[Cmdr Baxter]

I don't really support this in general, but if I had to offer suggestions...

One general forum, and a forum for each sovereign faction. If this is run as an IC thing then I would suggest an 'Independent' forum for the pirate factions rather than supported forums for each pirate faction (A Sansha's Nation or Blood Raider forum would just be silly).

Also, a Craigslist forum (for IC trades, recruitment, etc).

As a representative of Serpentis i would like put forth our demand for our own forum. We do not wish to mingle with vampires, calculators or simple minded brutes. We deem a joint Serpentis and Cartel forum acceptable.

What, you don't want to mingle with the glitterbugs? Think of all the free illumination and disco balls you could string up!

[Silas Vitalia]

I don't care who the mods 'really'  are, and none of us should; we shouldn't need to do much interacting with them.

As with any internet forum or mmo or RP whatever, 98% of problems by 2% of people.

A swift kick in the ass to dramallamas and everyone else goes on interacting smoothly with no need for much moderation at all.

Getting a shitpost deleted isn't the end of the world, and people who get posts cleansed should chill out, tack, and come from another direction in the future.

[Silver Night]

Just going through and addressing ideas so far:
From various people:
I think that subforums for various factions - while an idea that could be revisited later depending on how many participants we get - would probably be spreading things a bit thin at the very start

need a good set of rules, regarding god-moding of ingame locations and NPCs.

it wouldn't be constructive to have this IC forum as some kind of parallel universe.

e.g. just because everyone that uses this IC forum agrees that Planet X has Y cities on it with Z population, does not make it so.

Especially if someone on the IGS posts to the contrary.

I don't think it is practical or a good use of moderator time to police things people decide to make up. We will probably handle that the same way we do here: if people think it's silly they will ignore it. Of course, IC it can also turn into a flame fest if people decide their made-up stuff is in conflict with other people's made up stuff. There is also the danger of the escalating hand-waved arms-race ("Oh, you killed some Caldari?! Well I blew up a Gallente kindergarten!" "Well I released nerve gas in a Caldari city!") but we can decide to stamp on that if it gets to be a real problem, otherwise see the second sentence of this paragraph.

Stll phoneposting so got to keep this short and sweet.

1. Same ruleset as IGS except actally enforced.

(IGS ruleset is here for reference) - Overall I don't find much wrong with that set of rules, though we might add a couple. I would say that a bit of non-PG language is probably fine too, though I don't have any interest in having to wade through the latest in people thinking they can make their characters edgy by posting poorly written but graphic junk. I also think we might look at allowing limited OOC content - exclusively in spoilers - because for some people it is easier to clarify their intentions with a little OOC bit at the end or something and I'm not opposed to that.

3. Moderators need to use "neutral" nameless moderation accounts. OOC we will of course know who is on the team, but IC it needs to be a faceless, neutral entity to avoid the obvious ic biases.

I don't think this is a bad idea. (Known mod list, but no indication of who specifically modded what post) As others have said, the overall mod team should be known but I don't think we should have it be as linked as we have it here. I would think we would overall have lighter moderation but with correspondingly less transparency. Hopefully the greater bar you have to meet to get modded will mean fewer posts that are modded seem ambiguous (at least, to anyone other than the one who posted them.) I don't really see us having a 'mod discussion' section for the IC forum - though we would probably still have some kind of mod-only report forum. I'm not really sure about any kind of appeals process, could use thoughts on that.

While not strictly necessary in a first trial here on backstage, any official startup needs to be tabula rasa. No. Pre. Bans. Everyone gets a chance to prove themselves worthy of access.

From the limited discussion among staff we've already had, this seems to be the general feeling. This would not be the case for the initial trial run, but if that works out and we go to a separate sub-domain it would have a blank slate (the only possible exception I can think of may be anyone who manages to get themselves banned on the trial run forum section - which should require an actual intent to get banned, and doesn't seem super likely).

On that note, I am actually against this being trialed here. It is setting it up for failure. While there is an existing userbase, it starts things iut exclyding everyone that has already been removed or given up on backstage altogether. It is also hard to advertise as it is an ooc forum to bwgin with and not exactly easy to push ic. A separate forum on the same domain would be better, and could right off the bat be aypplemented with a trade forum, newsroom section etc.

As I think Havo mentioned, there are only a handful of people who are actually banned. There are a number of people who have 'given up' but they are free to join the trial, and if they do not, then I don't see that they would be any more or less likely to join an eventual separate forum for us having run the trial before starting it? The idea here is to see if enough people would even use it to justify someone (Havo, probably) spending their free time setting up another forum.

6. Can not think of a good name right now, but we should have an ic launch and purpose. "For cspsuleers, by capsuleers. Capsuleers only." Bla bla bla. You get my drift.

7. No seriously, capsuleers only.

8. Can we have a "No video feeds" rule please? It is almist never well done.

I'm not totally opposed to having it capsuleers-only myself. I think it would be worth seeing how other people feel though. As far as video feeds, some of my better posts when I used to actually use the IGS were videos (personal favorite is still the Happy Chip commercials), so I would disagree there, though if you see my response above about people posting stuff to be extra dark and edgy, it would apply to 'videos' too.

...tagging a thread as related to that faction.  So if someone has no interest in Caldariboos, then they don't have to bother clicking on the thread at all. 

Highly support the faction tags idea.

I'm still partial to centerstage.eve-inspiracy.com.

While I was initially on board with something like this, I think I'm now leaning more toward something more 'IC' for the forum name. I'm not much good at names, though. However, as I'll start foaming at the mouth if the word 'Empyrean' is used, and I pay for the hosting, it isn't going to be anything with 'Empyrean' in it. 

Anonymous mods ? So that way you have even more potential for abuse since :anonymous: ?

It's already dramatic on the internet as a whole due to :anonymous guy behind a computer:...

Just sounds like an excuse not to deal with the actual job of a moderator.

I'm actually going to support not only mod semi-anonymity , but a lack of a 'mod discussion' type section as it would be a distraction from the actual purpose of the IC forum. I already have a job, so unless you want to pay me to do this one I'm not willing to pile that much additional stuff onto my plate. People will know exactly what they are signing up for, though - that's the purpose of having the rules hammered out here. And frankly, Lyn, if I wanted an excuse to not deal with the job of moderator, it would be a lot easier than making another forum to moderate.

I guess I'll be devil's advocate here.

3 sections.

Section 1) the 'Nice' section. In this section, you're not allowed to derail or post flamebait, very strict rules, topic starters are allowed to say 'this topic is about X, don't bring up Y' so say an Amarrian starts a thread about church ceremonies, a minmatar can't derail it with 'rawr slavers'

Section 2) The 'civil' section. This section is designed to encourage active debate about something. Disagreements and arguments are allowed, even encouraged, but they must be civil and polite.

Section 3) Shitposting. "The cluster would be a much better place if all Amarrians were set on fire" very minimal moderation.

Moderation in my opinion should not be anonymous, and should be handled the same way that moderation of the IC summit is handled. If its in character, then we as the players aren't doing the moderating, our characters are and that should be reflected in how things are handled. I agree with Lyn believe it or not, anonymous moderation leads to bad times for everyone. Better to have everyone's faces visible from the outset.

Now lets go up a level. We imagine that the system I have described above exists within the larger framework of backstage, because we actually would have two tiers of moderators. We have first, your IC moderators, characters moderating from within the universe. Above that layer, we have the opportunity to institute something akin to GMs who will manage things in an OOC sense, and make sure things like dead characters posting doesn't happen. In order to gain access to the IC sections, each person would need to be approved by a GM, this is exactly the framework used on a lot of roleplay forums and roleplay chats that I have participated in before, and in my opinion its a rather good and robust system. It should not be responsive, that is, let anyone in who wants in, then deal with them if they break the rules, because it forces the mods to sit back and let people they know are going to cause problems cause problems, and I doubt that will put us on a very good footing. By having to actually get your access approved at some level, the content can be controlled in a much better manner.

 
I think that might be a lot of work for what might be marginal gain, in terms of approving people individually. Particularly since the mods aren't going to know everyone. I would also say that I'm not much interested in the idea of the 'shitpoasting' type section, myself. The current sort of early prototype we've brainstormed among the staff would be something like a section for announcements, a section of politics and a section for (essentially) non-political discussion. I could see something along the lines of 1) (with explicit thread ownership) and 2) (without ownership, pretty much) possibly working.

Edit: I think an IG event wouldn't be a bad idea, though probably when and if we open the separate forum proper. Rather than this more 'beta' phase.

[Louella Dougans]

Section 3) Shitposting. "The cluster would be a much better place if all Amarrians were set on fire" very minimal moderation.

Tried and failed with chatsubo's ic section thing, also shitposting fundamentally incompatible with:

Now lets go up a level. We imagine that the system I have described above exists within the larger framework of backstage, because we actually would have two tiers of moderators. We have first, your IC moderators, characters moderating from within the universe. Above that layer, we have the opportunity to institute something akin to GMs who will manage things in an OOC sense, and make sure things like dead characters posting doesn't happen. In order to gain access to the IC sections, each person would need to be approved by a GM, this is exactly the framework used on a lot of roleplay forums and roleplay chats that I have participated in before, and in my opinion its a rather good and robust system. It should not be responsive, that is, let anyone in who wants in, then deal with them if they break the rules, because it forces the mods to sit back and let people they know are going to cause problems cause problems, and I doubt that will put us on a very good footing. By having to actually get your access approved at some level, the content can be controlled in a much better manner.

By having to actually get your access approved at some level, the content can be controlled in a much better manner.

Sounds rather like: "You must be this /sip to RP". Shutting down anyone whose RP you don't particularly like.

It should not be responsive, that is, let anyone in who wants in, then deal with them if they break the rules, because it forces the mods to sit back and let people they know are going to cause problems cause problems, and I doubt that will put us on a very good footing.

Putting up a special wall, so that particular elements of someone's RP cannot be challenged by someone whose interpretation of the PF differs, says that only people who buy into someone's interpretation, get to RP.

E.g. Laerise doesn't like my interpretation of the PF, about scripture and stuff. Occasionally makes a fuss. But I'm not going to argue Laerise shouldn't be allowed to access an IC forum to challenge any RP I have on that forum.

Or, on another example:
People who play characters who appear to be rogue drone controlled - Unit as an example. They cause problems in and of themselves, because other people have a great problem with the very idea that such a thing is possible. But if you prevent access by the people who have a problem with rogue drones, you stop them contributing their other content, which others would find interesting. That would only fuel accusations about "special snowflake zoo", or whatever. And if you prevent access by the drone characters, because you don't want to deal with the problems caused by their simple existence, then it's "RP police state" or whatever.

[kalaratiri]

Requesting "cannotbeworsethantheigs.com" as domain name.

[Anyanka Funk]

Would there be a way to block people or hide a person's posts? This could resolve some of the need for moderation as well.

Edit: There may be a thing amongst paying subscribers that don't see a point in forum roleplay with people who they will not be able to interact with in space.

[Enso]

I vote for the name : The Fourth Wall

[Saede Riordan]

Putting up a special wall, so that particular elements of someone's RP cannot be challenged by someone whose interpretation of the PF differs, says that only people who buy into someone's interpretation, get to RP.

E.g. Laerise doesn't like my interpretation of the PF, about scripture and stuff. Occasionally makes a fuss. But I'm not going to argue Laerise shouldn't be allowed to access an IC forum to challenge any RP I have on that forum.

Or, on another example:
People who play characters who appear to be rogue drone controlled - Unit as an example. They cause problems in and of themselves, because other people have a great problem with the very idea that such a thing is possible. But if you prevent access by the people who have a problem with rogue drones, you stop them contributing their other content, which others would find interesting. That would only fuel accusations about "special snowflake zoo", or whatever. And if you prevent access by the drone characters, because you don't want to deal with the problems caused by their simple existence, then it's "RP police state" or whatever.

That's pretty valid as concerns, I admit the places where I've seen that sort of system work tend to be places where there already exists very well defined central lore, like Vampire the Masquerade, or even Naruto. Or places where there is only a forum, so people RP out actions their characters perform in text on the forums, the GM pre-approval is an attempt to screen out people with uber-godmode abilities from coming along and slaughtering everyone else's characters.

[Katrina Oniseki]

Doesn't matter what way you moderate it, people are going to hate being moderated.

That's my input on the matter.

[Louella Dougans]

since nobody reads the last post on a page:

[spoiler][/spoiler]