IMPORTANT! Bulletin Board Censorship: Clarified Guidelines

[hughes]

I know NPC Mods and players alike were waiting on this, so sorry for taking so long on it! D8 Also, to preface, none of this is absolutely 100% set in stone forever, but it is what we'll be initially using for this Dayshift so that all of our NPC Mods are on the same page (otherwise, we have to do a bunch of micromanaging and hold things up, which... I don't think anyone really wants? ;;) In the meantime, though, you guys can tell us your own feelings about the policies on this post and we'll definitely be taking into consideration any general consensus that comes to light as the next Dayshift rolls along and we try to refine rules as best we can.

Anyway, here goes!

It's been pointed out to us that there have been some concerns about the censorship from the players and from the NPC Mods; both are confused about the specifics of what should and should not be censored. In response to this, we've tried to extend and clarify the guidelines for all parties involved.

Some general guidelines:

1) In the interest of both respecting the time and energy that NPC Mods are putting into this, and also due to the logistic impossibility/redundancy of them running every decision by us, please understand that many of these decisions ARE up to the interpretation of a particular NPC Mod and those interpretations, unless directly contradictory to the rules, should be respected. If, after reading all of the below, you feel that an NPC Mod has broken the rules or that they are blatantly abusing their power, you may bring these concerns up with one of the Head Mods either in IM, e-mail, or the Complaints post. (While individual nurse censoring will not require the NPC Mods to identify themselves on every post, I have turned on IP Logging on damned_bulletin so that we can determine the identities of any abusers should that need arise – of course, this is a last resort and we trust that an NPC Mod would come forward if we asked the Mod Comm about a particular thread; in addition to this, some ideas have been tossed around about alternate ways for NPC Mods to identify themselves, but we're still in the process of sorting it all out.)

2) Context and quantity matters. We know there's been a bunch of debate over the validity of language and code usage on the board, so here's some clarification: secondary language and code can help, but they don't make a poster immune, and, in fact, overusage of secondary language and code can be more of a beacon for the nurses than regular speech itself. One post of binary qualified by an explanation of "trying to find someone who can do computer programming" might get by them, sure, but long exchanges of it would certainly garner attention and look suspicious; same goes for any other language – modern, ancient, or otherwise. There is some grey area here, and I couldn't possibly clarify every exact permutation of how these situations will turn out, which again goes back to some interpretation on the part of the NPC Mods.

3) The nurses are ICly trying to impede your characters. This means that, yes, nurses can take down threads and posts even in the middle of a discussion; this means that, yes, nurses would have some room for interpretation when they try to figure out if a post is inappropriate or not. What NPC Mods are trying to do, therefore, is look at these posts from a nurse's perspective. If a nurse were to see long threads in a foreign language or in obvious code, would they be suspicious? Very much so. If they were to see a couple of posts in a foreign language, or see code in the guise of musing about pop culture/historical references, would they realize the significance? Probably not.

4) IC=/=OOC. Yes, characters should be struggling through this first day to figure out what does and does not work with the nurses; after all, they certainly wouldn't automatically know which methods procure the best results. Remember that this censorship was requested and supported in the first place to give characters an extra challenge so that you could have extra fun with them. Torture them! Frustrate them! Force them to creativity! This first day might be rocky for them ICly but it's for the purpose of giving you some fun OOCly. Like I said above, the objective of nurses is to impede your characters, but that does not mean that the objective of NPC Mods is to impede players. Again, IC=/=OOC. The Bulletin Board has just been changed to pose the same level of challenge as the rest of the game; after all, the main RP would lose much of its purpose if characters could use all their powers and knew where monsters appeared beforehand.


Now, some further clarification on some points already brought up:

A) BAD LANGUAGE
This includes all the major cuss words, any slurs, any symbols (like a middle finger or a phallus or steaming pile of poop or something) or anything that the nurses feel is crass or inappropriate. For example: it is not okay for your character to call another patient a "rat bastard." It is okay for your character to call another patient a "weasel," so long as the exchange does not elevate to the level of threats or obvious hostility (see below). Basically, language can stay at a "PG" rating: an occasional "oh my god," "damn," or "hell" isn't going to bring nurse fury down on your character's head, but again, quantity and context is key.

B) SEXUAL REFERENCES
This includes all (non-heavily masked) sexual innuendo, description of sexual exploits, sexual propositioning, or anything that the nurses feel is overly intimate or inappropriate. For example: it is not okay for your character to say they have been "sleeping around with Bob," It is okay for your character to say they have been "getting closer to Bob recently."

C) ORDERS OR THREATS
This includes any (non-heavily masked) orders, any request for orders, any threats against a person's physical/mental/emotional health or their loved ones, or anything that the nurses feel is overly hierarchal, confrontational, or inappropriate. For example: it is not okay for your character to put up a list of "orders"; requests, if worded lightly enough, would be okay. It is also not okay for your character to say they will "blow your brains into bits"; it is okay for them to say that they "hope we can resolve this matter without too much injury."

D) INSTITUTE ACCUSATIONS OR NIGHTSHIFT PLANS
ANY non-heavily masked reveals about the Institute's darker nature or references to Nightshift may be taken down. However, some viable ways around this might be to refer to a vague time "later" (for Nightshift planning) or to make vague references to "dreams" (for exposés). Like everything else, though, getting too detailed in a thread might garner a nurse's attention. For example: it is not okay for your character to say, "Last night, I had a dream that my friends and I walked to the Greenhouse and got attacked by a giant pyramid-headed-meat monster and then we realized that fire could slow it down." It is okay for your character to say, "I've been having dreams where I'm wandering through foliage and a dark figure with a giant head starts chasing me. It only ends when I see a wall of fire." Similarly, it is not okay for your character to say: "Soccer Club is meeting in Mike's room tonight to pick up weapons and go foraging in the kitchen." It is okay to say: "Soccer Club will be meeting with Mike much later today to distribute equipment and plan a bake sale." Also remember that even if a thread is allowed to go on, there might be some consequences later down the line for putting any specific information out in the open...

E) EXTENDED REFERENCES TO "FAKE" LIVES
If only because the alternative would be way, way too difficult to keep track of, characters can refer to each other by their canon names and the nurses will not censor it. Characters can also make vague references to their canon lives and drop a couple of names (location, friend, or otherwise) here and there. However, just like everything else, if these exchanges become extended and overly detailed, the nurses can take them down. For example: it is not okay for your character to say, "Hi, my name is Princess Mary Sue Potter-Cullen of the Wizard Vampire Society and I come from Perfectland, circa 1200, where everything is made of gold and our main power source is fairy dust and I can summon magical dragons." It is okay for your character to say, "Hi, my name is Mary Sue and I come from Perfectland, which is very different from here."

----

Phew! I think that's all for now? Any comments, suggestions, or questions go here, and though we probably won't be changing the above rules for this first Dayshift unless it proves absolutely necessary, we are eager to hear what everyone has to say so that we can make any necessary edits for subsequent Dayshifts once everyone is a little more used to the basics.

I hope these rules seem fair overall, and again, please let us know your thoughts! Thanks so much for your patience and I apologize once again for my delay in getting this up.

Comments

[kindalikedit]

I'm just commented to say I'm enjoying the censorship and the rules, even if for the Real Life people, you don't really have as much a chance of getting hit with it since they're all going "LANDELS IS AWESOME". :)

*THUMBS UP*

[tiassa]

Thank you, Erin. ♥

(You already know all about my opinions so I have nothing else to say but thanks for the clarifications. ^^)

[ryuuzaki]

I'm going to edit down my big dump of teal deer (which is presumably in your inbox, still) and rephrase it this way:

I don't personally mind that stuff is being censored, although it sounds like some people do. :\

However, I do think that the speed at which some stuff is being censored is getting in the way of what chat assures me should be bulletin-board-related THNMY. The NPC mods are so impressively good at shutting down threads that really, if you didn't happen to have been online during a window of a couple of hours, there is no way to know whether your character could have IC-ly seen something or not. A lot of threads are snapped off before many players who might have seen them IC-ly and had the chance to reply to it even check bulletin posts, even if they check a couple of times a day.

So, my suggestion would be to have specific shut-down and removal times, maybe at shift change, maybe at shift change and then again halfway through each shift, or each night at a given time (midnight EST or PST?). I feel like I'm complaining because NPC mods are doing a great job, and I don't mean to! Really, you guys are TOTALLY ON IT in an impressive way... but so many board comments are so blink-and-you-missed-it now that I'm finding it confusing.

(One last edit here to pull the rest out, because the other thing I was talking about is probably a concern more appropriate to a "suggestions about the game" post and not this one. The thing I mentioned is not that big a deal; I just personally find it confusing, esp since the bulletin board is moving towards greater realism, being tied more specifically to the game and its conventions, and so on. Bleh, sorry for flooding your inbox.)

[laverinth.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think things would be taken down pretty fast, especially if there were nurses maybe standing near the bulletin at all times or something? Having them only look during shift change would also be unrealistic and allow for too much interaction on posts that would have otherwise been removed before that much could happen.

stampeding little hoofs return!

[ryuuzaki]

Aaaaaaaah, this touches on the part I edited out, because I couldn't phrase it properly without making it sound like something I didn't want to say, and because it seemed like there was great potential for this to be annoying to other players, and I kinda just didn't want people to be annoyed with me. :\

Basically, what I was saying in a roundabout way is that almost no one seems to actually confine the timing of their bulletin board posts to when their character could IC-ly be in front of the board. It's totally accepted practice to handwave almost every logistical element: characters post long threads when it doesn't seem like they'd have time to, and anonymity is usually respected even when it seems like there's no way a character could post something or continue to reply without being conspicuous in some way.

None of this is a bad thing; it's just the way I'm told things have been.

Previously, it was possible to not-be-online-all-the-time and still fudge that timing issue. It was also possible to be a little less cavalier about the timing and not post a lot at times when a player doesn't think their character IC-ly could post (this is my own inclination). Both styles seem to have worked A-OK for most things.

Now, nurse characters are censoring messages in what's more like "real time." I don't know how to explain what I mean so that it will make sense, but it's something like "there's in-game shift time, then there's apparent-bulletin-board-time which is widely seen as more nebulous and flexible." Nurses hopping onto things in a totally IC way seems to make it, well, much less nebulous and flexible, nailing it down to a time and space. I realize that the argument could be made that people have censored their own threads for ages, but that happens differently... and there's a lot lot lot less of it than there has been so far on Day 45.

The end result seems to be that everything except players' IC timing on the board is moving towards greater conformity with the setting itself; it seems like it's ceasing to be "almost a separate dimension!"

The problem with me saying this is that it leads logically to a lot of possible "solutions" that would be disastrously unpopular in practice (something like "you only get five bulletin board tags per shift; use them wisely!") or the possible perception that I'm being critical about the traditional THNMY and the way various players use it, when I don't mean to be. I just have the intellectual impression that Nurse!Time affects the logistics of Bulletin Standard Time; it's strictly an issue of game mechanics.

Also, because this is a complicated and precise explanation, it makes it sound like it bothers me a lot more than it actually does. On a personal level the only thing that bugs me a little is that I can't figure out the answer to: "If a thread that my character would have IC-ly replied to gets yanked before I managed to see it OOC-ly, does that mean I can't handwave the timing and he didn't manage to glimpse it IC-ly, but not reply, before it got pulled?" I know this is generally left in our laps to decide for ourselves, and not abuse, but it's become a much more complicated decision.

The rest of what I've said is more big-picture logistics, ease of play, and so on. In general, I think it's a really good idea that the bulletin is being policed; it makes sense for it to be. But, I hope some compromise can be made on the speed; neither it nor the current frequency of removal is 100% conducive to time-related handwaving.

What seem most likely over here in Nooblandia is that no compromise will even be necessary, as characters figure out what they can and can't write in IC terms and stop doing so much censorable stuff. XD

[eternity_dreams]

I completely agree with this. Once a day, at some point, would be great. Otherwise... unless you're constantly on, you're missing a bit of stuff. =/

[continuum.livejournal.com]

I think the general notion here is that once patients figure out what works and what doesn't, the censoring should pretty much cease being as confusing/happening as frequently?

So...I think it's gonna be confusing for this first day or so, but once they've got a system worked out, it's probably just a case of nurses taking down a couple of notes from time to time from those who don't realize what's up. Otherwise, the other patients should be able to communicate as before, only under a lot more careful disguise.

I do suggest that posts in other languages would be allowed to carry on for a little bit longer because realistically, a nurse might take a bit of time to translate it and make sure it's okay (and in the case of Abe's post where he provides a translation/makes it sound totally innocent, they'd just leave it alone altogether and not bother).

But setting up a point in time for them to remove it, as Lauren says, would sort of defeat the purpose of censorship, especially as most bulletin board conversations don't go on longer than a day, two at most (one RL OOC day for us, that is).

[ryuuzaki]

I posted a much more developed explanation of what I was talking about in reply to Lauren's comment. It seems like I really should have left my whole post intact, but I was having a hard time expressing what I meant.

Anyway, ultimately I think you're right that as soon as patients work out what's going on and how-not-to-be-censored it'll be a lot less of an issue. :)

[gald_digger]

I dunno about that. If your characters aren't constantly standing around the bulletin board, it'd ICly make the most sense for the nurses to get to it before they got a glimpse.

I mean, as far as what everyone's doing in the institute: nurses are patrolling the Sun Room and watching people post on the board, meaning they'll probably be the ones to see most notes first anyway. Our patients are usually off in other rooms, talking amongst one another. So it seems ICly reasonable that they'd miss most posts that are taken down.

I think you could maybe say your character saw stuff before it was taken down if they spent the shift alone in the Sun Room, or talking by the bulletin board, or maybe once in a while they just managed to catch something, but in general, I think they'd be missing the majority of obvious "inappropriate" notes.

[ryuuzaki]

I posted a more developed explanation of what I'm talking about above; it has to do with the fact that a lot of players handwave issues of timing and post long threads to the bulletin board when, say, to do that in real in-game time they'd have to have spent an entire shift standing in front of the board with a pen in hand.

I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with this -- it's accepted practice. I edited out that part of my initial post because I thought it sounded too critical, when I didn't mean to be critical, and because I got poked in chat to the effect of "Silly rabbit, the bulletin board isn't meant to be IC-real-time!"

My concern -- one which barely affects me as a player, actually -- is that the nurses are hitting the bulletin board in Landel's Standard Time, but a lot of players are still otherwise interacting on it in Bulletin Standard Time, if that makes sense.

[blinkinghell.livejournal.com]

it is not okay for your character to say they have been "sleeping around with Bob,"

Seconded, as this was Ryuk's 'real' name XD Ew.

[tiassa]

......................gj Bex you made me snort water up my nose.

[wariena.livejournal.com]

Apparently, Bob gets around.

[ryuuzaki]

... There's horrifying fic about that.

[continuum.livejournal.com]

[hes-deadjim.livejournal.com]

"Hi, my name is Princess Mary Sue Potter-Cullen of the Wizard Vampire Society and I come from Perfectland, circa 1200, where everything is made of gold and our main power source is fairy dust and I can summon magical dragons."

This right here was amazing.

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this, Erin!

I do have a question that sort of ties in with what was asked about the bulletin logistics. Do the patients know that a nurse took down the messages? Like, let's say I have Brainy leave a note up talking about SCIENCE > MAGIC or something, and it gets taken down, would he assume another patient took it down or a nurse? Because the first might be interesting in that characters might try putting up messages again, but could also lead to bulletin spam (well, more than we have already XD).

[tiassa]

Oh, good point. Are they leaving smiley-face "YOUR NURSE WAS HERE" cards or something in place of the notes?

[strayfag]

If a thread that breaks one of the rules happens to fly under the radar, should it be brought up with the NPC mods? Or would the nurses ICly not catch every little thing?

Also, relevant to my interests: GLITTER BOMBS. Can I still do them, or would that be taken down (if the content is innocuous)?

Otherwise, awesome stuff guys! Thanks for the clarification~ ♥ ♥ ♥

[bondofflame.livejournal.com]

IMO if someone sees a thread that breaks the rules and it flies under the radar it should be brought up with the NPC mods, if only for courtesy's sake. Considering how many threads get posted and the time it takes to look through each one, I don't think it'd be fair for a player to take advantage of something like that OOCly. That's how I see it anyway. 8[

Also: wow.

[aqua-karen.livejournal.com]

Question about censorship! Please?

A whiiiile back I asked for permission for Usopp to draw a simple pirate symbol in his style (extremely stylized/cartoonish skull with a slingshot behind it, in his case) and wear part of a shirt torn up with that on it as a bandanna. I got an okay at the time, but in light of more strict rules (no poop drawings, and I was really looking forward to Usopp drawing poop all over the board... *sob*) I wanted to know whether I should expect Usopp to get it confiscated this time around. I know it's not the bulletin board exactly, but it does relate to increased censorship? They are pretty cute, in a sort of... skull way.

Also wondering how they'd deal with the Strawhat logo in general or on the board (stylized cartoon skull with two cartoonish bones crossed behind it.)

Thank you~

[tartaros-avatar.livejournal.com]

Got a question that literally just derailed my posting to puzzle over it.

English is the language we are using to post, but quite a few characters have it as a second language. If they post to the board in English something that is worth censoring, how would the nurses react? Would they be able to read it?

[toobothersome.livejournal.com]

I'm only an NPC mod, but I picked the language laws to shreds with my last character, so here's what I'd guess based on what I heard.

In that case, the nurses would read the English-as-a-second-language as English, unfortunately for the character. So, it's treated the same as Spanish-as-a-second-language (which the nurses wouldn't be able to read). Since the game is set in New Jersey, the nurses know both magical-everyone-talks-in-the-same-language language, and English. So, a post intentionally using English-as-the-English-language will be able to be read by everyone who ICly would be able to say "I know English."

It's never specifically come up in-game, but the language laws do say that English is treated no differently from any other language, I believe.

Like I said, though, I'm not a mod, I just picked the language laws to bits with my last character.

[melting.livejournal.com]

I want to go to Perfectland. It seems like a pretty cool place.

Thanks for this, though. ♥

[lawful_perfect]

*Refrains from making all too obvious joke about how it exists where vK hails from* >.>