New Infraction / Warning System - Points for rule violations

[kstaven]

For those of you who frequent BYC this may be old news. This system has now been installed on BYH.

Over the many years the BYC family of forums have been around, weve worked hard to create a friendly and helpful environment where peeps can chat about animals (and a bunch of other topics). Over that time, weve also developed a bunch of rules that every member agrees to when joining our wonderful groups. After a member registers, they are responsible for adhering to the rules they agreed to when joining.

Our forum moderators do a fantastic job, but managing a community of tens of thousands of active members is really a tricky challenge, especially when it comes to remembering who did what, where, and when.

To help our moderators keep their sanity while helping us do a better job communicating with our members, weve implemented a Warning / Infraction System feature. This will allow for better and simplified moderation that is universal for all users and ultimately provides a better forum experience.

This system allows us to better manage the behavior of our forum members and offers an easier way of issuing warnings, suspensions and, when absolutely necessary, bans.

It is important to keep in mind that an infraction / warning is not given to punish our members, but is a way for us to help our members better understand our communitys rules and tone. If you get an warning, please simply become better acquainted with our rules and try to understand why you received a warning and continue enjoying our wonderful community!


Here is how the system works:

If a user should earn a warning, a message will be sent to the user explaining why the warning was issued along with how many points they have "earned". The more severe the infraction, the more points received. If you get an warning, you will receive a Private Message alerting you to the infraction along with details of why you received the warning.

If you gather too many infraction points, you will be prevented from using aspects of the forum for a certain amount of time.

If you feel the infraction/warning was unfair then please contact a moderator; dont start a public thread as it will be locked/ removed and result in even more infraction points.

Sometimes a warning may be issued without infraction points; if this is the case, any further breaches of the rules will result in an infraction with points associated.

Almost every infractions points have an expiration to them, and they vary between types of infractions.

You can see your infraction points and warning history in your user profile (Profile, Essentials, User activity). Only you and forum staff can see your warnings.

Below is the current list of warnings and points. Please keep in mind that this system is brand-new and we expect that we will need to continue evaluating and tweaking the warning, points per infraction, expiration dates, etc.
http://www.backyardherds.com/forum/warnings.php

We appreciate the members of our community that work hard to keep the forum rules and are very glad that this applies to the vast majority of you!

Honestly, we hope that none of you will even have any interaction with this new system!

 

[Ms. Research]

I am a newbie to the site. I want to thank those who created this and all those who participate in this very informative forum. I'm curious about all animals and have been reading many responses and also the responses that brought this on.

I read this and I have to say IMO, this kind of sums up how I feel too.



"Goes back to this: Ask 10 different people and you'll get 10 different answers. You have to figure out what you want to do and what risk is acceptable to you."




There are many on here that are passionate about their animals and I have more respect for those who do than those who think animals are just "ornaments". When a loss occurs, that hurt flares up and clouds the dialog. I think this is a great way to help cool down the thread so that the focus and that passion can be revealed when it's calm.

Thank you to all who respond to my countless questions LOL! I look to those who are experienced to that I can figure out what's best for me.

 

[DonnaBelle]

I read the list, sounds reasonable to me. Plus I learned a couple of things.

DonnaBelle

 

[kstaven]

It is all pretty self explanatory for the most part. In the end it boils down to be respectful and respect different approaches to animals. One size fits all has never worked and never will as there are too many regional variations that come into play along with multitudes of treatment options and theories. A person may be an "old pro" in their region and yet the same theories will fail miserably 200 miles down the road.

 

[Nifty]

Kurtis, thanks so much for posting this! You hit some really important points!

One item I want to emphasize: 90% of the time the problems we moderate are not regarding WHAT is said, but HOW it is said!


Trolling & Forum Etiquette:
A few reminders on proper forum etiquette: http://www.ehow.com/how_2106033_use-proper-forum-etiquette.html

1) We must respect that others have different opinions, but we must be civil and friendly even if we don't agree.

2) If you ever feel a post is directed to you personally and that someone may be "attacking" you, by no means respond publicly. Hit the report button on the bottom of that post and the forum staff will review and take action if needed.

3) Express your differences of opinion as such.

4) Remember there are lots of challenges with communicating by text only. So much is lost (tone, body language, etc.) which can cause a HUGE miscommunication problem. Per wikipedia:

"Some researchers put the level of nonverbal communication as high as 80 percent of all communication. More reasonably it could be at around 50-65 percent. Thats exactly what Mehrabian discovered in his communication study. He found that only 7 percent of communication comes from spoken words, 38 percent is from the tone of the voice, and 55 percent comes from body language."

So, you can see that in cases where people are reading and then posting replies to a comment, especially one that has a lot of emotion, a TON of information can be lost or miscommunication. This is usually responsible for 90% of the problems on forums which cause threads to be locked or removed.

We encourage everyone to be VERY careful as they read AND reply to posts on a forum (i.e., have a thick skin when reading and be very friendly and clear when posting).

5) Be careful how you reply to someone posting their opinion and how you react to "attacks". Never flame a person for their opinion. Examples:

Bad:
"You're pretty dumb for believing that! Let me tell you that I know I'm right and you're wrong..."

Good:
"I see what you are saying. I personally believe that xxx yyy...."

Bad:
"How dare you call me dumb you jerk!"

Good:
--- Do not reply publicly but report the post to the staff.

Just because something is "true" or "correct" doesn't mean it is okay to post it in a rude way. Remember, it isn't necessarily WHAT you say, but HOW you say it.

 

[FarmGuru]

can i post links in my post ?

 

[kstaven]

As long as it doesn't violate the forum rules or go to content that is adult or offensive in nature you are pretty safe.

 

[FarmGuru]

As long as it doesn't violate the forum rules or go to content that is adult or offensive in nature you are pretty safe.

Only Farming stuff . I hope reproduction in Livestock is not adult stuff LOL