Good evening everyone!

As we mentioned previously, staff has been working hard to craft a more encompassing set of rules for Mycena Cave. We are excited to bring our completed work to you and hope that you will find the new rules satisfactory.

These rules will not be going into effect immediately: we are currently shooting for full release in early November. This should provide plenty of time for you to digest and become familiar with any changes, as well as provide enough time for us to implement the necessary features. We will inform you when the date for release is finalized.

While this is not a debate like the last time we updated our rules and the changes below are the rules we plan to adopt, we nonetheless welcome discussion around them! Please remember to keep your posts courteous and constructive: violation of current rules or disrespect shown to other users or staff in the thread or in chat is not acceptable. As such, please consider what you’d like to express carefully and ensure that it is neither inflammatory nor repetitive.

• Be aware that these rules are in their final stage of development and are unlikely to be altered in any major way at this time. That being said, we will read over all comments and take your thoughts into careful consideration.
• Please read every response in this thread before posting your own. If it is apparent that you did not, or if your post is off topic, your post will be removed.
• If somebody has already said something similar to what you want to say, feel free to express your support but keep it brief. To avoid restating what other people have already said, feel free to link directly to the posts that you agree with or use the quote feature. We want to avoid circular discussion and redundancy.
• If you disagree with any of our new policies, or with any comments made by other players, you’re welcome to express as much, but all replies should be kept respectful.

-reads everything- Okie dokie.  A few little comments from the me.

I’m really digging the new hiding thread things.  Could be useful.

I feel like… these two:
“Be direct and forthright.
Do your best to be aware of how your words may appear through text — avoid harsh, mean, or aggressive behavior.”
sorta… cancel each other out?  Like, idk I know there’s a difference between being rude and being direct but being direct means not mincing words which generally comes out sounds hostile and flat? 

“Be careful to not sanction illegal activities in discussions or roleplays.”
I really hate that this specifies ~illegal~ because like, okay, you’re right illegal things is wrong, but also like, I have gangster characters and murderers and thieves and drug dealers.  Like. Those are all illegal things.  And most of them really dig their life choices.  Uhg this is a really tricky thing. :I Obviously when I rp them I’m not running around like ‘yEHAW GONNA SELL SOME DRUGS TO PEOPLE’ but also like, she doesn’t regret what’s she doing? Is that the same as me myself sanctioning it?

“If you tarnish Mycena Cave by contributing to and/or allowing bullying posts to an anonymous blog, we will aggressively respond and investigate through legal avenues, and it will result in a ban when we determine who you are.”
Whoa whoa whoa whoa, hold up.  Define ‘tarnishing’ Mycena Cave.  Is this just worded poorly and is supposed to mean you’ll hunt them down if they contribute bullying posts or just anything that makes ~mycena look bad~ because if it’s the latter then honestly what the heck.  That’s really not cool.

“Site bans are not merely for the account but for the person behind it, and ban evasion is a bannable offense.”
lol ‘what’re you gonna do?????? ban me again????????????’

““If you tarnish Mycena Cave by contributing to and/or allowing bullying posts to an anonymous blog, we will aggressively respond and investigate through legal avenues, and it will result in a ban when we determine who you are.”

Whoa whoa whoa whoa, hold up. Define ‘tarnishing’ Mycena Cave. Is this just worded poorly and is supposed to mean you’ll hunt them down if they contribute bullying posts or just anything that makes ~mycena look bad~ because if it’s the latter then honestly what the heck. That’s really not cool.”

I honestly thought the same thing upon reading that haha. It’s worded really poorly in my opinion and just makes it look incredibly self centered on Mycena’s part. Really this should be about tarnishing players more than about tarnishing Mycena itself.

lol ‘what’re you gonna do?????? ban me again????????????’

I think using guest-passes or account sharing would count as ban evasion as well which might cause another player to be banned in that case.

[@Deddo]
The way I read that was that bullying other users or contributing to bullying itself was something that ‘tarnished’ MC by hurting the image of the community. I don’t think it implies the site itself.

—-

To be honest, the part that is kind of making me anxious is the flagging thing. It’s not a ban or anything, sure, but I’m positive i’ve made posts in all-caps or poorly spelt or whatnot in the past. Is the flagging mainly going to be on RP forums or all over? In RP (or even posts like this) i’ll try hard to adhere to proper spelling/grammar but honestly I no longer have the mental focus to care to make all of my posts…..‘proper’. Getting flags repeatedly and having to correct posts will probably make me feel really down on myself and that will likely deter me from using the forums (everyone other than me: “GOOD”). Like, how long has it even taken me to write this little paragraph? Five minutes? I’m not even sure if I make sense and maybe im being overly sensitive and am in the super minority but i worry so much about my online persona already and trying to be perfectly correct in my grammar and spelling always will likely be too much for me.

    Alright, I’ve read through everything, and the one comment, and I just wanted to be clear… Moderators will be able to flag posts for grammar and spelling mistakes and while you have a flagged post you cannot write forum posts till things are fixed?

      I understand that it’s for educational reasons, but there are people who enjoy the writing practice/reading practice offered on the forums, that may have issues such as dyslexia or sentence processing problems, and if they get flagged often for their mistakes they may become discouraged to write, or feel like their difference is being pointed out when it’s really hard for them and they try their best. I’m not saying a moderator would intentionally nit pick them particularly, I’m saying what if a moderator flagged them without knowing of their problem and offended them or discouraged them.

      I feel the flag could be very educational without being demoting. Giving a flag might be better as a “Hey just wanted you to know you have a mistake that you can fix if you want” rather than a “You have a mistake, fix it, until then no more forum posting.”

(not to mention some people use misspelling and grammar “mistakes” to indicate character personality. I do myself, but I figured they would be flagging more “out of context” mistakes. I still find it slightly worrying. After all, Mycena is a place where we have freedom to write despite whatever challenges we face. Being told we can’t post until the problem is fixed just seems a bit harsh.)

  I apologize if I took that wrong, but that’s how I read the new feature and wanted to clear it up. ^.^
~Ploo

Tarot

Yes, I do understand what they’re trying to put across in that regard (schools etc use this exact same jargon), however I still think the focus should be about protecting their players rather than Mycena’s reputation - an issue which seems to keep cropping up regarding anon blogs.

Edit; Note that I understand they’re trying to protect players, but I feel the wording of the rules should reflect these to avoid coming off as condescending.

[@Ploo]

I very much agree, and especially since the rest of the rules are very conforming to everyone’s individuality - potentially (and unintentionally) treating dyslexic people this way seems counterproductive. A ban from posting is not the way forward, in my opinion, temporary or not.

“Be careful to not sanction illegal activities in discussions or roleplays.”
I really hate that this specifies ~illegal~ because like, okay, you’re right illegal things is wrong, but also like, I have gangster characters and murderers and thieves and drug dealers. Like. Those are all illegal things. And most of them really dig their life choices. Uhg this is a really tricky thing. :I Obviously when I rp them I’m not running around like ‘yEHAW GONNA SELL SOME DRUGS TO PEOPLE’ but also like, she doesn’t regret what’s she doing? Is that the same as me myself sanctioning it?Dakota Riley

I also have a bit of a problem with this, so far is in that I would like a clear distinction between what counts as you sanctioning illegal activities and what counts as roleplaying illegal activities. I don’t have many characters who I would believe to “sanction” illegal activities, but I would not like to fall into that category by accident. So, yes. :/ Please explain further as to what counts as sanctioning.

As for the tarnishing Mycena Cave issue, I read it to mean more that if your actions reflect poorly on Mycena Cave you will get in trouble for that (like how I couldn’t, say, go jay walking all over town while wearing my work uniform), than that you can’t go and directly tarnish Mycena Cave. I can see how that could be read the other way, however.

I’d like to weigh in on Ploo’s comment to say that I too feel that not being able to post once you have a flag is a tad harsh. Perhaps, if it’s a fixed idea, have it so that once you reach X number of flags you are unable to post. Additionally, I am also worried about what that might mean for characters whose accent/education is displayed through their speech.

“Be careful to not sanction illegal activities in discussions or roleplays.”
I also would like some clarification on this, RP-wise (basically what Riley and Nyfeaena said). o:

[@Ploo] & Nyfeaena & [@Deddo]: In regards to the grammar flagging, the moderators will not be flagging every post with a typo. That would be highly unreasonable and unfair to those with language disabilities. The circumstances under which we would flag a post would be if it is essentially unreadable and we cannot clearly decipher your intent or purpose. (I describe it earlier as if it looked like a dog or cat had walked over your keyboard). Mistakes happen, typos happen!

Additionally, in the context of a RP, if a character has a typed out accent or a given learning/reading/speech impediment that would be excluded from flagging as that is not representative of your own personal abilities.
(In other news, my professor actually typo’d ‘welcome’ into ‘WeCome’ in an e-mail to us.)

I really do not like the flagging for grammar/spelling feature though after reading the previous posts it seems like it shouldn’t be too awful
Many people have already stated good reasons and this may not be contributing to the discussion but we deserve to be able to post and express our feelings when it comes to site changes, redundant or not

[@Deddo], Hawkins
Tarot summarized our intentions for that particular line well - it is important to us that Mycena Cave maintains a safe and comfortable atmosphere for our players.

Unfortunately, we have had issues with bullying of Mycena Cave users before (both public and private). This is something we absolutely do not want any of our members to experience and so we are taking a stronger approach to eradicating this behavior. The objective of this rule is to make it clear that we will not tolerate bullying. If evidence is brought forth of one of our members engaging in bullying or activity that would otherwise compromise the safety of Mycena Cave for its players, we will take action accordingly. Negative comments about site features or events are permissible, but we draw the line when users are targeted.

Nyfeaena
In regards to the “sanctioning illegal activities” portion, there is a clear difference between having your character steal something from a house and personally endorsing and instructing other people on how to rob a house. This rule is in regards to the latter.

We’re not trying to police anybody’s characters here - we’re well aware that a character’s views and actions don’t always mirror their creator’s. The important distinction here is user vs. character. We will make note that this wasn’t immediately clear and see how we can make certain it is for the rules release.

I’m also a little wary about the attempts to police offsite behavior. On one hand, if you’ve seen the aywas tag on tumblr, you’d understand why staff doesn’t want things getting like that. It is a horrible, awful nightmare of a space that is just rife with bullying/trolling, especially given how often people are namedropped directly. On the other hand…yeah I don’t really get the “tarnishing” bit either, it kind of sounds like you want to shut down criticism of the site itself that takes place offsite. Which is a bad idea, if that’s the intent. And you have to be clear that this is not the intent, because that’s a great way to silence people from ever reaching out to each other about things that bother them. I know there are people who take their complaints about the site to other forums because they’re not ready to bring them up here yet or things they have brought up were ignored, or because they want a second opinion. And some people just wanna vent…as long as it’s not something that hurts other people I don’t see why not. The spaces on this site are meant to be kept more copacetic and polite in atmosphere so, here’s not the place for it.
If that’s meant only in regards to bullying behavior though…then good.

I like the expansion of content tagging abilities so far as it’s described, don’t see any issues with it since users are gonna be able to add custom descriptors…very nifty. Kinda reminds me of tags on fanfic websites lol. Is the use of those gonna be free for whatever, even if content is not necessarily explicit/sensitive?

And…unfortunately I also have to agree that some distinction should be made between sanctioning illegal activities and just roleplaying them, though it’s possible for there to be an overlap with that. It’s a very wide definition that could bungle up roleplaying opportunities when characters are just. Pirates or assassins or whatever. Like…usually it’s pretty obvious when someone’s rping those that they don’t actually believe in doing those things since it’s just a fantasy. On the other hand, with characters like, pedophiles, or zoophiles, or nazis or something. I don’t see any way to roleplay someone like that without sanctioning it unless the character was a very clear cut antagonist character who isn’t a protagonist in any way and the activities of this person are framed in a negative light. Which is hard to write out clearly as rules to enforce I’m guessing. I’m on both sides of the issue whereas I wouldn’t want roleplays to be ludicrously restricting, but I don’t want there to be loopholes for unsavory people to take advantage of.
Somehow I see another big conversation coming up about that one again unless staff already has distinctions discussed and laid out that aren’t clear yet.

I was also gonna inquire about the flagging thing but it sounds like this will be an okay feature.

edit: and despite my efforts I have missed some posts before mine…

To add onto what Amaterasu has mentioned, stylistic typing (ie: caplocks) is okay as long as it’s readable and isn’t done all the time. :3 We won’t flag you for that.

Basically, we will likely not flag any posts unless there is an extreme case (ie: evident spamming, your pet walking over your keyboard, etc).

Just have to say that I love those upcoming new features – especially the change to mature content tagging (just an all-round fantastic idea), and the ability to hide individual threads (I’ve been wanting that for an age, and I’m sure plenty of others have been, too). Looking forwards to seeing them released~

Though I’ll admit the flagging thing worried me a little until its use was clarified >__>

Crow, you guys are being very speedy with these answers! Thank you!
I always do worry about how character actions and views may be perceived as my own (when about 90% of the time that’s very far from true - it’s far more fun to roleplay something totally bizarre to you), so I’m very pleased that Mycena seems to be taking a clear stance on that issue and having a distinction between the two.

With all the concern, I forgot to mention that I too am very excited about the updated mature content warnings (though going back and changing all old roleplays/other threads will be interesting, if we have to do that) and the potential to hide threads! I also do really like the addition to section 6. I know a few people who have been bothered about pets that they have no interest in selling.

“Do not inquire, publicly or privately, about a player’s pets or items that are not explicitly listed or marked for sale.”

I haven’t really seen this brought up, probably because there are a lot of people who are perfectly fine with/prefer this rule. However, as someone who has done this exact thing before I don’t think that the rule should be so…. broad?

It’s just that sometimes, people don’t explicitly put something up for sale, but also don’t happen to have an issue trading. For example, I realized that there was a pet, somewhere out there that had the ID of my anniversary and I really wanted it, so I echoed the owner of said pet and they were perfectly fine with trading me the pet if I could perfectly replace them with the same gender/species/ect. This proved of no issue for anyone, and the person I echoed didn’t mind at all, or at least didn’t seem to.

So, perhaps, instead of banning the “inquiry”, maybe it would be better to ban hassling someone when they’ve already said no, or the asking for something they say they explicitly don’t want to ever sell?

Just thinking that perhaps a more specific/clear sort of rule might be better….

I know that the grammar issue has already been addressed by Ploo, Tarot, and a few others, but I do have something to add. This is a topic I feel very strongly about it. My best friend online had a stroke a couple of years back that caused her to have trouble translating her thoughts to written form. She has a lot of typos, but she’s still a joy to roleplay with. There’s also people who are non-native English speakers who struggle with the language. There are many more situations than just dyslexia that could cause typo issues.

Would it possible to add an addition to the rule that mentions you can (but don’t have to) PM a moderator to alert them of medical (or regional) difficulties that might influence spelling? That way the moderators can at least be aware of some of the population of users who struggles and it makes it less likely that they’ll be stuck in the flagging situation because of the difficulty?

The other changes do not concern me in the least, though. They sound reasonable, and the tagging will be wonderful!

OregonCoast Officially you will see staff utilizing American spelling, but we will not penalize you for using either American or British spelling. :)

Hawkins I think I see what you mean - I am sorry I cannot give you a more detailed response one way or the other right now, but we will consider the phrasing here to ensure its clarity. Thank you for bringing the concern up!!!

Dove  Oh what a relief!  I’ve been on British virtual pet sites for years and have grown up using the British spelling.  I admit, I panicked when I read about the flagging. 

Also, that’s a very good point about the stroke patient and other non native speakers. I know of several people who utilize posting on pet sites in order to improve their spelling and grammar.  I just worry that this flagging might bring up anxieties in people and prevent them from utilizing this feature altogether?

Dash & OregonCoast : I understand your concerns and I wish to reemphasize that this flagging feature is really not meant to punish anyone for trying to learn or for having difficulties beyond their control. If anyone wishes to disclose any disabilities to us, they can do so at any time at their own discretion but as of the moment we will not be amending the rule to include that.

To give an example of what I would actually flag for review:

If say, Firkasa was to post in a thread about candy and wrote the following:

ahdaklhd jkhasi cafe salad dream

I would flag that and comment in additional something along the line of:

Hi Firkasa, we are having a bit of difficult understanding your post, would you mind editing it a bit to make your intent clearer?