My name is Bruke and this place is an extension of my home. I have made this forum as a place for myself and my friends to gather but it is not entirely exclusive; indeed it would be a poor community if it never grew. The door is open to all guests that are willing to respect my rules.
I am not, by my nature, an authoritarian. When I created my first community forum back in 2006 I had just one simple rule - "primum non nocere". It roughly translates from the Latin as, "first, do no harm". It was simple, I liked the sound of it, and it seemed to be all that I needed to say. It was all I ever wanted to have to say about rules.
That really didn't work so bad at first but as that forum grew I discovered that there are reasons why so many forums have longer lists of rules - the anonymity of the internet seems to bring out the worst in some people.
Over the years I've experimented with several different sets of rules but I've never really liked long itemized lists that read like a legal codex. Worse yet, I've come to realize that most people simply don't bother to read the rules - the only people that really read the rules are people that are likely to be pretty decent regardless of the rules. I've never known anyone to read a forum's rules and exclaim, "They have no rule against spam! I think I'll post links to my porn site here." The sort of people that are going to engage in the most overt types of bad behavior wouldn't care what the rules say, they intend to (attempt to) carry out their agenda regardless of whatever a webmaster might do or say.
For those reasons, I've decided to avoid any long list of rules for this forum. Instead, I'm going to reiterate that this is an extension of my home; behave here as you would if you were physically in my home and you should be fine. If you don't know how to behave in polite society, I can't help you with that. If you're unsure of the acceptability of any particular course of action, post a reply in this thread and ask me directly - I don't believe in thought-crimes and won't ban you just for asking a question.
If you do anything that would prompt me to kick you out of my house you will get you banned from the forum. Anything that would make me call the police will still make me call the police. Don't break the law, don't bring the police to my doorstep, don't disrespect me or my other guests. Other than that, have fun.
~The Bruke
Topic: General Rules & Ethos (Read 271 times)