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[Null]

One of the main complaints I get from "outsiders" is about the forum rules. There seems to be some sort of misconception that we ban for every single infraction, as opposed to the rules being general guidelines that set the tone for what is considered "acceptable behavior".

To combat this, I'm going to do a few things:
1. I've made the "Forum Rules" into "Forum Guidelines" and colored them blue because blue is less spooky.
2. I'm rewording them to be shorter.
3. They're being moved off index of the board, and will only appear when creating a thread/reply or browsing a thread.
4. I'm adding icons to indicate if something is important or informative.

For instance, I've done this to Lolcow's rules first.

 

[MasterDisaster]

Looks good boss.

 

[EI 903]

The changes look good. Being more accurate as to how the place runs and what's expected is never going to be a bad thing.

 

[DuskEngine]

Are you going to rewrite the subforum-specific rules as well or is this just for the main lolcow board?

 

[YI 457]

If you don't look like Danny de Vito and that you do and say all the right things, the Farms will welcome you. Looks good for me.

 

[Clown Doll]

3. They're being moved off index of the board, and will only appear when creating a thread/reply or browsing a thread.

I think it's better to have the rules passively hitting people browsing the index over the head to have more visibility for them before people start posting. It's likely a negligible difference, but why change from marginally higher visibility for lower? As it stands, not enough people give a shit about the extremely lax rules/guidelines on the site, rather than rules stifling posting.

And honestly, rules being "imposing" for new posters is better since it encourages people to not start going against them until they've developed the sense that they're supposed to be guidelines. A cringeworthy shitpost prevented by a user exercising self-restraint is less embarrassing than one that has to be cleaned up by a janitor/mod later.

The rules still show up everywhere else, just not the index page. This is mainly a readability thing because I feel the index pages are cluttered as-is..

Okay, thanks for the response, this clears things up.

 

[Null]

I think it's better to have the rules passively hitting people browsing the index over the head to have more visibility for them before people start posting. It's likely a negligible difference, but why change from marginally higher visibility for lower? As it stands, not enough people give a shit about the extremely lax rules/guidelines on the site, rather than rules stifling posting.

The rules still show up everywhere else, just not the index page. This is mainly a readability thing because I feel the index pages are cluttered as-is.

Are you going to rewrite the subforum-specific rules as well or is this just for the main lolcow board?

All of them will be like this soon.

 

[CatParty]

icons were a great addition

 

[yasscat]

Looks awesome!

 

[AnOminous]

I think the Rules should be bright red, flashing, and there should be skulls on either side of them. Every couple minutes, the skulls should scream.

 

[CatParty]

pls add "respect pronouns" to the list

 

[Philosophy Zombie]

Can we please actually enforce the "brief as possible" guideline by editing titles that are too long? No one actually follows it and they try to pimp out their titles to "sell" their lolcows as if they were used cars. It's annoying as fuck.

I think the Rules should be bright red, flashing, and there should be skulls on either side of them. Every couple minutes, the skulls should scream.

agree

 

[Smutley]

Can we please actually enforce the "brief as possible" guideline by editing titles that are too long? No one actually follows it and they try to pimp out their titles to "sell" their lolcows as if they were used cars. It's annoying as fuck.

I understand your sentiment but this already feels like a bad idea.

Chris A. Fields

Why would I care about Chris A. Fields, or click on his thread above any others? The simple line that was on it before, "your vagina has turned into a strange tesseract" not only sells the thread but lets people know they're getting into something weird. Just a name, or a screen name and name, mean nothing to people who aren't already aware of the cow in question.

 

[Null]

I understand your sentiment but this already feels like a bad idea.

Chris A. Fields

Why would I care about Chris A. Fields, or click on his thread above any others? The simple line that was on it before, "your vagina has turned into a strange tesseract" not only sells the thread but lets people know they're getting into something weird. Just a name, or a screen name and name, mean nothing to people who aren't already aware of the cow in question.

Yeah I'm torn. I really fucking hate spiel titles though. I wish we had thread descriptions like in PHPBB.

 

[Watcher]

I still don't understand why people have such a huge problem with rules.

The rules around here are much more liberal and laid back than the majority of other forums I've been on. On some forums I've been on you can get banned for "disrespect" and posting threads on stuff like abortion or religion.

Here I can post shit like Null go fuck yourself and nobody gives a fuck.

The rules are much more important as a guideline as to what behavior around here is deemed acceptable. Not so much what you can get banned for. Most of the time when you get banned around here you had it coming.

 

[Philosophy Zombie]

I understand your sentiment but this already feels like a bad idea.

Chris A. Fields

Why would I care about Chris A. Fields, or click on his thread above any others? The simple line that was on it before, "your vagina has turned into a strange tesseract" not only sells the thread but lets people know they're getting into something weird. Just a name, or a screen name and name, mean nothing to people who aren't already aware of the cow in question.

I don't mind it so much if the title blurb is good or interesting, but that is relatively uncommon compared to the majority which are "tranny pedo sjw thing but it's different you totally haven't seen this before" and "this tumblr user has a weird gender!" I tend to roll my eyes and pass over those, and I'll never know whether the content within is interesting or not simply because the thread creator was bad at making titles. Meanwhile the few short, minimalist titles actually stand out more and I'm more likely to click on them.

 

[CatParty]

i say handles and real name if we have them should suffice

 

[Philosophy Zombie]

The lack of red is disrupting our color balance, so you have to make another thing red now.

 

[Sanae Kochiya]

I don't mind it so much if the title blurb is good or interesting, but that is relatively uncommon compared to the majority which are "tranny pedo sjw thing but it's different you totally haven't seen this before" and "this tumblr user has a weird gender!" I tend to roll my eyes and pass over those, and I'll never know whether the content within is interesting or not simply because the thread creator was bad at making titles. Meanwhile the few short, minimalist titles actually stand out more and I'm more likely to click on them.

I was wondering where all of the descriptions following the Lolcow titles went. That makes some sense.

I do get the grievance for why absurdly long titles can turn people off of a lolcow, but like @Smutley said, just putting the name alone can sometimes not drum up interest since all you have is "a name" without any hook, and if it's someone that isn't particularly Internet famous or at least sticks to his own pastures, it's probably really easy to miss him if you're just skimming through the page like some people do.

How about a fair compromise? If your description needs more than seven words, it's probably a shit description. Something short, concise, and witty. Who is Brianna Wu? "Crazy Anti-GamerGate Tranny Twitter Drama Queen." Gives you an idea of what to expect going into the Wu thread. Similarly, Smutley's example of Chris A. Fields. Who is this guy? "Writes D&D Fetish Books with Incest."

I do think that some of the titles are overblown, but scrapping the titles entirely seems like too drastic a step in the other direction.

 

[Zeorus]

The lack of red is disrupting our color balance, so you have to make another thing red now.

Sshhhh, he might turn your name pink.