Welcome to the NEW forum!

[Enail]

Welcome to the new forum!

The other mods and I are excited to launch this site and give the DNL community a place to gather and get off-topic once more! We’ve missed you people!

For the most part, it’s our hope that this forum will be a lot like the old one, but we are bringing in a few changes. Please give  the updated forum guidelines a read (I know they're long, but please do try to read them through!), and I also wanted to highlight and talk about some of the bigger changes here. I’d like everyone to come in knowing how things will work here, so please do read this stuff!

The Mod Team

You might notice we’ve got a rather bigger team of moderators than before. We’ve also got shiny new kinds of mods!  

General Oversight (G.O.)Mods oversee the whole site, especially subforums without dedicated mods, and are responsible for taking major mod actions. They’re pretty much the same as ye mods of olde.

Subforum Mods are specialists, each in charge of their own subforum(s), and will also do minor mod duties outside their domain.

Roving Mods, like G.O. mods, cover the entire site but mostly focus on day-to-day issues. Along with G.O. mods, they will especially look after any subforums lacking a dedicated mod.   

See the Forum Guidelines for more details on how this works.

So, I’d like to announce and welcome our new (and a few not-so-new) mods:

UristMcBunny (formerly known as Bunny!), Subforum Mod for Romantic and Sexual Relationships,
Dan_Brodribb, Roving Mod
Eselle28, G.O. Mod
Fakely McTest, G.O. Mod
Mel, Subforum Mod for Lifestyle and Health and Wellbeing
Reboot, Subforum Mod for Gender, Identity and Society and Other Relationships
Robjection, Roving Mod
SarahGryph, Subforum Mod for Meeting People and Dating Advice and Geekery and Entertainment
Werel, Roving Mod
(and me, G.O. Mod)

And we may be adding some more moderators over the next few weeks as well, stay tuned!

I also wanted to say a little about mods, and members.  There were a lot of awesome members on the old forum. The people I’ve asked to moderate the new forum with me are most definitely some of them,  but there are lots of other awesome members, valued contributors, who are not moderators. So I didn’t want anyone to be wondering why you’ve not been chosen or thinking that it’s a reflection on your contribution or my esteem for you; I’ve  tried to choose people who are not only awesome, but who don’t generally attract controversy and who tend towards de-escalation. We need the members who are forceful, passionate and unafraid to say what they think without pulling punches - but we need them to be able to speak freely, as members.


Rules changes

• The biggest policy change I wanted to discuss is that we are no longer allowing posts announcing or debating suicidal intentions. I know some of you have made posts like this in the past - and I’m very glad if we’ve been of any help to any of you at those times - and so this might be rather startling and hurtful to you, and for that I’m sorry.
  
  I want you all to know that the new policy is not because we don’t want to help or because we don’t care about you anymore - I think I can speak for many people here when I say we do -  but because it worries me to have people seeking help in times of crisis here, where there are no experts and no guarantees anyone will be around or able to handle something so important, when it means delaying getting real help from people qualified to help you. If you are in danger of killing yourself, I want you to stay alive and safe, and that means getting professional help immediately.
  
  That doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear from you. Let us know how you’re doing once you’re safe. This new rule is not a ban on talking about suicidal feelings - we’re still here to listen and offer support on coping with the difficult stuff - but if you’re currently in danger, please, get help first and save posting for later.
  
  
• We’re going to be making greater use of temporary thread locks and short-term member bans when things get out of hand. Moderators might lock a thread that’s outside of their realm of influence until someone else can deal with it, to discuss a problem with other mods, or just generally to freeze a situation that’s moving too quickly. This isn’t exactly new, but since it’s now going to be a more important moderation tool, we’re also going to need members to be aware of that.  
  
  So, the new rule is, when a moderator temporarily locks a thread, that topic is off-limits until further notice. Do not start threads on closely related topics or bring up the subject in a different thread.  Do not start threads complaining about the thread lock or discussing other members’ behavior in the locked thread. Intentional attempts to circumvent a thread lock will be subject to moderator action, up to and including long-term banning. So don’t do it!
  
  
• We’re going to be moderating a bit more strictly. We’ll be keeping things just a little more feminist-friendly, as well as coming down harder on racism, transphobia and excusing of abuse/victim-blaming particularly. We’re not intending this to be a huge change to the environment here, it’ll still be pretty much the same place and we will still encourage discussion of difficult topics rather than moderating the life out of them, whenever we can do so without allowing toxic beliefs to flourish or being exhausting and repetitious.
  

Reputation/Likes

We no longer have a downvote system. At the moment, what we've got is a Like button on every post; liking someone's post will add +1 to their reputation. We may be changing this up for something a little more like the old system, with comments, but we're sticking to upvotes now - if you have a concern with someone's post, the thing to do about it is to report it; if you disagree with what someone's saying, respond to it!

Alright, I think that’s the big stuff. Go have fun, people!