Amendment to rules surrounding posting content

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Blitzo

Lieutenant General
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Recent discussions across a number of threads have prompted the active moderating team to reflect and develop some rules and guidelines for the nature of the community's posting of content -- including articles, videos, images and social media, which may be of questionable quality, and lower the standards of the forum's primary role of being a competent PLA watching forum.

The nature of a forum means debate and discussion are encouraged within reasonable parameters and norms of a community's userbase. The outcome of such debate and discussion is to attain productive and constructive outcomes and sharing of knowledge.
However, unbridled posting of content that is questionable, from users that are continuously unable to learn and constructively engage or defend their postings, puts the forum's overall quality at risk for everyone.
This is especially the case as the forum continues to grow, and has started to develop a reputation in other circles beyond this little corner of online defense watching, meaning the forum has a need to bring new users up to speed as fast as possible, and to prevent a low quality content from causing too much distraction and using up the oxygen in threads.

Most of the time, when low quality content is posted it is a result of ignorance rather than deliberate malice.
Ignorance is not an offense -- but the persistent inability to learn, develop, and constructively engage over an extended period of time despite feedback from other members of the community, is certainly an offense as it is actively detrimental to the quality of the forum.

Thus, the new rules for content posting and the way in which members post, interact, critique and moderation, will be as follows:





Newly amended rules for content posting, interaction, critique:


1. Members are allowed to post articles, social media, images, videos, and other online content of "questionable" quality, however they ideally need to be accompanied by reasonable thoughts and commentary by the member themselves.
- For example, newly released images of a J-20 or any other system can be posted with minimal description or even without a description -- however if it is an old image that is well known (and thus would be content of a "questionable quality"), then ideally the posting member should explain why they are posting it.
- For example, posting a link to a video that is a podcast or an "information video" (and thus more likely to be content of a "questionable quality") should be accompanied by an explanation for why it is being posted such as what section is relevant, what information is new, and to justify its presence overall. Alternatively, posting a link to a newly released CCTV video defense documentary on a weapons system can get away with less of an explanation.
- For example, posting an article from outlets with long established poor track records such as SCMP, The National Interest or Business Insider (and thus are sources of "questionable quality"), is allowed but should be accompanied by a justifiable explanation for why it should be of interest to anyone on the forum. Its presence would need to be actively defended and justified.
- Overall, members should exercise common sense, and to not be afraid of using some effort to preemptively explain and justify what they are trying to convey, including for content that may not be of "questionable quality".

2. Fellow members have the right to critique and respond to posts and links in a manner that stays within the bounds of forum rules and etiquette (i.e.: they should be done in a civil manner, without use of expletives, and conveyed in a way that minimizes provocation).
- Members should not wield the forum rules as their own person bludgeon and cite them as the first course of action for shutting down another member's post or contribution. Instead, should seek to engage with them as equals.
- If members identify someone who has repeatedly made posts they consider to be of poor quality and the offending individual has not engaged in constructive responses, then they can use the "report" function and make their case for a track record of questionable low quality posting behaviours. Moderators can then review and judge the offending individual in question, and provide (or not provide) warnings and penalties as appropriate.

3. Members who consistently post articles, tweets, videos, images of questionable quality without responding to critique, and without alteration of their behaviours, may be subject to receive warnings and penalties by the discretion of the moderators, depending on the context and severity of their infarctions and behaviours.
- These members who behave in this way may be identified through other individuals using the report function to raise it to moderator attention, or alternatively can be a result of moderators themselves noticing such a pattern of behaviour through their own time on the forum.

4. These above rules and guidelines apply for all parts of the forum, but will be especially closely monitored and enforced in the primary PLA watching sections of the forum, in the "Strategic Defense," "Army," "Air Force" and "Navy" subforums.

Signed from the active moderating team:
T-U-P, Sampanviking, Deino, Siegecrossbow, Blitzo, LawLeadsToPeace, Vincent, HereToSeePics, Phead128, SAC
 
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Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
The above rules may be subject to fine tuning with time, however it is an outcome of extensive deliberation among the active members of the current moderating team.

They come into force now as of this posting, and enforcement will be done on a reasonable and common sense basis in a manner where the outcomes will be proportionate to the extent, duration and intensity of the behaviours.

We also remind members that the moderators will be sensitive to and vigilant to any members bold enough to abuse these new rules, and abuse of this new mechanism will not be taken lightly either.
 
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