Proposed Discord Rules

Hi Everyone,

After a number of conversations and threads, it was decided to refresh and re-work the Discord rules. There has been some initial feedback from the Discord staff which I will post in a reply to discuss here but this is what has been proposed by me based on our current rules in an effort to make things somewhat easier to understand for everyone.

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These are the rules of the TotalFreedom discord server, which are in extension of the conduct policy.

General Notes
While we try to keep these rules simple and easy to understand, we ultimately expect our members to apply a level of common sense when using our discord community. We ask that people are respectful to one another regardless of rank / title or otherwise, and if you're politely told to stop doing something, perhaps you should think about listening.

The Discord staff have the final say on sanctions issued out, and have my blessing to enforce the rules as appropriate and based on the circumstances, these aren't black and white, these are a guideline to help the staff team make the right choices when enforcing our standards.

Server Chat Channels
The server chat channels will be exclusively governed by the rules of the server to which the chat is sync'd with. The only exceptions to this are as follows

a: There is to be no NSFW Material or links posted in the channel, either from discord or in game and the moderators will remove such content and sanction as appropriate.
b: Any actions to which the usage of the server chat results in you communicating with someone outside of said channel, for example if you use the channel to get a list of people to DM advertise you will be sanctioned according to the rules governing our policy on advertisements.

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Section 1: Indefinite Ban Offences
These sanctions may be temporarily put in place by any member of the Discord staff team, however will require formal approval from the server owner, or a member of the ATLAS Management Team. This approval can be sought in the owners absence through the Executive Team who have access to members of the ATLAS Leadership Team.
These bans are permanent and may only be appealed on the grounds that the ban was incorrectly issued. Due to the high-bar of enacting this ban a high bar will be required for any appeals to be considered and approved.

a: Any content (of any sort) that breaks the Discord Terms & Conditions
b: Any content (of any sort) which brings the reputation of ATLAS Media Group Ltd or it's projects (Which include TotalFreedom) into disrepute.

Section 2: Bannable offences
a: Any users who are not currently eligible to be an active member of the Discord community as a result of the Discord Terms & Conditions. The ban may be revoked when the member is eligible to once again be part of the community.
b: The Sending, Linking or otherwise sharing links to Malware or other such harmful content.
c: The Sending, Linking or otherwise sharing links to NSFW content, this is including but not limited to pictures, video's and websites.
d: Discriminating against, harassing or insulting a person based on their race/sexual preference/gender/age.
e: Continued efforts to disrupt the community. This may include but is not limited to continually causing drama, arguing or insulting other members of the community after previous warnings and being asked to stop
f: Advertising for what may be perceived as attempting to draw players away from the server or it's communities. Links to common sites such as YouTube / The Forums etc for example are acceptable. IP Addresses, Server hostnames, Discord invite links and similar content will be treated as a violation of this rule regardless of if the content posted is or is not real and live, we will tread it as such.
f-1: This rule is extended to those whom attempt to use tactics such as DM advertising, and if reported will be enforced regardless of friend status on Discord.
g: Raiding (having a group of people spam, sending multiple messages) or spam mentioning.
h: Abuse of bots to break any rule listed, including section 2 and 3 offenses.
i: Repeatedly breaking section 2 offences.

Section 3: Mutable offences
a: Spamming (sending multiple messages or creating large gaps in chat) outside of #spam.
b: Being disrespectful or annoying to members of the discord (arguing/insulting/mic spam), trolling.
c: Repeatedly breaking section 3 offences.

Section 4: Minor offences
a: Posting irrelevant messages/media to a channel with a specific purpose.

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So that formatted about as poorly as I expected it would... Yay Flarum.

The current main topic of conversation is around rule 1A, and if that should be an indefinite ban or not. My personal 2 cent is if you're breaking the discord TOS, the only grounds for an appeal should be if you weren't... Otherwise I'm not sure a "Sorry boss I made a mistake" appeal is really going to cut it, but open to thoughts.

Also would appreciate other peoples input on this before we look to formalise this as the new rules.

I've uploaded a second draft in an effort to clarify the original 1A rule that was causing some confusion.

@StevenNL2000#1650 & @neo#1734

While I am a firm advocator for second chances, they can only be issued where we can control our own destiny, and that's to say if people are breaking in this case the Discord T&C's, we are at risk of best case scenario getting a slap on the wrist, but more likely the entire server getting shut down and wiped, and as I understand more recently, the admins of said server also getting banned, along with any servers they also have setup... So If you're going to post content or engage in activities on our discord where you're breaking the T&C's, I don't see there being any reasonable way in which those users can be re-welcomed back to the community when the risk they have then posed to warrant that ban is so great.

I think we as a community are frankly lucky that we've never had a run in because I'm quite sure over the years T&C's of services we use have been broken, and that's something we're very lucky hasn't bitten us.

It's why I've set the burden for infinite bans so high and there are very few reasons you will ever fall into that category, in reality I would be surprised if anyone ever does, but it's either that or adding a "And these are guidelines and the staff can do what they want" clause at the end which I think will piss more people off.

@Tozzit#1730 Section 1 is a firm requirement, 1A to protect the Discord Guild, and 1B to protect the company which is managing and hosting it. I quite frankly don't want people bringing the company or server into disrepute and ending up with lawsuits or other shit on my hands because someone thought it'd be funny to trick people into things or nonsense like that. I've explained more about 1A in my previous post here, and 1B is there to protect me, my staff and frankly the funding line for this community to continue having servers and such...

2B I'm happy to remove, I think it's there for additional clarity as I suspect very few people read the Discord T&C's fully...

2E - I'll remove the examples entirely because I don't think just changing it to insulting is representative of the intent behind the rule.

2F - Can you give me an example of what you mean? I've tried to word that rule in such a way that unless you're following the server advertising rules in #server-chat - It should be no advertising of any kind where it may take an audience away from TF as a server, so posting links to your personal projects and non-minecraft related stuff, I don't see as any major issue, but posting links to other MC Servers or server addresses are a no-no, but I'm not sure if that's what you were getting at?

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@Tozzit#1789 What? You arent hosting the discord guild, and protecting you from what exactly? How are you gonna get sued because people talk bad about your company?? A company not allowing people criticizing itself is frankly a new one for me. id argue the rule ruins the reputation of the company more than anyone on the discord could, atleast for me.

Sorry, that was poor wording on my part, the hosting and managing side of things was more around the server generally. My issue is not with criticism / similar, it's with content or activity which would ultimately or could ultimately cause us to suffer losses as a company. I am happy to re-word things to hide that rule away like you'll find on just about every other discord guild, but I was keen to be transparent with the reasoning behind the rules rather than adding a catch-all at the end which most discord guilds and other communities tend to have...

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@Tozzit#1789 To be honest im not exactly sure how to put what im trying to say into words but i want people to still be able to post to stuff like their personal project but not excessively, i want people to be able to post links where they wont have to worry about being banned for advertisement and only people that have intent to advertise will be banned.

The issue comes with defining "have intent to advertise" because that's something I toyed with as well, and couldn't find a good way to word it without it ultimately still being very subjective... I think the way I had hoped the rule was worded was to make clear that if you're advertising something that we feel is competing with TF or could take our player base, that's an office which could result in a ban, but if you're posting a link to music, GitHub, websites and all these other general things then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

I'm happy to tweak the wording but I'm struggling to find a good way to word it if I'm honest.

@DragonSlayer2189#1806 I'll look to re-word and re-work that part. In short if you're in server chat the servers rules should be being followed but using that as an excuse to DM advertise for example isn't going to be taken well.