Hey, everyone! We are rolling out some new changes to our rules on the LBP Union’s Discord Server. This is part of a transparent process to improve our server atmosphere. It is not in response to serious problems but it is definitely driven by your feedback and is meant to improve your experience. Our community is an ever changing process and we appreciate further feedback that you have in this process. Please feel free to respond to this post with any questions, feedback, or suggestions that you might have.
Rule 2: No Spam
Original: No spam.
Updated: No spam is allowed. Please do not post too many messages at once or copy and paste messages over and over. This includes behavior that is disruptive to the flow of conversation.
We wanted to elaborate a bit more on this rule to make clear what we are trying to control. In the future, we may introduce slow mode to all channels on the server to help enforce this server-wide. Slow-mode restricts the number of messages a server member can send in a period of time. However, currently, slow mode is only active in our primary #chat channel with a five second delay.
Rule 3: Self Promotion
Original: Self-promotion is allowed within reason in the appropriate channels. Try not to actively advertise your work. Instead, we recommend letting your work speak for itself! Post some pictures of what you’ve been working on in our showcase channels like #lbp-creations and #projects!
Updated: Self-promotion is allowed on our server. We encourage groups looking to promote themselves to sign-up for our Broadcast channel so that you can push announcements to the server. All promoted content must adhere to our Code of Conduct.
The LBP Union team believes that sharing what you do is essential for a LittleBigPlanet community. Because of this, we want to provide a courteous, safe, and organized way for people to share their content with others with as few barriers to entry as possible. However, our system is in need of improvement.
To succeed, we are implementing the following:
The LBP Union’s Broadcast channel is more emphasized.
We are producing a guide to help groups of creators market their content to a larger audience with courtesy and outreach in mind.
Members of the server are encouraged to follow courtesy guidelines when promoting their content on our server.
Content promoters should take care to review our Code of Conduct. We will not allow promotion of Discord servers, levels, and other content which violates our Code of Conduct.
Broadcast Channel
Our Broadcast channel is a unique community announcements channel where community studios, groups, clans, and other organizations can get outreach about their content. Use of the Broadcast channel is limited to one representative per organization and one announcement every 24 hours.
We plan to allow server members to opt out of Broadcast channel role pinging. It’s our belief that members should be able to control their notifications. However, we encourage you to support our community content creators.
Groups will have to sign up to use our Broadcast channel and be approved. We intend to approve all applications so long as groups do not violate our Code of Conduct. This is merely to make the process official and keep track of things. We also want to prevent users from abusing the system to promote malicious or unwanted activity.
Outreach and Courtesy Guides
We would like to produce outreach guides to help content creators better advertise their content on the LBP Union’s Discord server and elsewhere. We want to remove as many barriers to entry as possible to help people get started with sharing their content.
To do this, we will be writing about ways to use our forum, social media, Discord, and later LittleBigPlanet to help promote content in a courteous and polite way. This guide will be available soon.
Rule 6: Easing Language Restrictions
Old: Please refrain from using mature language. Let’s keep the server a family friendly environment, but remember that Discord’s TOS requires you to be at least 13 to use the server. Please do not use any racial slurs or any words that demean groups of people.
New: Mature language is okay, but please limit it to help maintain a positive server atmosphere. Do not use language in any way that is offensive, meant to insult, harass, or instigate others. Do not attempt to circumvent our bot’s word filter.
We believe that we have overly restricted mature language on our server. However, we have enjoyed the positive atmosphere that has resulted from a reduction in language use. To compromise, we’d like to ease those restrictions with some guidance.
We believe that mature language is in most cases fine. However, when it crosses the line and this language becomes intended to insult, harass, or demean an individual or group of people, we cannot tolerate it. Sometimes problems can also occur without intent. We may not understand that the things we say can harm others. The role of our Pathfinders and server team is to inform users that what they say may not be okay and what they should do instead. We want to work with you on this process rather than issue out mutes, kicks, and bans to deal with it instead. When rolling out this change, there may be some confusion and we don’t want to punish people for that confusion.
To supplement this change, the bot word filter will be significantly reduced to only include things like offensive slurs. You may have questions about why certain words remain on this list. If you have any questions, please ask a server team member.
We aren't done yet. Our goals for the future include, but are not limited to,
Improving our protocol for how Peacekeepers (moderators) should intervene with actionable content.
Opening up an appropriate number of Peacekeeper positions and promoting Pathfinders to fill these positions.
Improvements where our forum and Discord server can best complement one another.
Improving our network of bots on the server to better our community experience.
Thank you for the feedback you have provided so far! Please reply to this thread with any thoughts, questions, or suggestions you have related to this update.