*** NEW RULES FOR THE CA FORUM ***

Ten of Swords

Following the recent feedback thread, which the mods and admins have gone through in considerable detail, we have identified the main themes, issues and possible solutions that people suggested to address the problems in the Current Affairs Forum.

With the recent success of the minimum post count, which has greatly helped with the rereg issue, we are going to try to deal with some of the longer term issues in the forum.

The things that came up repeatedly in the feedback thread were - a perception of over zealous moderation, dissatisfaction with threadbans and a method dealing with long term trolls in the forum on a permanent basis.

**These rule changes apply only to the Current Affairs forum and are effective immediately**

1. In response to multiple claims that the moderation in CA is too strict, we are going to reduce moderation to a more hands off level - threads will be allowed to meander, debate can be more robust and warnings will not be given for very minor infractions. Posters are, however, expected to take note of the forum charter and follow any mod instructions.

2. Threadbans are being removed and all current threadbans are now cancelled. Everyone may participate in every open thread in the forum.

3. The forum charter is not going to change. Posters know what is acceptable and what is not, new posters will learn quickly. However we would like to clarify the following - Low level snark/ personal abuse, concern trolling, sealioning, victim blaming, piling on posters, link dumping and bringing up a posters previous posts from other threads/forums are specifically not allowed, as these seem to have operated in a grey area until now.

4. Warnings issued in the Current Affairs forum are no longer subject to the dispute resolution process and moderators/admins will not engage in PM discussion about them either.

5. If a moderator issues a zero point warnings to you then this is an advisory to change your posting style in some way (which will be specified in the warning). Do not ignore it and do not accumulate multiple zero point warnings.

6. Every warning issued (except a zero point warning) now comes with an automatic ban too, starting with a one day ban and escalating to an eventual permanent ban.

The warnings scale-

1. 1st warning = 1 day ban
2. 2nd warning = 3 day ban
3. 3rd warning = 1 week ban
4. 4th warning = 1 month ban
5. 5th warning = 2 month ban
6. 6th warning = 3 month ban
7. 7th warning = 6 month ban (can be appealed)
8. 8th warning = Permanent ban (can be appealed)