In my last dev blog concerning the ISD team, I mentioned the internalization of the volunteer forum moderation team into the newly created Community Group, a team tasked with increased responsibilities. One of the primary responsibilities of the Community Group is the management of the forums.

During the creation of the Community Group, the forum policies were reviewed. As part of an ongoing streamlining process, the manner in which forum warnings and bans are issued have been changed to the following:

The number of warnings issued before forum bans are levied will be reduced and the duration of the bans increased-

• 1st Warning – No action
• 2nd Warning – 2 week forum ban
• 3rd Warning – 1 month forum ban
• 4th Warning – 3 month forum ban
• 5th Warning – 6 month forum ban
• 6th and subsequent Warnings – 6 month forum ban

Permanent bans will be issued under special circumstances, such as threats of physical harm to a player or developer, posting of pornography, racial slurs and epithets, etc. Existing forum permanent bans will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, please e-mail community@ccpgames.com to request a review. Depending on our findings in the review, posting privileges will be reinstated after six months has passed from the application of the ban. For example, if a perma-ban was levied seven months ago, posting privileges will be reinstated pending the review; if a perma-ban was issued four months ago, two months remain to be served. Current or future permanent bans issued for death threats, RMT spamming, discriminatory content, End User License Agreement or Terms of Service breaches, etc. will not be lifted. Reviews will be conducted only for perma-bans issued before these changes are implemented; any bans levied after the new structure is in place will stand.

For all other community members, the warning/ban counter will be reset at the end of the normal Tranquility maintenance period on Thursday, 20 December. The first warning issued after the downtime will result in a warning without a ban, the next warning will result in a two-week forum ban. Warning histories will be retained for reference. Community members who abuse the warning reset will receive the equivalent of a fifth warning and a six month forum ban.

The increase in severity of the warning and ban process does require a relaxation of some of the forum rules.

• The forum word filter will be updated and some words resulting in filtering of words like cockpit or crack will be reviewed. Proper use of multiple definition words will not result in a warning, but improper usage will.
• The Corporations and Alliances Summit and Intergalactic Summit Role Play forums will see a relaxing of the enforcement of minor flaming as long as post content is in character, but a post with contents of a harmful, racial or inflammatory nature will not be tolerated.
• Warnings will not be issued for oversized signature images or non-EVE related content unless the signature violates the existing image guidelines (Forum rules, items 11 and 18). However, signatures that fail to meet the image guidelines will be deleted and locked until a compliant signature has been provided. Repeated violations will result in the permanent loss of signature use.

We feel these changes are necessary for the betterment of the EVE community and forums. It is our hope the EVE community mirrors our feelings.

Forum Improvements and Changes

A number of other changes have been made while others will be made in coming months. Improvements to be deployed tomorrow include differentiation between developer and GM replies to posts, new badges for GMs, volunteers and business partners that will display under their avatars, improved Devfinder resources, 'post moved' notification (when a post has been moved from one channel to another), and the aforementioned changes to the warning and ban process.

Planned future changes include updates to the forum code itself, addition of the ability for community members to report questionable posts in a petition-like system viewable only by appropriate CCP staff, an improved search feature, and much more. Further information and introduction of these additions will be made as they are ready for deployment.

EVE Community Fansite Listing and Community Support

At the same time as the forum improvement deployment, our Community Fansites page will be receiving a facelift. The current page links to the Fansite, icon for site language, the date added and a list of offerings by the site; the new page will include this information but in a more user friendly format. Simply look at the top of the page for the feature you want, such as Podcasts or Corporation Recruitment and follow down the column for sites offering the feature.

To have your site added to the Community Fansite listing, please visit this page to start the application process. Questions may be sent to Community@ccpgames.com. We will be happy to provide any assistance we can in the support of those who have supported the EVE Community.

The Communications Relay Commission (CRC)

Finally, this blog marks the last day for the Communications Relay Commission, the volunteer forum moderation team. Their efforts will be taken up by our new community representatives, CCP staff members of the Community Group. We would like to thank the members of the CRC team for their efforts and contributions to the EVE community. Their assistance has had a hand in EVE Online’s success and for that we are truly grateful.