SWF Review: November to December

[Mediocre]

1. Restructuring the 64 Forums and the Smash 64 Backroom

The Smash 64 rooms were moved from "General Gaming" and given a heading to share with SSB: Melee. Smash 64 was the start of the game series we all know and love, and still maintains an active competitive community more than a decade after its release. Because of the limited size of that community it did not get its own heading, but it still deserved better representation on SWF. Smash 64 was also given its own backroom, and the first round of admissions and decisions from it have already been carried out. Hopefully these changes will be a boon to the 64 community.

2. New Senators Added to the Mix

In an effort to allow for even better discussions and decisions on site policy, and to increase the diversity of the Senate, we have recruited five new senators. Please welcome Hilt, Ankoku, Bionic, Mediocre and Dazwa as they step into their new roles. We expect that they will all do an excellent job. Expect even further changes to the composition of the Senate in the future.

3. Permanent Points Return

Because of the usefulness of permanent points as a moderation tool, they have been brought back. Now repeat offenders will find it much harder to play the system. The more a user breaks the rules, the faster they will get banned next time. We hope this will make for a more enjoyable forum experience for everyone.

4. Nudity Now Clearly Against Forum Rules

We have updated the Global Rules to more explicitly ban nudity. Although it has never been allowed on SWF, a few users apparently had some confusion about the rules regarding it. Now there is no excuse for not knowing that posting nudity can earn the poster a permaban.

5. The Unified Ruleset Initiative

In order to increase the consistency for rules among various smash tournaments, the BBR-RC has started a unified ruleset initiative. AlphaZealot is the head of the project, and everything is discussed among the BBR-RC. Because of the expansive reach of this initiative, we are also working with Neal from All is Brawl. To facilitate this change, only tournaments following the agreed upon ruleset will have their threads stickied on SWF, or receive coverage on AiB. We hope that this effort will result in a more unified and professional Brawl community.

6. SWF at PAX East

To find new ways to spread the word about our community and competitive Smash in general, Ambassador Solid Jake is aiming to set up an expert panel to talk about competitive gaming at Penny Arcade Expo. The panels, which are free to host, give the host access to over 100,000 PAX attendees and all the media that PAX has at its disposal, including a section in printed PAX materials. Although SWF will not be the focus of the entire presentation, it will certainly get some mentions and will facilitate our ambition to make more people aware of and active in the competitive Smash community.

Unfortunately, PAX has turned down Solid Jake's request for a panel. Both he and JV will still be attending PAX, but as normal attendees rather than panel hosts.

 

[Indigo Jeans]

"Expect" was misspelled.

 

[Mediocre]

"Expect" was misspelled.

Not anymore it isn't.

And you can't prove it ever was, either.

 

[Lore]

And you can't prove it ever was, either.

Objection!

You edited the post after he pointed it out, which implies that that mistake was the reason for the edit!

Anyway, this is an interesting list. I definitely enjoyed reading it.

Did PAX give a reason for rejecting the application?

 

[Terywj [태리]]

I liked this. Interesting read.

Late congratulations to our new Senators!

 

[Sariku]

It's great to read about everything going on in the SWF community. It's a shame Solid Jake was turned down at Pax. q_q

Also, was nudity being a violation really debatable before?

 

[Mediocre]

Did PAX give a reason for rejecting the application?

I'm not sure. If they did, I'm not aware of it.

Also, was nudity being a violation really debatable before?

Well, it was always worth an infraction. But there was one user who was arguing it didn't warrant a permaban, under the rules.

So we changed the rules and now it's pretty much impossible to argue.

 

[ZIO]

I can't believe there was someone who tried to argue about the punishment to the posting of nudity. No one should have the balls to post it in the first place.

Reminds me of when I had an animated avatar and I told Azua it wasn't in the SWF global rules I couldn't have when she told me to remove it, so she changed it so it did say that. Still would be cool to have one.

 

[Dark Hart]

Azua rejected me this one time

 

[Mediocre]

I can't believe there was someone who tried to argue about the punishment to the posting of nudity. No one should have the balls to post it in the first place.

As I remember the guy who caused the problem was posting lots of old artwork. Stuff like The Birth of Venus and the like. Works that unquestionably have artistic value, but still wasn't stuff we wanted posted on SWF. So we changed the rules.

I don't think anyone was posting softcore porn and then trying to claim we couldn't ban him for it.

Reminds me of when I had an animated avatar and I told Azua it wasn't in the SWF global rules I couldn't have when she told me to remove it, so she changed it so it did say that. Still would be cool to have one.

Hahaha. Yeah, I think that's because we can configure the site to automatically block animated .gif files, but not animated... .png files, I think. So as .png files got more popular, we started having the occasional animated picture that would get through the filter, but no one thought to update the rules to reflect the fact that our filters weren't totally effective any more. But then I guess you made an issue out of it and got the rules updated.

(I don't mind letting people know how to get around the filter since all it's going to earn them is an animated avatar for a few minutes/hours and then an infraction.)

Anyhow, I can understand why people would want animated avatars, but a lot of users find them quite annoying. Not to mention that they can slow down loading times and possibly computers.

 

[Kinzer]

What exactly is the job of a senator?

As I remember the guy who caused the problem was posting lots of old artwork. Stuff like The Birth of Venus and the like. Works that unquestionably have artistic value, but still wasn't stuff we wanted posted on SWF. So we changed the rules.

Not even for artistic value huh? Good to know, I was thinking "but what about famous sculptures like the Statue of David?"

I don't think anyone was posting softcore porn and then trying to claim we couldn't ban him for it.

... I'm sorry, I messed up~!

 

[Mediocre]

What exactly is the job of a senator?

Well, first of all they're like super moderators, so they can mod anywhere in the forums. Well, except for password protected rooms, and I don't think senators who aren't in the Back Room or the various private Smash rooms can see those. I know I can't see any of the SBRs. I personally check the reported posts pretty regularly, and then handle problem posts according to the global rules. However, some senators hardly do any actual infracting at all. It's not really a requirement.

The other aspect of the job is discussing forum policy, and that's probably the most important role of a senator. The Senate helps to decide what changes would benefit SWF, and make sure they're done. It's also where some of the more controversial or unique moderation issues are discussed.

Not even for artistic value huh? Good to know, I was thinking "but what about famous sculptures like the Statue of David?"

Well, once you make that exception it's hard to say where to draw the line. There is some artistically done erotic art there, which straddles the divide between art and softcore pornography. There are movies with artistic merit out there that have fairly graphic sex scenes. However, posting a clip from one of those movies would not be allowed.

Moreover, artistic value is hard to define. I'm sure you could find someone who would believe that some hardcore pornography was art, and there's really no way to prove that stance wrong. Would the fact that he believed it was art justify him linking to a clip from it on SWF? We obviously can't allow that.

So while I and the rest of the SWF staff recognize the artistic value of many works which contain nudity, we simply can't make that exception.

... I'm sorry, I messed up~!

Heh, you're not the user I was talking about.

You did mess up, but given that that's the only infraction you've had in the past year, I'd say you should just make sure not to do anything like that in the future and you should be fine.

 

[Lord Chair]

It's really easy to find gray areas in terms of nudity.

I still don't fully understand what the different between explicit and minor inappropriate content is, but specifically banning nudity makes the rules that much easier to understand.

Then again, there will always be discrepancy about what exactly is nudity and what isn't. I recall posting a bare-chested of whom it wasn't objectively ascertained that he was fully nude, yet I got infracted for it regardless.

Then again, I was viewed as a troll and got instant-banned regardless of my defense.

Fun to see that the admins did agree with me saying it was one huge gray area regardless.