Replying to New Rules - Making NSG Better

Dear NSG,

The mod forum has been undertaking some discussion of late. Basically, we feel like NSG has become a bit of a mess. This is partly our fault. A couple of years ago, there was an executive decision made to loosen the slack on moderation in this forum and let it be a bit more unbridled and unmanaged, and focus on keeping the other forums a bit more organized.

This hasn't really worked very well - or, to be more accurate, NSG has gotten a bit out of hand the last little while. This has started to affect other areas of the site, as the behaviour level in this forum has transferred over into other forums and content like news comments and media. Overall, it's not giving off a good impression to people who might come on here. When a content producer clicks on a thread in NSG and the first reply is "OP's mom is a huge slut" or something equally brilliant, it immediately turns people off the site. When an interview is posted and the first comment is "this guy is a huge chode", it puts a damper on everything afterwards.

With that in mind this thread is intended to give people the chance to give some input on what we can do to make it better. New rules, new policies, new ideas, and so forth. Doug suggested I post a thread so we can have a public discussion with the people who use the forum. I know some people think it's fine and like it this way, but we've decided to change the atmosphere, so hopefully people can just post suggestions as to how make improvements rather than arguing over whether we should.

As you see we added two new moderators this week, Dingosean and BWalmer. This was done more or less entirely in response to a meeting we had about NSG. There were some other good candidates and, who knows, we may add more mods down the road. Incidentally, for the first time I can remember, we really changed the process from focusing solely on people who have been around a long time and are long-standing members and towards people who have been producing good threads and responses lately. We want to encourage that.

The long-standing forum rules are posted below for reference. If you think any of these should be changed somehow, replaced with something that reflects the fact that this isn't 2004 and the internet is a different place, or if you think new rules should be added, share that view below.

In order to ensure that this board is as helpful and enjoyable as possible to as many people as possible, we have established the following rules for this board. Any message may be removed if it:

-Contains any form of discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation or age. This includes words, abbreviations and slang which has a negative connotation.
-Contains links to sexually explicit or offensive material
-Contains blatant advertising for a company you work for. If you wish to advertise on Newschoolers.com, you must do so properly. Please contact dbishop@sportnet.com
-Contains unwarranted and direct hate towards other members of the site
-Have materials that wish to slander or hurt Newschoolers.com or their associates
-Contains spam, which only intention is too further one’s post count
-Contains information about deal-a-day websites. It is not your responsibility to pass on a good deal, as these threads only clog up the forums.
-Contains any personal information of others which can violate privacy issues
-Contains links to a site promotes the illegal downloads of ski industry material
-Contains items which are trying to be "flipped". If you wish to make a profit, do so somewhere else please
-Is deemed by us to be unsuitable for any reason whatsoever.

If we decide that a post is unacceptable, we will remove the post. Depending on the severity of the post or the past history of the user who made the post, we may drop a ban on your ass.