It seems recently alot of people have decided that now is a good time to test the boundries of what is and isn't acceptable. I've spent endless hours chatting with people going over why they need to stop saying stupid things and harrassing other comunity members so I decided to just compile the jist of it and post it here.

Strictly speaking the agreement you signed into when you installed spring is this: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/dl/Agreement.html

The agreement is a great example of what you can do to stay unbanned for ever, that being said I realise that if it was strictly upheld to the tee there would be alot of bans for relitively innocent things and alot of perminent bans for minor offences. We want people to be able to play spring so that isn't they system that we have decided to enforce here.

So what is being enforced in terms of rules?

A) Absolutly no harrassment or persecution of other comunity members for any reason.
B) No racism or biggotry towards any people group for any reason
C) Shock humor will not be tolerated in public channels. #main is PG13
D) Excessive spam or posting that either causes frustration to other comunity members or clogs up client server will not be tolerated

Things to understand:
Spring moderators are trying to moderate by intent: If we see you accidentally slip up and curse in #main we will probably not bother you about it, even though strictly speaking it is against the rules. We want to ban people who are breaking rules because they intend to make the comunity a worse place, not people who are trying to follow the rules and slip up every once in a while.

The proper avenue of retaliation against harrassment is reporting it to a moderator: If you flame someone back because they flame you and the fight escalates both parties will be banned, even if it can clearly be shown that one started it. Don't be provoked, report people who are harrassing you.

You don't have to swear or spout racist retoric to be banned for harrassment: If you follow another member around joining games to ally comm bomb them that is considered harrassment. If you consitantly provoke a negitive response out of another comunity member that constitiues harassment, even if they resort to personal attacks and foul language before you do. Harrassment is the act of intentionally frustrating or annoying another member via whatever means are used.

Intentionally ruining the play experiance for other players can get you banned: This does not refer to using tactics that are under debate as to thier fairness, what this constitutes is things like joining a game and just sitting AFK, or joining a game and comm bombing your allies. This also extends to shows of inpoliteness like haveing pause wars with the game host or unpausing a game another player has paused after clearly explaining the reason they paused the game. Play to win and do not use game or engine glitches to frustrate the experiance for the other players in the game.

As moderators we really don't want to ban you, that constitutes extra work for us and means we're denying people the ability to play spring, which is something we want to spread, not limit. Please just try to keep the comunity a friendly place so you don't end up butting heads with us.

I heartily agree with you. It's about time someone laid down the law, and now the old "I didn't know" excuse is useless.

Don;t youi have to agree to taht when you install it?

If so, Bans without reasons seem in order becasue by reading thtat, You should knwo what you've done worng.

You agree with it when you make a account on the server and login with it!

Well, I just totally agree with you here Swifty

While your at it could you comment on the roadmap?
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4542
Specificly the Marketing and Atmosphere part?

Maybe the lobby needs to show a warning when you join? Like:
THIS LOBBY IS MODERATED SO BEHAVE YOURSELF!

Idea?

An EULA should be enough, i'd say.

All things are in there and the rest comes down to common sense.

misbehave = ban4ever :)

Why can't people just behave. What's wrong with peepz these dayz?

Too long since we've had a real war.

this mean i cant mock steves geordie-ness no more

Unfortunately, with the recent increase of popularity of Spring, this necessity had to happen sooner or later.

We really must thank the moderators and the dedicated members of the community for spending time and effort to keep it as cool, safe and friendly as it has been so far.

Oh that explains it. I was banned cuz I didn't know there was an up in the strictness mods had to uphold. :/ Nobody cared as much before about my stupid behavior since TAS wasn't so popular, but now I have to be nicer so more people will play it (if I ever get unbanned...)

So the temp-bans didn't clue you in, mechasonic?

I thought that ban was just for my spam fest that night. I got banned again for...I don't really know. Must of been that arguement I was in. If I got banned for that, then that's just stupid and unfair. I didn't start the arguement...

[jeez was I mean.]

Actually I can, but I'm too lazy to keep reconnecting to find an unblocked IP.

Mecha, you got banned because betalord got fed up with repededly having to warn you and deal with you. The spamfest was the last straw in a long list of offences and betalord didn't want to deal with it any more.

Bah! Betalard never warned me about anything. The only time he ever warned me was that time he muted me for 15 minutes. I know I've had tons of offenses but they were all pretty minor IMHO. I never cussed, said anything racist, etc., it was all mostly spam, a few insults here and there, but nothing serious. And FYI, it doesn't say anything in the EULA that you CAN'T spam, and it says I was banned for violating the EULA, but I really didn't cuz it doesn't anything against spamming, so I was banned for no reason! What do ya have to say about that, huh? HUH!?! Anyway, if I'm ever unbanned, I won't use my name anymore, I'll just start a new life with a new name and try my best to not be an ass, if you are willing to let me do so... And finally, I sincerely apologize for my buttholioness in the past. I'm not going to be using my real name anymore, but I will try to be as nice and helpful whenever possible, even tho you won't know it....

How old are you? twelve?

You seriously think other people keep pointing out the fact you are annoying? course not.

Just spam? it's a game lobby for 'chatting' and setting up games? why would you spam that? a few insults here and there? where's that good for then?

Just re-read your own post and figure out the problems you have, there's gotta be some professional help for you out there somewhere.

jeez

It says right at the top that "administraters and moderators will try to keep spammers and players volating this agreement off the server". Spamming is considered a form of DoS attack, and technically any form of DoS attack is illegal. I don't think you ever spammed to the point where we'd acctually have grounds for a legal argument but you had been diplined or warned by nearly every moderator in one way or another and betalord decided it was time to end it.

Personally I never saw you as being that destructive to the comunity and I'd be ok with seeing you unbanned, but betalord was the banning administrator so you need to discuss the point with him, not with me or any other group of people in the spring comunity. Spring bans must be manually removed, so if you want to be unbanned you need to give betalord a good reason to do so.

This is not the place to discuss a ban.

I think that one problem with the EULA is that most people just click accept and ignore/forget about it. Every program has a EULA. When I first joined I just clicked accept and ignored it thinking that it was just another moded copy of the GPL or similer licence. It might work out better if the name was changed to "Acceptable Use Policy." Just a thought.