This has been a passion project of mine for a while now, I just got the foundation finished enough a few months ago to start getting people to join it and since then it’s flourish into something amazing imo.
LonePortal .com is an Old Web Intraweb. Which means it’s essentially it’s own website. We have a search engine, community made websites (The foundation for a Geocity inspired site), Myspace inspired social media, AIM/MSN inspired Chatroom, Retro Forums, a 2006 Youtube skinned… youtube. with 5 star ratings, comments, etc., monster taming, TCG & card collecting, an entire Library where the community can upload their own Literature as well as read Public Domain books as well. We have a community currency in which you can buy peoples books, ads on the website, etc. Every time you buy a book, or card for the tcg the quality for those degrades and scratches, stains, tears, etc. start to form on it! There’s so much more to list but I think you get the point.
I’d LOVE to know your thoughts & opinions on it. I hope that despite me being new that y’all will give it a chance for some feedback. I have a list of daily forums I use and I’m adding this to it, so there WILL be more activity from me :3
i didn’t see a terms of service or privacy policy anywhere, which is a pretty big red flag for me when it comes to anything that wants a signup. it also wasn’t clear to me what type of legal framework you’re operating under - the about page says that you are based in indiana, is that where the servers are and what legal jurisdiction people should be mindful of when it comes to the “no illegal content” rule? (what counts as “illegal content” is different in different places)
there’s some other legal things that seemed absent as well, like no rule or information about a minimum age requirement (even a generic coppa-compliance disclaimer)
the rules seem pretty vague on a number of points, with some loadbearing ambiguous "etc"s (“Keep edgy humor reasonable.” “No politics, no religion, etc” “Keep roleplay/drama contained.” “no single word messages, no multiple messages in a row, etc.”) that don’t really give a coherent idea of what type of behavior is expected or considered unacceptable. i didn’t get a sense of what type of social environment you’re trying to curate. either more information about that outside of the rules or clarified rules would be good.
you mention staff being “relaxed”, but also that any rule break can result in a permanent ban and that all staff decisions are final, so it’s not clear what the approach to moderation is going to be! also a helpful thing to clarify. posting and reporting expectations for a 4chan-esque “anything goes as long as it isn’t extremely egregiously likely to get me in legal trouble” environment are very different from a more traditional forum structure.
wrt “there’s a difference between nostalgic internet humor and making the site miserable for everyone else, or making it so we have to try and contact local authorities.” - is this supposed to be an indication that you can & will contact local authorities under some circumstances? if thats the case then it would be good to specify when you would do that!
It should all be on the signup, the core is MyBB so the user registration and everything is on there. I hadn’t even thought about adding that information to the about page or anything, so I’ll go ahead and add that to my list of things to add to the site.
As for the rules, I operate like the old net use to. Use common sense, the entire site is built around Y2K, and that’s how most forums and communities operated. Loose rules, and common sense.
As for the next section, I think it’s a similar answer to the previous. Be respectful is one of the main rules, so it’s def not going to be 4chan-esque at all.
As for the authorities, that’s essentially just saying if you’re saying anything in which I legally have to, then I’ll be covering myself. Don’t post about harming yourself or others, etc. That’d be a quick way to get perm banned, on top of me having a legal obligation to report it. The goal for the community is to keep things relaxed and enjoyable, while still having enough rules to deal with the weird people of the internet who insist on pushing boundaries, or that one person who just doesn’t know when to let something go. Those are the people who will eventually find themselves banned.
At the end of the day, this is a passion project. I’m not going to be profiting a single penny off of it, there’s no ad revenue, there’s no monetary anything, no MTX, no subscriptions, literally nothing. I won’t be selling or collecting anything outside of what MyBB naturally collects and as such the default MyBB rules/terms/etc. are really all I need, which, once again, pop up when you go to register an account, or should at least pop up (If not, let me know and I’ll see why it’s not showing up there).
the thing about common sense, especially online, is that what seems like “common sense” to one person is not universally applicable! different subcultures have different standards of respectfulness, appropriate language, etc. i generally think it’s better to be as explicit as possible when setting out rules for social interactions in a space so people know what to expect!
example: in some creative communities, responding to someone’s work with detailed criticism would be considered “helpful”; in others, it would be considered “mean”; in some social environments, calling someone “a dumbass” would be considered extremely nasty and rude and in others it would be conversational banter; in some forums it’s expected and normal to “bump” a topic to get more eyes on it, especially if it’s a psa or promoting an event, and in others that would be considered spam; in some forums disagreeing with someone in any context is “picking a fight” and thus disrespectful and against the rules, in others it’s read as completely value-neutral; et cetera !
i suppose if it’s small it works fine to just do moderation on a case by case basis and the particulars of the rules aren’t necessarily important, but i find it is at least helpful to set some tone expectations ahead of time.
this is what pops up on the registration page! this is not the same set of rules on the loneportal “rules” page (and doesn’t link to it), so i’m assuming this is the boilerplate mybb thing?
Yeah, that’s 100% the default for MyBB. I will go through it and work on that later though. I honestly hadn’t even thought about it outside of the standard ‘basic rules’ until I finished everything. I’ve been done with the foundation and now working on polishing everything. When it’s all fully polished and everything I’ll go in and work on making all of that more polished as well, it’s just the last thing on my mind atm as I’d rather work on the content first
Thank you for the in-depth look at everything btw! Constructive criticism is what helps a site the absolute most! So this is now officially on my list of many things to do XD
