And with these rules, if the idea of ‘forum utopia’ means we see the Blender devs. themselves and even Ton frequent the forum far more often to gather feedback, that would be seen as good news from my point of view. 
With a much more well-mannered community that’s filled with constructive discussion and debate, we might very well even see the effects through a heavier rate of Blender development and a better tool for all (even for those who would’ve left because of this announcement).
Here’s the deal. The general sense of negativity has gotten bad enough that many key members of the Blender community (including many of the main devs) would rather not even come here.
That is a problem.
Were I a particularly officious moderator, I’d say that by restating your rules in very slightly different words you’ve broken your own dead horse rule. I’d explain exactly what I meant by “agree, shut up or leave”, but then I’d have to reiterate it and break the same rule. Actually, I might be breaking it already by posting this. Oh dear. Since I don’t agree, but can’t continue arguing, my only options are now to either to shut up and stop posting on this subject, or leave the public forum and go to PMs. In that case, I think I’ll choose to shut up.
(Disclaimer: this post is intended to be humorous and taken only half-seriously)
The Steam forums syndrome. The more people that have access to a medium the harder it is to moderate. I understand completely why you’d want to have some stricter rules if it at least can save you from a few headaches.
I remember it was about a year back, maybe less… It was either Ton or one of the other primary developers, pretty sure was Ton though (but leave room for me to be wrong on this one) who referred to BA as being full of “noise”, it was phrased less in the context of it being full of negativity and more about people “throwing requests out” and endless debate on “how things should be” (note quotations are paraphrasing, not literal). The implication was that developers are going to do their own thing regardless, and if you want to be heard you go on irc or via the mailing list.
I think this claim of negativity is a reletively new thing (or excuse, depending on how you look at it). Via IRC the general complaint that was made today could be translated to “some people have opinions that are killing our buzz”, it did feel far more like a request for censorship. IN fact there were calls to censor and ban people they pretty much didnt like… props though to JonathanW for saying thats not the answer.
At the end of the day I think this is really more about a lack of communication and in many ways, transparency, as well as consistency. When theres a lack of consistency mixed with a lack of certain types of transparency (unless you go on irc or other channels) all thats left with is doubt. Doubt will fester, and those who start to doubt will naturally bump heads with those who are always blindly faithful. This is a cause and effect of how blender is developing, how information is being shared, and how people either embrace or deny change. There is no easy answer here, nor should anyone be the scape goat used limit the opinions of others.
2cents
I’m actually surprised it took so long to have tightening of forum rules. We certainly could’ve used it during the ‘UI-summer-flamewars’.
This rule change was being discussed nearly 7 months ago though was not implemented as the forum appeared to calm down.
Thank god. My experience with stricter moderation has generally been that its the only way to keep things together once a community goes past a certain size. BA as of late has been a lot of armchair “artists” and “devs” running their mouths about things they have no relevant experience to actually discuss. And I don’t even know what you all managed to fill multiple vitrolic Gooseberry threads with. A lot of threads, I can’t even tell if people are serious or trolling.
Also, glad to see a CGtalk-style “no ‘app vs app’ thread” rule. Never seen any regular complain about the rule there. Makes things a lot neater.
And like others said, the fact that people couldn’t even keep it together in this thread is evidence enough these changes are needed.
Except then it didn’t really matter because nobody important was involved in the discussion.
This problem isn’t even much of a community-specific problem. You can look everywhere, all these PHP-bulletin-board sites have very similar problems. It’s structural: You cannot go off-tangent without posting in the same “line”. every comment gets as much “shelf space” as any other, you cannot refer to another comment properly without inline comments. On top of that, every reply is huge because of all the irrelevant crap that comes with it (avatar, member status, signatures, member status, reply buttons)
A page has twenty or so comments, after that it is Tabula Rasa. Nobody bothers to read the earlier pages, so the same stuff comes up again and again.
If anything, a proper solution would involve not using this terrible forum software that everybody else uses. There’s a few reasons why reddit is successful, this is one of them.
This is terrible timing since it coincides with the unpopular Gooseberry Project. I say let the forums govern themselves and let any abusive posters try to survive the criticism.
These new rules suggest that Blender users aren’t smart enough to think for themselves.
I am so ashamed of this community right now.
Self government on an internet forum will only lead to survival of the fittest, or at least survival of the people who can think of the best and most shocking attacks and names on which to levy on other people (to try to knock them clean off the site as others engage in power struggles).
Why not go ahead and start a completely un-moderated site with no rules, see how long it goes without turning into the equivalent of an out of control frat-house with people appointing themselves as ‘bouncers’ and attacking people they don’t like all the way out the door.
Unfortunately, the idea of trust or an honor system simply doesn’t work on the internet, eventually people will revert to acting on their most primeval instincts and thoughts and sites that do not keep this at bay with tight moderation are destined to become cesspools.
The very possibility that BA could suffer such a fate is why these rules are needed and why they need to be tightened up. Imagine the ultimate benefit with the devs and core users coming back, it could ultimately mean a much better Blender that everyone will massively benefit from.
Any forum that lets its users do what they want will be in total anarchy in no time. A forum just doesn’t govern itself. Without moderation it turns into a total shitstorm in a matter of days if not less.
Edit: CyborgDragon beat me to it.
I used to post on Renderosity. One day the Thought Police (pardon, moderators) started to apply rules to reduce/eliminate “negativity”.
I can report that they succeded: the Vue forum had tens of post every day, now several days can go without a single post and the Poser forum has seen a very large reduction in posts (though not so devastating as the Vue one) and you almost only read yes-men “opinions”. The whole thing nowadays looks like a western ghost town, with tumbleweeds rolling around and somewhere a sign creaking in the wind (poetic, isn’t it?).
I think that closing this forum would be simpler and quicker then going thru all the intermediate steps.
Having proper moderation doesn’t mean it has to become a ghost town. No one said you can’t disagree with anyone it was only stated that bickering will give you a warning or the like. That’s not a bad thing since most moderators will see the difference between a healthy debate and an argument.
I respectfully disagree with everyone claiming that stricter governing of users will kill the community. Plenty of communities have rules against derailing topics, infighting, personal attacks, and x vs. y software bickering and thrive just fine. No one is asking for the forum to be populated by a bunch of yesmen. What we are asking for is a forum populated by people who are respectful and reasonable with their peers. It’s not a lot to ask. Keep things on topic, keep civil, don’t complain about missing the same features in every thread.
2 cents: blenderartists.org is a tremendous resource: a quick place to find solutions to common problems, new techniques, inspiration… all because of a willing community with know-how. From my perspective, I hope you don’t worry too much about a few trolls. Most who come here have been in a forum before, and although having to wade through non-essential dirt to get to the gold nuggets is annoying, it’s par for the course in a large group of people.
Thank you for making a friendlier atmosphere, but most of all thank you for helping me with blender. Keep up the good work.
+1 i agree those rules are really not well made
I’m with this guy. The choice of animal in this movie is starting to make sense now. I’m probably going to end up supporting this film anyway but I think I will skip BA from now on. I am not a fan of choirs of yes men and people singing from the same hymn sheet which is what these rules seem to encourage.
I am very happy about these new rules, I think these will help the forum in the long run.
And may I remind people that the BA forums are owned by CG Cookie. It may be viewed as their business choice on forum management.
Generally Im happy with these rules, however in some cases you may want to give a very comprehensive reply.
Not to knit-pick or attempt to pull apart an argument to prove them wrong, but to find out exactly what someone means.
For example - if someone makes a feature request, developers need to know exact details, which are often glossed over by users.
If you want to get to the bottom of something, IMHO there are times when it is reasonable to reply to every point someone else made, I think the difference is weather you are having a constructive conversation or not.
So as long as its not a Battle, giving comprehensive quotes with replies should be OK, I assume