=][= Community Rules and Terms of Use Updated =][=

[Brother Tyler]

By now, you've had to re-sign the Terms of Use.

 

The changes there were:

• Change from a minimum allowed age of 16 to a confirmation that you are legally allowed to access the site, and
• Add Horus Heresy and Kill Team to the copyrights (listed at the bottom).

The main reason for the update was the first change, and that was due to the possibility of different localities having different minimum ages (or none at all). We don't want a single locality to limit others, so we crafted language that covers all possibilities without being specific to any. In the case of the recent Australian social media legislation, as well as any potential future cases, we are still working to comply with the requirements to conduct our own confirmation, but we are waiting to see what stands up and what remains reasonable.

 

The second change occurred as a matter of opportunity. While the copyright list isn't complete, those are two omissions that stood out and implementing the first change allowed us to include them.

 

In addition, we have made a few updates to the community rules. There were two substantive changes:

• The addition of guidance about non-WH40K game content, and
• The removal of the absolute prohibition on threadomancy/necroposting.

Permission to post non-WH40K game content actually appeared back in August, but we (a) have been very busy, and (b) were waiting to see what kinds of questions members of the community might ask so that we could incorporate our answers into the rules update. I'm actually working on another thing to complement this rules change and will post an update when that becomes available.

 

As far as threadomancy/necroposting goes, there have been changes to the site/community over the years. Back when the site was first created, we would delete content that was more than 30 days old unless we felt it was worthy of preservation. Over time, we realized that this didn't adequately support the members of our community. It became common to see topics of discussion appear over and over instead of a single topic being created and continued. For example, the issue of whether or not Rogal Dorn was dead or if it was just his hand(s) that was found was addressed in numerous discussions (and the lore appears to have been changed over the years ). Deleting a discussion topic about that issue deprived future members of input from other members, and there was a lot of repetition. Having a single topic that can be revisited, even if that means merging a new topic when someone isn't aware of an older one, allows for a much more thorough discussion, especially where official lore may change over time.

 

That doesn't mean that it's open season for threadomancy/necroposting, however. There are times when posting a new comment to an old discussion provides no value. We will likely address this in a sort of "best practices" guide, however, rather than preserving the previous blanket prohibition.

[Brother Tyler]

16 hours ago, Brother Tyler said:

Permission to post non-WH40K game content actually appeared back in August, but we (a) have been very busy, and (b) were waiting to see what kinds of questions members of the community might ask so that we could incorporate our answers into the rules update. I'm actually working on another thing to complement this rules change and will post an update when that becomes available.

 

I kicked the complementary thing off last night, though it's still a work in progress:

The updated rules provide guidance on where to post non-WH40K games when those games correspond to WH40K games. For example, you might use your Titan Legions miniatures with the Battletech rules, posting such content in the + EPIC SCALE HORUS HERESY GAMES + forum; or you might use your WH40K Kill Team miniatures with the Stargrave rules, posting such content in the + KILL TEAM + forum. An extension of the non-WH40K games allowance, however, is giving non-WH40K games a WH40K theme. Since many of those don't have a natural correspondence with an extant WH40K game, the WH40Kifying Other Games club has been created to provide hobbyists with a place to pursue those efforts. The club includes a discussion forum ("Topics") and blogs, as well as the ability to upload images and files. The club is a work in progress and will be adjusted as necessary based on the experiences and feedback of the community. I will be kicking off a few discussions about games that might be WH40Kified, hoping to get the creative juices flowing within the community.