Bannings
- Recasting
- Failure to meet financial obligations in the community
- Intentionally misleading the community with false information
These are the only offenses for which people should be banned, and I'll explain each in more detail.
Recasting: This is the number one sin in the Prop community. It's a very complex issue with many shades of gray that can be debated endlessly but at its most basic, recasting is taking someone else's work, making a mold of it and casting your own copies from that mold to sell at a profit. For those unscrupulous enough to engage in this practice, it can be quite profitable. But the profit is gained on the backs of the skilled artisan who spent countless hours making the original replica. There is literally no reason for someone proven to have done this to be allowed to stay in the community. (As an aside, there are instances where Art Andrews has let people get away with this when it served his own self interests, especially where it concerns a certain "Dented Helmet").
Failure to meet financial obligations: A lot of people buy and sell stuff on the RPF. And the singular most useful thing about the RPF, from a sales perspective, is the ability to gauge interest in a product before producing it and even taking pre-sale payments up-front to offset the production costs. Usually, this turns out fine. I oversaw such a production run myself, selling over 100 brass Farnsworth faceplates at $55 a piece. All paid up-front, prior to manufacturing. Sometimes, however, that product doesn't materialize. Either because the person doing the run was out of their depth and blew the money without being able to produce, or sometimes because they're just a crook, taking the money and running. If a person has received money and fails to deliver the product or refund the money, they should be banned. Period. Non-negotialble.
Intentionally misleading the community: I don't know how often this happens, but I feel as if it should be mentioned. Sometimes, someone will get their hands on a piece of information about a prop that is not known to the community. Usually, that information gets shared to the benefit of all. Occasionally, that information will be withheld (which is totally fine--no one is under any obligation to share information). But someone could knowingly put out false information in order to mislead others into making inaccurate products, while producing the only accurate one themselves. I don't know of any specific cases of this happening, but it must have done and should not be tolerated.
Lack of respect for the staff, community and its members: This is NOT a reason to ban someone, ever. Respect is not something one can just expect. There are other ways for dealing with a "lack of respect," not the least of which is just fucking getting over it.
So, if we're not going to ban people for being assholes, how will we ever survive? Easy...
Treat People Like Adults
Man, fuck all that shit.
Here's how you deal with all that: First, allow swearing. Make the filter optional; IE: If I am some ponce who is easily offended by "bad words," then I can go to my profile and have them all censored FOR ME.
Second, put in an "IGNORE" button. If some asshole keeps bothering me, insulting me, harassing me, etc., I can click "Ignore This User." Then, their posts just show as blank to me (maybe with a "You have this member muted" message). Their quoted text will likewise be blank to me. And this will make trolls obsolete. Because they can troll all they want, but if everyone has them on ignore, they've essentially banned themselves. Everyone gets to express themselves in whatever manner they want, and no one who is offended by that has to deal with it.
Moderators
To repair the RPF, the job of the moderator must be greatly simplified. Their job will be simply to make sure that posts are made within the correct section, so that topics are easier to find. They will engage in conflict resolution when asked to. They aren't police, they're mechanics. Their job is to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Ads/Paid Memberships
What needs to go are "Premium Memberships." The RPF currently offers these premium memberships for $4/mo. This allow members to sell items in the "Junkyard," a premium-only forum (presumably where they talk about the unwashed plebes) and a neato designation under their screen names proclaiming them to be Premium Members!
Far worse than being a blatant cash-grab, creating an exclusive upper class in a community makes everyone else by default a second-class citizen. It creates a false dichotomy under which those who pay for the privilege are perceived to be somehow more important. This should be thrown out completely. In a community, all members should be on equal footing. Those who contribute more and are more helpful or have a better track record of providing solid information will gain respect via a well-earned reputation. People can pay $4 a month to have all advertising turned off for them if they'd like, but no badges, no exclusive forums and everyone with an established presence on the forum can sell in the junkyard. This premium bullshit does nothing but create an artificial wedge in the community.
Close Registration
Because here's the reality: If you don't know one of the 83,000 existing members in order to get an invite, then you're a complete noob to the hobby and you can benefit by being forced to peruse and read the site without the ability to ask inane questions that can be answered with a simple search. Because that's what a LOT of posts from new members are: the asking of a question that is answered 100 times over already, that can be found by a little search or looking around at the site. But people sign up just to ask a question without putting in a little reading time first. No more. Read for a while. Wait for open enrollment. Join up when you've already familiarized yourself a bit, so you don't come into it with zero knowledge of anything. It worked that way for YEARS and it is actually MORE helpful to people.
Segregate the Cosplayers
While I do respect the cosplayers' rights to celebrate their fandom in their own way, I don't want to wade through 50 foam Mjølnir builds before finding a high quality replica. So I propose splitting all cosplay threads into a sub forum (or possibly creating a redirect to a new sister site dedicated to that). Proper, accurate costuming discussions can still have a place on the RPF, but most goes to the other forum.
Streamlined view
In a community, even an informational thread can be quite a mix of information and conversational chatter. And that's how it should be... Without the conversation, there's no personality, no free sharing of ideas, no growth. But some of the most helpful information is interspersed with massive amounts of chatter, in a thread with 50 or more pages. When you're researching something, going through such a thread can easily take up an afternoon.
The solution to this bloat is to allow users to mark posts as "key information". Then a reader can choose the streamlined view, which will show only the posts that have been marked as key information. In order to ensure that only the proper information is presented in the streamlined view, posts would be marked that way based on either a minimum number of votes or a nomination process by which a moderator would have to review and approve a post as key information.