Unity Rules, Forums Update, Moderation.

Right now we are preparing a major Unity and BoonEx.com update. If things go right, you'll see it in a few days. So, I'd like to bring up a few issues that are relevant to this update.

First, we'll be putting up a new BoonEx Constitution/Rules document and will be enforcing stricter moderation rules using some new features, namely short-term suspension - ban for 48 hours, a week and a month. First of all we'll be targeting personal insults and spam. There will be no warnings, just bans. We'd like to create a sort of ecosystem where everyone knows that neither insults nor "opinions" about other members will be tolerated. Something like what you see at WebMasterWorld - you can't advertise anything, directly or indirectly there and you can't talk about other members in negative manner, be it your opinion or just an attack. Simple as that. For advertising we have Market.

Second, we are upgrading Forums (in Dolphin too) with many new features, including attachments, signatures, new layout, better speed, "recently updated topics" page, limited time for post editing, moving/deleting of topics, topics and posts hiding by moderators, etc. Forums will become a more important part of Unity with "no advertising".  References to your site in signatures will be allowed, but not in the content of your posts, unless requested.

Note that we reserve the right to both remove content as per our discretion and NOT to remove it, too. We are trying to build a helpful resource that gives answers to BoonEx software users and gives them opportunity to improve Dolphin, learn about it and share with others. We may as well remove any content that discredits BoonEx in any way. Even if the author feels that they are giving their honest opinion and that critique is justified. It's quite simple - don't like it, tell us; if no answer, still don't like it - do something to fix it; still not there - leave. The catch is that experiences and opinions vary, for different reasons, but we don't need anybody's bitterness publicly expressed without any practical goal that may benefit BoonEx. In short, if you are absolutely convinced that BoonEx is evil and that others need to be warned - trumpet from your own hill, not from ours.

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On a more positive note, some Unity changes are designed to make all updates across the system more visible, so it should be a lot more interesting to keep track of what's going on here.

And, if you have a good, practical idea on what particular functionality of Unity could be improved or added, let us know in comments, please. Unity is not only a BoonEx Community, it is also a sandbox for solutions that will find their way into future versions of Dolphin.