RuneScape Forums

I have been foruming for well over a year now and I have noticed that a lot of forumers find the rules difficult to follow and confusing. The rules are too open to interpretation. Everyone seems to interpret them differently. It is not fair for posters to believe they have interpreted the rules correctly only to find their thread locked. It is confusing and if it happens often enough may even make them decide to leave the forums or to not care about the rules. They obviously can't get it right so why bother. Sometimes I will see a locked thread and think to myself "oh I didn't know that was against the rules." and then I will search for it in the code of conduct and the forum specific rules only to be unable to find it. At the moment it seems like a guessing game as to what you can and cant do, especially in rants. I believe the rules need to be changed. They need to become more specific and clearer.

The code of conduct is long winded and extremely boring. Not only that but it is more related to ingame than it is to the forums. It is vague and hard to follow. Right at the bottom it tells you to go to the game guide for more information. I did this and found myself at customer support with a number of links leading to various pages. No link to the forums was visible so I clicked on "other" and found "information about the forums". I had a look and found an extremely informative piece of writing. It even has a definition of spam. It answered questions most new forumers would have. It contains so much information the code of conduct does not have. Why is it so hard to find?

Wouldn't it make sense to have this information in the code of conduct itself? Or have a link next to the code of conduct and the forum specific rules.

Another problem I find with the code of conduct is that you only get directed to it if you log in while you are on the forums. If you log in from ingame or from the main page you go directly to the forums, bypassing the welcome to the forums page. I have recently obtained 500 total level on my noob account and I logged into the forums straight from the game bypassing the welcome page. It was my first visit to the forums on that account. New users would not have a clue if this happened to them.

No wonder you find so many new time forum users posting in the wrong place, unable to find certain forums and generally confused.

There should be a compulsory page users see when they log into the forums for the very first time. It should explain how to use the forums and what the different sections mean and also how to use forum help and forum emergencies.

I have also noticed that there are "secret" rules. Rules that are not mentioned in the code of conduct or the forum specific rules, not that I could find anyway, such as not being allowed to complain about a group of players. Threads are locked for this, and rightly so but it should be mentioned in the code of conduct. Apparently you are not allowed to ask people not to post, everyone is allowed to give their opinion, fair enough but some people are under the impression that if you ask someone not to continue posting and they keep going it is a reportable offense. No where is this explained.

Also punishments given should be explained. Have a system of 3 warnings and you are banned and say so in the CoC. Make it clear that offensive, racist and personal attacks will be an immediate ban.

I hear of people receiving a mute after spamming twice and without a warning. I hear of people who receive warning after warning after warning and still no ban. That inconsistency again.

Alright Rants specific forum rules. What a joke they are. Jagex you allowed and even encouraged spam in rants for months then with the update you suddenly decide spam will no longer be allowed yet there is no proper explanation in the forum specific rules. Plus there is a sticky saying "spam will no longer be tolerated." but I still see spam. I still report spam and it is not actioned upon. Last night I reported about 15 threads of pure spam, one of which was evading the censor yet only 5 of them were hidden. The one evading the censor was allowed to live until I presume a passing fmod saw it and locked it. Not good enough!!. If you are going to change the rules that drastically then the least you could do is be consistent. Spam is against the rules so enforce it. Put a definition of spam in the fsr.

The forum specific rules say "everything should be tailored to helping us improve the RuneScape experience. " and that is about the extent of the fsr for rants, except for a vague blurb about not ranting about jmods personally.

The only mention of spam in the fsr is "However, this is not a forum for spam or pointless messages". Huh. How do I know that what I think is a valid message, you may feel it is pointless and hide or lock it.

The fsr should have an explanation of what jagex believe a pointless message to be and a definition of spam would be wonderful. Explain that flaming in any form is not allowed in rants. Currently there is far too much flaming going on and it is not being actioned, it needs to be dealt with.



Thats all I can think of at the moment, I might add more as I think of it.

Rules that are common sense but are not in the code of conduct or forum specific rules.

I will post as I or a poster think of them. Thank you Trizimo for giving me this idea.


You may not post a thread to advertise your thread. -Trizimo

You may not make a duplicate thread in another forum.

Signatures may only be four lines at the max, without advertising threads via QFCs and the like. - Foursy

Pmods may not identify themselves in the Forums. - Foursy

Players may only bump threads every ten minutes; this takes "Reply" bumps into consideration. -Foursy

You cannot recreate a thread that has been locked.

might need this one

and hopefully this one will be it.

Bump! <3

Good thread.

What I'd like to comment on is the "secret rules" part. I have personally reported people who continued to post on some of my threads, after asking them to stop. A certain Jmod (won't mention names unless requested) has told these people that they have to stop posting because I asked to do so. The reason being:

"If you continue posting on a thread where you are obviously no longer welcome, you are being deliberately disruptive. This is against the rules."

So once again an example of how much of a guessing game the rules are at this moment.

Hmm did they just have a different opinion to you and were arguing the point with you? That rule is not mentioned anywhere.

There were 2 cases in which this happened.

First case: I used to be a clanleader. A person who got banned from the clan insisted on posting more (non offensive, non spam) messages on our clan thread. I simply did not want this person to keep on posting, because the person wasn't welcome in the clan anymore.

Second case: I made a thread with my opinion. Someone was debating this with me, as they had a different opinion. It came to a point where this person called me an idiot, while I was having a perfectly normal discussion, so I did not want this person to come back to my thread. At that moment I didn't wish to continue discussing my opinions with someone showing little respect.

In both cases the people got told to stop posting on my thread, as explained in my other post.