http://nexxushost.com/forums/index.php/topic,64187.0.htmlA while back the ombudsmen got together and decided to work on a new AUP... one that is clearer and leaves less room for misunderstandings. As anyone who has had experience writing rules - and having others test those rules, and staff try to enforce those rules - would know, it is a incredibly painful process.
They banded together with a couple users and some of the junior (and not so junior) staff to write an AUP that would do the following things:
1) be as clear as possible, within the constraints of reason
2) limit the ability of the staff to misinterpret the ruleset, deliberately or not
3) eliminate loopholes
4) make sense
and most importantly, be fair.
I've always been open to groups of users getting together to discuss the ruleset and make it better, and they seemed like they were heading in the right place so I set up a forum for them. A few months later, here we are.
Everyone working on it has put in a lot of work. You have seen in the politika forum just how many arguments the document has spawned in the week. Imagine instead of just the document being the issue, every single rule is open for rewriting and there are ten other people hellbent on having their own particular way. Now imagine I lock them in a forum together for three months to debate.
With most groups I would expect they'd all be dead within the month.
But somehow they managed to persevere and create a ruleset that somehow, most of the voters seem to find is an improvement, if not exactly what they were looking for. That's incredible and a testament to their hard work. Last time the users got together to rewrite an AUP, it took nearly an entire year.
So thanks very much to the entire Working Group - you know who you are - for working together and building a better set of rules.
