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Guidelines
Note: 'I' in this article refers to Random007.
Cooperation and good communication is essential.
In a "worst case scenario" the offender will be kicked from the project. (I only mention this because I did run into someone a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away who didn't get the fundamentals of team-work and life was made difficult until the individual was prevented from 'contributing'.)
Similarly, as I started this and have my name (alias) against it I reserve the right to revert any changes where there is sufficient cause. It would have to be in an unacceptable situation as above.
Members of the project will get credit. Not that it will change anyone's life... :)
In communication, probably better to use your Bethsoft Forum name instead of your Google Account name. We all know each other by the aliases from the forum.
Only make edits/additions you're confident about - otherwise discuss on the Bethsoft forum threads or via Private Message.
Check out the masterlists and become familiar with the comments and categorisations therein. See the Masterlist Syntax HTML file in data/boss-common/Docs for the details.
Make as many silent comments as you want within the masterlists - it doesn't hurt (within reason).
Use blank lines to separate mods that are grouped together or where it helps readability.
Feel free to check people's 'unknown mod' list on the Bethsoft forum and add some of these mods if they're not already in and you're reasonably confident you know where they should go (at least temporarily). Feel free to add your own mod collection if you're reasonably confident.
Have as much fun as humanly possible editing a text file... (er, yeah, right!)
As time goes by, we sometimes find it's good to have rules written down for things relating to how we operate. This is where we write these rules. Please don't change them without prior discussion.
It's pretty simple: if a plugin is, or will shortly be (eg. author giving heads-up about imminent release), publicly available for download, it should be added to the appropriate masterlist.
Plugins that are not available to the public are not suitable for inclusion in the masterlist - if someone reports such a plugin, tell them that it is more appropriate for them to sort it using a userlist rule. Such cases include private beta plugins, or more generally plugins distributed amongst a select group of people, or plugins for which you have to pay to access (which is against Bethesda's rules, but has undoubtedly happened before).
We ask those submitting unrecognised plugins to provide links to those plugins because we often need to look at what is in the plugin to properly place it in the masterlist, so we need to first download it. The person reporting a plugin is far more likely to know where they got it from, and so are far more likely to easily acquire a link to it, than we are. That, and because committers have to do much more work than submitters already.
However, because most of BOSS's submitting activity occurs on Bethesda's official forums, we have to abide by their rules. These rules include not linking to nude mods, for instance, and not discussing certain mods that break their rules (eg. Morroblivion).
If a user submits a plugin that falls into such a catagory and they provide a link, ask them to remove it, stating why. It's best not to draw negative moderator attention to BOSS's threads, because we need them to stay open. (Moderators are highly unlikely to lock the thread or get on to us about such cases, but better safe than sorry, plus you educate users that may have been unaware of the rules.)
If a user submits a plugin that falls into such a catagory and they don't provide a link, ask them to PM you a link to the plugin.
This covers removing an individual from the BOSS team purely due to inactivity on their part. We haven't yet needed a policy for removing team members otherwise.
To avoid bloating the BOSS team membership and reducing the potential security risk a large member count represents, individuals can be removed from the BOSS team if they have made no contributions to the masterlists. There are two cases for this:
- If a newly-added member does not make any commits within the first month of their membership being awarded, they can be removed without credit.
- If a member does not make any commits within the most recent two calendar months (ie. it's not a rolling check, just once a month), they can be removed with credit.
In either case, an email should be sent to the member's given email address containing the following notification:
You've been removed from the BOSS team membership according to our membership removal policy (see our Guidelines wiki page for details). If you wish to contribute again in future please contact a BOSS admin saying so and you will be reinstated.
For removal "with credit", this means that they remain credited as a BOSS team member in the BOSS readme, but are marked as inactive.
Note: Admins are exempt from this policy, for a couple of reasons:
- They might be active, just not in masterlist maintenance.
- They act as safety-nets for the project, in case the active membership disappears. An otherwise inactive admin can step in and get the ball rolling again.