First is the very top-down nature in which they were dished out, with the thread locked to artificially stifle discussion. I appreciate that certain people run these forums and I appreciate that certain rules must exist. But I do not think an authoritarian tone makes a community, and I believe that an authoritarian tone is what led to the demise of LEM Lists.
I'm of the school of thought that an announcement on the forums should be just that, an announcement. Hence, I tend to lock announcement topics. Some forum software (in particular vBulletin) doesn't even let you have announcements that are open to replies... so I guess I'm not the only one that feels this way. I have no problem with open debate on the new rules, I just didn't want it to happen in that announcement topic.
Second is the mention of abandonware in the rules. The trading of it happens here, and I'm fairly certain that we are all aware of it. But it is illegal in the eyes of the law, even though some publishers seem to condone it. As such, if the rule exists it should be as an unwritten rule -- as it always has been.
We put this in place just to cement the position on the whole issue. It seemed to be a bit of a double standard to say in the rules that we didn't condone the discussion of how to obtain software illegally, and yet still let some discussions exist on the forums, as they're only pertaining to abandonware. We decided to make it clear in the rules what we do and do not accept. But I do agree that the whole subject is a bit of a grey area, and I'm certainly no lawyer. So any advice that anyone can give would be appreciated. We're certainly open to adding/removing that or any clause from the rules if need be.
