OSNews Ditches Forum Rules, Introduces “Implicit Trust”

For a very long time now, OSNews’ comment sections were governed by a set of rules that dated back to the very early days of OSNews. This set of rules has been amended a number of times over the years, but we were never really comfortable with such a dry, silly list of arbitrary rules that nobody read anyway. They were too much like an… EULA. So, we decided a change was in order, and I started work on a completely new approach.

The old list of rules was a bit silly, filled with stupid arbitrary rules nobody cared about. It was probably our least read page, and it all felt dry, distant, legal, and very uninviting. Putting all that together, the thing looked too much like an EULA to me, and since I don’t like EULAs, I figured we try a novel approach. We call it: “Implicit trust“.

Our old rules are still available as a simple HTML file.

What also bugged me to no end was the method with which we made you “agree” to our rules. On every comment form on OSNews, there was a line which read something along the lines of “by posting this comment you agree to our terms”, or something like that. Yes, this, too, had the god awful stench of an EULA. So, from now on, the line goes like this: “Before you submit your comment, please read about our system of Implicit trust.”

I still don’t think anybody will ever read the darn page, but I do think this is a better way to treat you, our readers, who are, in the end, our livelihood. You probably never thought about all this anyway, but I thought you all should be notified of this change.

As you were.

45 Comments

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