Board Etiquette
The GameFAQs Board Etiquette page is a listing of guidelines for use of the GameFAQs forums. It replaced the Annotated Terms of Use (AToU) as a primary reference on the particulars of the site's rules. It was created by SBAllen on December 12, 2011, as part of a sweeping revamp of the site's rules. Initially, the document was known as "Board Rules." However, its name was changed to "Board Etiquette" on December 16, 2011, to better reflect its purpose as a list of guidelines rather than as hard and fast rules for posting.
In July 2011, SBAllen first mentioned that he was trying to work out updates to the site's Terms of Use that would make the rules more lenient and more understandable to the average user. However, doing this required many hurdles to be cleared, primarily with other CBSi "community leaders" and CBS Legal [1].
Due to the nature of the changes, the new guidelines are much more brief than the AToU had been, and as such they allow for much greater discretion on the part of individual moderators to interpret the rules and apply them to various changes. Notable changes include allowing "handbras" and similar scantily-clad images (though not images that are actually sexually explicit); a great relaxation of the old Trolling and Disruptive Posting rules, allowing moderators much more leeway in deciding whether or not a message should be moderated; and clarifications on and additions to the rules spelled out in the main Terms of Use document itself. In addition, these changes were accompanied by a series of topics on SBallin' providing additional details as to how the new guidelines are to be applied.
Finally, several other pages on the site were updated to reflect the change; most notable were changes in the message detail and moderation detail pages to reflect the changes, which were implemented on December 16, 2011.
