► There has been a change to the policy regarding "games" threads. Games threads will still be permitted but will need to involve participation greater than simply changing a single word or letter. Preferably they will also involve something linguistics/conlanging related. The House Rules have been updated to reflect this change.
► As a result of the change the 'Word Association Game,' 'The Orthography Game' and the 'Sentence expanding game' threads have been deleted. .
► A policy change regarding the various chat threads has been introduced. These threads will be locked and split once they reach 500 pages, and the old thread will subsequently be deleted.
► The Default Ranks have been changed to the following:
----• EARTH ---- ----Requirements: -------- ○ Create 1-3 translation challenges in Translations, each containing at least one linguistic feature that is not straightforwardly translatable. (Down from 3) -------- ○ Reply to 7-9 translation challenges. Your posts have to include IPA or X-Sampa transcriptions and proper glossing. (Up from 7) -------- ○ The total number of the above two criterias must add up to 10. (New)
► House Rule 5 has been updated with the following passage:
The same goes for making extraordinary or controversial claims without backing them up with evidence or proper arguentation. Repeatedly making such claims, without providing either evidence or argumentation to defend your claim, will be regarded as trolling.
Edit: This means that you should notify people if you think they are breaking rules, but slamming the rules at someone is not the best way to do so.
► To clarify, there is a suggestion in the rules thread that if someone is breaking the rules, any member can notify them of it and post a link to the rules thread itself. However, just jumping on someone with a quote from the thread every time you suspect someone's doing something that might kind of be in a grey area according to your interpretation of the rules, maybe, is itself disrupting, and likely to do more harm than good.
► In the future, please reserve this course of action for posts that are either highly offensive or otherwise in clear violation of the rules.
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► EDIT: This information has now also been added to the House Rules. .
► Firstly, many of you will have noticed that there has been a large number of spambots the past couple of days. I'd like to thank those of you who flag these posts because it makes a lot easier to delete them.
► Secondly, we are aware of the issue. Hopefully, we can find a way to prevent more spambots from joining.
► Thirdly, I had to ban about 50 spam accounts today. If you happen to be a real person who's just joined and been banned, my apologies. Feel free to make a new account and join us again.
► There has also been a change to the standard ranks. The old rank of darkness has been revised and split into several new ranks.
They are as follows:
----• DARKNESS ---- ----Requirements: -------- ○ Post several detailed descriptions on the phonology of a conlang. This requires more than a simple phoneme inventory.
----• MIND ---- ----Requirements: -------- ○ Post several detailed descriptions on the morphology of a conlang. This requires more than a listing of affixes, cases or pronouns.
----• LIGHTNING ---- ----Requirements: -------- ○ Post several detailed descriptions on the syntax or pragmatics of a conlang. This requires more than a posting on simple word order.
----• ICE ---- ----Requirements: -------- ○ Post several detailed descriptions on the historical changes of a conlang. This requires more than a few basic sound changes.
► There is also the new special rank of Cleardarkness.
----• CLEARDARKNESS ---- ----Requirements: -------- ○ Earn three of the following conlang rank banners - Darkness, Mind, Lightning or Ice.
If you feel you qualify for any of these ranks please PM me (Ossicone) with the rank(s) you believe you have earned as well a link to any thread you think is relevant.
► DrGeoffStandish has been temporarily banned for three days (as of yesterday) for putting words in someone's mouth, trolling in the form of posting controversial claims with no given reason or evidence and for ignoring a moderator's warnings.
► The House Rules have been updated with a note on how they apply to signatures.
► A note on citing sources has been added to the General Information & Rules thread. .
► The title of the forum has been changed from New CBB to simply The CBB. With more than 3 years since the move, the location of the forum doesn't feel all that new anymore. .
► I would like to urge everyone to report spammers and bots as soon as you see them, by using the forum's built-in 'report this post' function (the little ! to the bottom right). Please do not reply to their threads or posts. This makes removing them more complicated for us doing the cleaning. .