[Gold is for Friendliness and Inclusion in accord with Our People's Type of Safer Spaces. Silver is for Safety and Security of the Waterfighting activities themselves.]
* GOLD 2 CSSW is about the continued meeting of new people and making friends .
* GOLD 2.1 To Be Involved in CSSW is to Consent To Be Met.
But not to be a card to intrude beyond welcome.
It is a Promise that all actions carried out in connection with CSSW's activities are Grounded on Friendly Conduct, as per Our People's *Safer Space Code LINKIN*
Meeting involves waterfighting in suitable terrains, preparing such, and doing/discussing the running of such
* GOLD 3 CSSW is to be Inclusive and Diverse.
* We do NOT consider wide variety of toy weapons to be a particularly important part of this; this society is primarily about people and not guns.
* We do NOT accept toy guns that the Police, the Public or our Safety and Security Officials consider to look like real guns.
* We do NOT accept any 'toy' guns that are dangerous.
* At present, we only allow waterguns because these are much less likely to cause any of the above problems, which almost entirely refer to other kinds of gun.
* By Diversity , we mean, rather, such as walking-only rounds to not leave out the less athletic, equal-weapons rounds to not overly favour expensive gun owners,
and rounds which favour subtlety or realistically allow for a variety of approaches to succeed. For example,
Different Activities Interest and Favour Different People, so a wide range of such should be run.
As well as this meaning nothing like air rifles or BB guns, this includes elsewise harmless toys that have been modified for enhanced range.
Some such are not eye-safe, and too much is lost as regards being able to reassure bystanders concerned as to the safety of the contraptions once one
can no longer honestly say 'these are all sold as children's toys'.
Rather, we enjoy toy guns `as they come from the shop', since that lies within the high-quality safety considerations of the toy companies themselves.
[We are OK with gun exteriors being changed for such as enhancing the number of individual shots or for enhancing aim,
provided these changes do NOT cause the toy to look more like a gun than the boxed toy.]
1) sneaking, disguise.
2) Killing in social settings in which we provide both
killing and other societal stuff and each person decides for themselves how much they are there for the killing and how much to see and partake of the other stuff.
Then here many participants are distracted sometimes and there's timing issues (like killing being restricted to be done in between 5 to 10 minute silly society meets
rather than during them).
3) Paying attention to non-gun and non-gun-range reasons why one team is winning more than the other, and rebalancing teams accordingly.
* GOLD 1 The Waterfights are Only a game.
* Thus Real Life Issues override issues internal to whatever scenarios the Waterfights are set up to have (Rebels versus Armies, Hostage Rescue etc). CSSW do NOT condone people becoming absorbed into alternative realities.We avoid that sort of thing by explicitly not being anykind of roleplaying club, and immutably so: we'd rather shut down than be run as a roleplaying club. Our organization is part of a Safer Space community rather than a sub-organization of whatever roleplaying club or non-Safer Space toy weapons club. For us, Rebels versus Armies etc is just a rough shape, not something to try to `imitate in detail' or `live through'. Such activities are based on WHAT HAPPENS TO WORK whilst STAYING WITHIN THE SAFER SPACE FREINDLINESS RULES and WITHIN WHAT THE PUBLIC AND THE POLICE TOLERATE, and not on things like 'what looks good' or 'what better approximates real-life violent situations with real guns'. We are NOT ABOUT BEING REALISTIC IN ANY DETAIL and we are NOT ABOUT PRETENDING IT'S REAL. A number of other toy weapons societies in other cities have been shut down by the authorities due to real-looking weapons and/or obsessiveness with realistic emulation of situations involving weapons. These things are not suitable (and often illegal) in the public places that we operate in. And we choose to avoid that by using non-realistic and harmless toys in convenient public places rather than by hiring private terrain out of sight from the rest of the world. If you only want the latter, join a live-action roleplaying club or go paintballing; those are amply provided by organizations other than ours. OURS IS ABOUT ENJOYING HARMLESS AND NON-ALARMING TOY WEAPONS in places like GREENS, ALLEYS and WOODS.
* As a Safer Space, we take "game" in the sense of "IceBreaker Game", ie useful for meeting people and causing all involved to gain in confidence and in feeling valued.[And NOT Game in the sense of `have to win', `has to be balanced for some concept of ``fairness" ', or any aspect of winning-oriented `Gaming' or `Game Theory'. As far as our Safer Space Custodians are concerned, these things have been amply demonstrated to not be suitable for Safer Spaces, by their leading to people taking `Games' too seriously in wrong ways, such as being nasty to other participants or flouting safety and security rules in order to gain `game advantage'.] We simply accept that not all rounds will be balanced, because we cannot always guess what the main truly determining factors will be (it can be the terrain or the wind or th teamwork or one army's General or Champion, rather than just being down to the team sizes and armaments). If that happens, our people do NOT get aggressive or resentful, we simply point out that one bunch of us seems to be winning all the time and then see if we can balance that out by changing the teams and/or the combat rules. Armies versus rebels reflects that sometimes our most experienced 2 or 3 can take on the sizeable remainder of those present. Walking-only or equal-weapons instead nullifies some of these people's individual advantages.
Summing up one main point,
* GOLD 1.1 As our waterfights are only a game, it is No Excuse to for nasty or inappropriate behaviour.
* GOLD 1.1b As we are a Safer Space, there is Doubly no Excuse for nasty or inappropriate behaviour, and anyone testing this WILL be called out, and, if necessary, banned from us, and will be Deaned or reported to the Police whenever real-life considerations imply this is the prudent course of action for the Custodians of a Safer Space that is being aggressed.
Note 1) These rulings transcend to anyone hastling our organizers, demanding to `be in charge', or threatening to turn our society into anything other than a Safer Space of our particular sort. With us, people volunteer to serve as organizers, and are accepted, after training (which can be lengthy for senior positions), whenever our existing organizers deem this in the best interest of the vulnerable people who do, or may, benefit from participating in our safer-space activities. There is no `demanding to be in charge' here; we are foremost a volunteer-to-serve based welfare scheme much like Linkline, and not whatever else this or that toy weapons club elsewhere has unfortunately ended up being.
Note 2) What constitutes nasty or inappropriate behaviour is, since CSSW is not an alternative reality, is to be Judged byi) Real-life Criteria, Just Like for Any Other Society.
ii) Moreover, in addition to basic common decency, our Safer Spaces have a wider than usual awareness of unfairly marginalized people. We are a general-purpose Safer Space, which means among other things, that we are designed to be truly inclusive of those who Do Not Identify with why they need a Safer Space. E.g. closet-LGBT people may not feel OK using LGBT Safer Spaces. With us, we don't ask why, and coming to our activities doesn't imply one is facing adversity, since we are designed to have helpful people, people who need a safer space and people just there because they like the waterfighting activity itself. We implement this as follows.
GOLD 0 With us, those who say they are upset are believed without having to say why, apologies are expected, as are non-repeats of what caused it.
Anyone who actively refuses to behave like this at, or in the process of running, our Society, is flatly not wanted at any of our activities; we are foremost for all people in difficulty who don't deliberately hurt others and treat all other such with our Safer Space's respect that goes above and beyond common decency.
* SILVER 1 As Waterfighting is a game, it is No Excuse for Trouble or Nuisance.
In particular, do nothing illegal, or which may be mistaken by onlookers as highly illegal.
* SILVER 2-3 And Waterfighting is a Harmless Game. Do nothing at all likely to cause injury to anyone, whether Safer Space Waterfighter or Bystander, or cause material damage.
* If you can't provide a reasonable explanation for exactly what you are doing
to any Porters/Fellows/Police Officers who challenge you over doing it, then you shouldn't be doing it.
* This Society for now only meets in appropriate terrains selected by experienced Safety and Security Officials, so it does not presently require a
long list of where round town it is a bad idea to do Waterfighting. WE DO NOT FIGHT ON UNIVERSITY GROUNDS.