I heard the rules came from the threat of being eaten by a giant mutant stargoat.

Do not look at the robed and hooded figures.

I reviewed the new rules, and can find no difference from the old. Could somebody more observant than I please inform me of what has changed?

Under Forum Rules, the idea of "use common sense" has since become what are now rules 1 and 2, which make overt reference to not being abusive on the forum.

It is a mirror of what is going on in the world. Two factions battling it out and the rest standing around clueless in their oblivion.

You can catch up in the rule hypocracy forum

The facts:

Our new forum rules came out of a longstanding desire to make the site more open and welcoming for new players and to the public. They were not spurred on by any particular thread and we took nearly two months to complete them so that we covered every angle in a way that made sense. Most of the new changes to the rules were already being enforced; however, they were not clearly written anywhere on the site. We felt that this should change.

The alternative facts:

The moderators were paid off by George Soros and a bunch of other Nazis and Stalinists to make webDiplomacy the place for snowflakes and cupcakes across the internet to congregate, remove any and all remotely partisan viewpoints on any issue, controversial or otherwise, in an effort to totally eradicate free speech and thus create the utopia that we so deserve.

The alternative facts bit is the truth and don't lie to me it's clear as daylight.

That is a most unfair thing to assert, Hannibal. The Omnipotent Zultar has made a series of posts that clearly explain the why & how. I did start a thread that descended into controversy and conflict. However the drive to bring more "decorum into the forum" as I describe it started quite some time ago.
After the controversial thread I started was closed, there was an exchange of emails between myself and the Mods. Now I shan't discuss in any great detail what may or may not have been in the emails I received from the Mods.. Not because there has been any "conspiracy", but because the Mods deserve respect, & have, I think a right to demand respect.
I can state with 100% confidence that the latest changes to the rules were well in the works ( two even three months of actual work, and preceding discussions amongst the Mods & site owners, is my estimate ) before I created that controversial thread.
I genuinely had no prior knowledge of these latest rule changes. But I have been aware of the general desire to reduce the amount of unnaceptable abuse within the Forum for a while, which goes way back to the expulsion of a few players.
There is, it seems, a division between the two camps, those who oppose, and those who support these changes. Unfortunately the divided camps are not always as restrained, as careful in the way they express their views as they might be, imho.
I am trying now to avoid causing unwanted offence to those who oppose the rule changes, but I will not be a "doormat". I think some of the negative predictions are unfair to the Mods, I think some unkind things have been implied about the Mods.
Irrespective of which side of this issue we might be, the Mods deserve respect from all of us, imho. Let's remember, the things that we share in common, a love for a great game for example, a belief that the WebDiplomacy community are the best damn collective of Diplomacy players & better than those blighters at other Internet Diplomacy sites..these things that unite us, are stronger than the things that divide us.
As much as it might hurt me to say this, if ssorenn was in a one V one Diplomacy game against some blighter from another site, I would want ssorenn to win that game.

And Hannibal, if you were being satirical, I apologise.

Hannibal, we just don't want a repetition of what was written in that controversial thread, you can look it up...it had a title like" Can we please agree to NOT use a certain offensive word in the forum " and I created it. It won't be too many pages back..one, maybe two pages.

threadID or they don't exist!

;-)

threadID=1

thread=1060585 ?

Well thanks for clearing things up everyone. While I never have been a fan of limiting how mean we can be to each other, the mods have decided, and there is some wisdom to the decision seeing how everyone's been lately.

And no need to apologize Major :)

Can't find the thread :(

While some nastiness was thrown around beforehand, the presidential election and discussion following it certainly brought a bit more venom to the fore. We can argue, we can heatedly disagree. But under the new rules you just cannot spout off at a person and call them a bunch of awful stuff anymore. I for one don't see that as any loss at all, and actually a gain, in our community discourse.

"Can't we all just get along?"
Community: "No"

"Can't we all just abuse each other?"
Mods: "No"

Conclusion... Find the middle ground. Clever witticisms, mild insults that are not offensive, racist, sexist... Disagree on political issues but express opinions with some care...

I attribute it to a steady increase in entropy!