I… I was once graped, by the Grapist.
I still wake up screaming sometimes.
Pretend like you just got a warning (or a note) because a mod just decided it was annoying that your location doesn’t contain an actual location but rather just symbols that make up an arrow. Said mod decided that it was obnoxious and around these parts you can either use an actual location or leave it blank, it’s the way we do it here, an unwritten rule. What, you didn’t know that?
Here’s the thread I was thinking off. I seem to have misremembered it, but drew never did get any clarification.
You’ve been here for over a decade and you didn’t notice that almost all posts are in the default colour and font?
It would be a savage blow, no argument there— but I pray that if that terrible day should ever arrive, I will somehow find the strength to draw myself up, stand on my trembling legs, wipe my tears with a gauze bandage, and proceed with what remains of my life.
Modding for excessive use of weird fonts, colors, font sizes is a long standing practice. This isn’t new or a one-off but has been done before. Modding isn’t just about enforcing the rules that are on the books but helping to keep the atmosphere conducive for good conversation. Sometimes that requires judgement calls and mods don’t always agree even among themselves (not saying there was disagreement in this case, mind you).
What I haven’t noticed, in over a decade is this ‘unwritten’ community standard being enforced, remarked upon, noted or mentioned.
Ever.
No one is taking issue, as far as I can tell, if this is the standard. They are only seeking clarity. Why is that so difficult to understand, or too much to ask?
It clearly caught people off guard. What’s wrong with them asking questions?
Sometimes I think everyone who posts here must be a lawyer. “Rules, we must have rules, and they must be parsed to the nth degree.” EEk. I think the mods did this just right and that their explanations are just right. (have I ever said that before??) I don’t think we need any more rules!
I, on the other hand, think that we must have rules for every single situation that could possible arise.
Then we could have many, many fun threads in ATMB complaining about how there are too many rules.
Am I reading this right? It’s not just about enforcing rules, it’s also about citing standards not even agreed upon amongst the mods, nor users are informed/aware of?
Surely that can’t be right.
I want to believe that it is a long standing practice, cited in the past, and I just missed it. Could you possibly show us some examples, where that was the case? I don’t seem to be the only one caught off guard by its sudden enforcement.
Perhaps if you gave us some examples, we’d be a little less taken off guard, is all.
Exactly. Colored fonts can be useful from time to time. They are helpful in Mafia and role playing games. They can be used to highlight or set off text within a post. They may have other uses I’m not thinking of. There’s no reason to forbid them. OTOH, used all the time they are kind of obnoxious and hard to read. The solution isn’t “No fonts ever!” Nor is it “Fonts whenever!” And it certainly isn’t an 82 page document, written by lawyers, detailing exactly when a poster may permissibly use a colored font. The solution is to judge these things on a case by case basis. In this case, Miss Spaulding was annoying a lot of posters with her difficult to read pale green font. So she got mod noted for it. Not warned, just noted. This doesn’t have to set some carved in stone unalterable rule for any future judgements.
You are boiling a complex idea to a too simple conclusion. Not every rule is in blistering black and white and nor should it be. And to clarify, even if all mods don’t agree on certain judgement calls, especially for complex issues, we come to a consensus agreement before taking actions.
Here are a few examples in the past of moderator actions (these were the first two I could come up with that are mod actions. There a lot more where it’s other posters complaining about it to another poster.):
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15432698&postcount=23
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15758129&postcount=15
One more:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15433444&postcount=8
Not to offend but;
It’s NOT a complex issue, no one asked for blistering black and white, the clarity requested was not about mod agreement or how they reach consensus, and user complaints have little to do with this, a enquiry regarding a mod action.
In the cases you cited, two had been previously mod warned and ignored those warnings, all three were legions more egregious than a newbie simply unknowingly choosing a font/colour outside the norm.
That you think these three cites support an ‘community standard’ (that the community was clearly unaware of !), indicates to me that any further discussion would be pointless, in this case.
Have a lovely day.
Feel free to search yourself. As I said I only looked for a couple of mod interventions. There were plenty of posts by users that were annoyed by these users. In fact at least one of the links went to a similar thread to this one, in which all the same arguments were made: some people thought it was annoying and some thought it’s no big deal.
These examples are exactly why it’s not a black and white issue- how “annoying is annoying” will never be black and white. Of course we do not want to outright ban using different fonts and colors. That’d be silly. So the best we can do is to use our best judgement as when it has become annoying (including responding to reports that indicate our users find it annoying). Finally, our poster being discussed here wasn’t warned or banned- just told to knock it off.
Personally I think the discussion has been pretty fruitful. I don’t see what you see that makes you think can’t have a conversation about this issue.
No, just green.
Regards,
Shodan
elbows, your posts seem to imply that you’re upset because there’s no way this new user could have known her choice of font and color were not acceptable to people. But it’s not like she’s been punished or lost any privileges for doing so.
A number of posters have pointed out to her directly, and indirectly in this thread, that her color choice and font choice are annoying. On at least two occasions, she has made it clear that she doesn’t care. Link 1. Link 2 (noting the “Deal with it. lol” response). And now she’s been asked to stop.
So again, we have not banned a newbie for not knowing some unwritten rule. We have determined, consistent with prior rulings, that what she’s doing falls into a category of jerkish behavior, and as such, she has been directed not to continue it.
In your fifteen years, here, have you encountered a large number of posts written in personally chosen colors or fonts? The very absence of such variations indicates a community standard.
And, in the tradition that has been followed for the entire duration of the board, the Moderator noted this fact to the poster who had failed to notice this practice–just as previous Mods had posted similar notes to previous posters on the same issue.
I suspect that a Mod note dropped into a thread once or twice a year is a better way to handle this than adding a rule to the Registration Agreement. YMMV.
Someday I’m going to find a message board where people have innate emotional intelligence, and understand ‘gray area’ rules.
And it’ll be empty, because people with emotional intelligence get their social interaction IRL.
There’s no way she could have known about it, but let’s be honest, there’s no way anyone else could have known that you were going to write a note about people posting in green either.
How many people have asked Shodan to stop with the Regards thing. That’s also something most people don’t around here don’t do. If people asking a user to stop doing something AND it’s not a community standard is all it takes for a mod to intervene, then I’m sure we’ve got plenty of outliers that Asimovian can start writing up.
The funny thing is, if writing in green was actually against the rules and someone said something, then they’d be in trouble for Jr Modding.
Joey P and elbows, I’m curious. What is your goal here? To have no restrictions on the annoying use of fonts and colors? Or is it to have every single last possible annoying thing a poster could do explicitly written into the rules (which also means if it isn’t explicitly in the rules, have at it)? Should the “don’t be a jerk” rule be erased because every jerkish behavior must be specifically identified in a rule?
What are you hoping is the result of this thread?