How about not having people getting written up (warned? noted? whatever) for random made up rules at the whim of a mod.
There was nothing in that post that was any more obnoxious that plenty of other people don’t do all the time. The ONLY thing that was different about it is that it had a different font and color. If that’s not allowed, it’s not difficult to make that a rule. That’s all I asked in my OP and I was quickly told that it’s perfectly okay to use a different font and color so I’m not sure what the problem is and why Asimovian wrote Miss Spaulding a note about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be silly to make a rule about that. But I also thing it’s silly to run around in jackboots saying ‘hey missy, we don’t approve of writing entire posts in green font on this message board, what do you think you’re doing’.
other posters talked about community standards and keeping things the same and everybody does things one way and she did it a different way but if you want to argue that, theres plenty of other people that need to get warned as well why just the newbie what about the other people on this board that do things differently so they stand out
So I guess it comes down to what you think constitutes jerkish behavior. I felt her use of fonts and colors was clearly done in a “look at me” way designed to be annoying, and therefore falls under “don’t be a jerk.” You don’t. You might get your point across better if you quit harping on what’s explicitly in the rules.
So how was she supposed to know that she was running afoul of the ‘don’t be a jerk’ rule when Asimovian said "This is an official moderator instruction for you to knock off the font changing going forward. "
I never said it was about jerkish behavior, I just read the note as it was written and asked why it was written to begin with.
Uh, she was supposed to know because he told her to not do it. It was fine that she didn’t know until he told her. That’s why she didn’t get in trouble for it.
Is your point that my note should have said that I was instructing her not to change her font specifically because I felt she was in jerkish behavior territory? If so, fair enough. I could have added that point. However, I’m not sure what harm you believe has been done to her.
Earlier in this thread, you make a statement that implies you don’t see any distinction between a note and a warning or any other type of moderator action; I strongly disagree. All that has happened is that I let her know not to continue a specific pattern of behavior she’s engaged in since she began posting here. That’s it.
It’s not a rule. It wasn’t claimed to be a rule. It’s a long understood board custom that in the past has been modded at times and frequently addressed by other posters when it caused a problem. Other posters did address it in this case, and were ignored, so they turned to the mods for assistance.
There is even a pit thread about it, that started before she got her note.
Personally, in this type of thread I ‘ignore’ the distinction between a note and a warning because I think there’s the (fair) implication that if a user ignores the note, they’ll get a warning, right. If Miss S. continues to write in Green, she’ll get a warning, right?
But, so far as she knows, based on what you said in her note, it wouldn’t be for jerkish behavior, it wouldn’t be for ignoring community standards or just acting different from everyone else (as others have stated in this thread). If I hadn’t started this thread, and she ignored your note and continued to post in green, her warning would have been for posting in green.
Again, her note said "This is an official moderator instruction for you to knock off the font changing going forward. "
Interesting thing about other people calling her on it. If it’s a rule, they should get warned for Jr Modding. If it’s not a rule, she shouldn’t have received a note.
Board custom also dictates we also don’t sign off each post, that irritates people to no end, yet I don’t see Shodan getting Mod instruction to knock it off. We also typically use proper grammar here and yet johnpost doesn’t seem to have a shift key, but I don’t think he’s racked up any warnings over it.
I just find it odd that a poster made a few posts in green and gets this warm welcome.
No. I had seen the issue explicitly raised once before in one of the threads ITD linked to. And even if I hadn’t, it is innately obvious to me that always coloring your text and using nonstandard fonts would be annoying to other readers. I’d be very surprised if the majority of posters here didn’t understand that.
So let people pit her. BFD. I have no problem with that. If people don’t want 8 million rules and the mods stomping all over every post, why not challenge them on arbitrary moderation.
Damn - now that she’ll be posting in standard colors it will be harder to ignore her, the green she used just faded into the background for me.
Seriously though - it was annoying that to comfortably read her posts I had to either highlight the text or use the quote function. She picked a really annoying color, at least from my perspective. If the color choice had been easier to read I wouldn’t’ve minded so much.
If she or any other poster were to ignore a specific moderator instruction, a warning would likely be issued for ignoring a specific moderator instruction.
I don’t think you understand that word. Just because something is done one way for along time doesn’t mean it’s wrong to do it a different way. It’s arbitrary (random) because in 16 years and how many millions of posts, Asimovian suddenly decides there’s to be no posting in color.
In 16 years ITD dug up two examples of other people getting in trouble for posting in different colors. One of them was someone posting two words in Red, the other was a ‘final straw’ situation and the post ITD dug up was similar to this one (a thread asking why someone was banned for posting in a different color). I’m not sure either of those apply here.
It’s because of 16 years and millions of posts that he decided to moderate it. And he’s not said there’s to be no posting in colour, in fact in this thread the mods have been very clear that posting i colour is allowed where appropriate.
I have to assume from this post that you’re not interested in any sincere discussion. You’ve been told over and over again that a particular pattern of behavior was moderated in the form of telling a poster not to engage in that behavior going forward. There is absolutely nothing new about that. But you are apparently determined to turn that into a new and universal ban on posts with color, and nothing anyone says to you about it is going to change your mind.
If, when asked, the mod had said, “We decided it was jerking behaviour.”, I’d have had no issue.
But to be told it’s a community standard or unwritten standard, when modding a newbie who could not possibly know what I, as a decade plus member, had no idea about, seemed entirely out of line to me.
No, I honestly can’t. If a new member (or long-time member) isn’t aware of some standard behavior of the board, I honestly have no idea why you have a problem with a mod informing them of the standard.
What you seem to be saying (and I apologize if I don’t understand it) is that it’s unfair to get a warning for something where you didn’t know you were breaking a rule.
But what the mods seem to be saying is that she’s on notice now that her posting style isn’t okay. And only going forward will it be a problem for her.
Isn’t that fair, to say “You’re doing this thing. Doing this thing is not okay. From now on, you can’t do this thing”?
We may disagree about whether the actual offense should be noted, but it’s clear she’s on notice now. She can’t turn around and claim that she had no way of knowing, after the note, that she had to cut it out with the font.
If she had gotten a warning instead of a note, that would have been utterly unfair.
Not really. Because we’ve gone through this with other posters over the past decade plus and IMO it’s been pretty standard. It’s even a meme with the grapest. You can debate whether it’s a true community standard or convention, but there’s already established cases where posters have been told that it’s unacceptable.
Bottom line is whether you agree with it or not, it’s a pretty minor issue and the user wasn’t given a warning so there’s no harm, no foul. If it was a warning you’d have a point, but for a Mod Note? That’s just correction, not discipline.