General SDMB question: Why many rules?

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1

I’ve been here a couple years and I’ve always wondered something. Why are there so many rules here, with each forum having a long list of very specific rules for that forum? This is a pretty unique message board in that regard.

Why not just a rules of “don’t be a jerk,” “post the appropriate content to respective forums” (a general description of the forum could be loose guideline), and “don’t piss off a mod”? Nice and subjective, but with the right moderators, there are few issues.

There sure does seem to be a lot of confusion with any of the rules outside of the three aforementioned. It does generate lots of message traffic (especially in this forum, where 9/10 of all threads are rule clarification requests), which doesn’t hurt the SDMB in the least. Perhaps that’s part of the revenue-generating approach.

Can a mod please change the thread title to “General SDMB question: Why so many rules?” Thanks.

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Because, like beauty, jerkiness is often in the eye of the beholder. If you eliminated all rules except DBaJ, you’d suddenly find dozens if not hundreds of “clarification” threads in this forum asking if a, b and c qualifies as being a jerk.

And there are quite a few things that are forbidden here that aren’t covered by the DBaJ rule. So we need specific rules, and then the DBaJ rule as the safety net in case somebody finds a loophole.

Another reason is that different transgressions carry different penalties. You can probably get away with a half dozen warnings for being a jerk, but threaten to sue the Paper just once…

3

Probably because someone foresaw an exceptional and unique amount of hashing and re-hashing of who, in the end, gets to decide if someone is acting the jerk and, if so, if it merits a banning. Any conceivable interpretation of the “don’t be a jerk” rule of thumb would be, by some people, perceived or construed as arbitrary beyond belief.

And so the mods and admins of yore have codified that principle, somewhat.

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What follows is just my opinion, and should be read only as such:

I think it’s because, collectively, the SDMB membership is like Sam I Am - constantly asking “Is this a violation of the rules? How about this? How about a little more? A little less? A little to the left? The right? The centre? Would I be a jerk if I did this by accident? What about if it was *sort of * by accident? Why did you make this decision here? and that decision there?”

And in a perhaps misguided shot at some kind of transparent democracy, TPTB have allowed themselves to be drawn into an ever-increasingly-divided tangle of measurements and definitions. It’s a bit like that creationist thing where every new fossil creates two new transitional gaps - every new rule creates new edges/boundaries and grey areas that people can’t stop poking.

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So every pair of rules needs an intermediate rule between them? Thank Ccl that isn’t true, since then we’d have an infinite number of rules.

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That’s where we’re headed. Every new rule creates borders and fringes that may or may not be covered by the rule, under various circumstances - therefore endless clarification must be sought on hypothetical examples skirting these boundaries.

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I’ve been here many more years and this is close to how things used to be ( very early on ). Rules lawyering ( on all sides ) has slowly but surely eroded that early foundation. Mangetout is essentially correct - a message board group naturally given to questioning and debating has proven unable to resist pushing boundaries or accepting “arbitrary” rulings. So you get the following:

“Who say I’m a jerk? These thirty people in this pit thread disagree I was being an jerk. And by the way how was what I did different from poster B, who you indicated wasn’t being a jerk? You should define what you mean by a jerk in this particular instance.”

Repeat ad nauseam and in a thousand different permutations.

Which isn’t to say that management has always responded appropriately to these boundary disputes. Sometimes they have, more than a few times they haven’t IMHO. But that’s the origin of most of it. People, whether they want to admit it or not, frequently demand rules.

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I’ve noticed that the rules on the SDMB can be confusing, with long narrative paragraphs and separate sub-rules that may apply only to one forum. There’s also the oddball rules like “Don’t post ‘pulling up a chair’” and unwritten rules like that prohibiting offering technical advise related to site performance and vBulletin.

There’s a long set of rules on my site, but the main intent is to avoid the “tyranny of structurelessness”.

The tyranny of structurelessness is one of the reasons why the rules on my site are quite detailed. I want to make sure that everything is written down, out in the open, and that new users without institutional knowledge are not at a disadvantage because they’re unaware of unwritten rules. The rules are organized and in plain English, because it can be hard finding something in long narrative paragraphs, like on the SDMB. While on some other sites rules are scattered around on various subforums, in the registration agreement, in an FAQ, and elsewhere, I wanted to make sure they’re all in one place.

I’ve had a few users on my site complain about the length of the rules, but when asked what they’d change, they’re usually silent. The “no leeching images from sites you have no control over” is probably the most unpopular, but I defend it with 1) we don’t like it when others steal our bandwidth, and we don’t want to be hypocrites and allow others here to leech, and 2) Goatse, Tubgirl, Lemonparty, and Two Girls One Cup.

We’ve got an unusual situation on my site; it’s a board catering to a niche topic, with the majority of members being practicing urban planners and planning students. Planners as a whole have traditionally favored mailing lists, and they are perceived as being “more serious.” We have to be rather strict with rules enforcement so other planners consider the site to be a legitimate resource.

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Sadly, over the years, the powers that be have been led down a seductive path. In the fear that they may get a decision “wrong,” they have resorted to trying to establish bright lines to measure jerkiness by. This way, they think they can accomplish two purposes: warn away potential jerks by giving them concrete boundaries not to cross, and make decisions about whether or not someone is being a jerk without having to worry about being wrong, since they can point to a rule and say that the rule is being broken.

This process was accellerated at the time we went to Pay-to-Post, because the assumption was that the paying members deserved some sort of spelled-out boundaries, part of the contract, as it were. Else, presumably, those upset with a decision based upon something as nebulous as “you are being a jerk” could complain that their purchased right to participate was being violated.

The assumption that creating a slew of rules will help manage the game is false. Soccer understands this (or it used to, anyway), which is why it has only 17 “laws” that govern the game, and most of them are pretty simply stated. Compare the rule books for sports like football, baseball, etc. Or, if you prefer, ask yourself if modern Dungeons and Dragons is more enjoyable for participants and DMs simply because every possible situation has already been thought out and a rule for it created?

This place would be far better off if it returned to a less rule-bound organization (and I say that, having been an attorney!). As a teacher, I find it much easier to limit my “rules” to a few generalizations (respect your teacher, for example), rather than trying to add a rule or an addendum each time someone manages to screw up. Yes, this can result in accusations of unfairness and favoritism, but I’m confident I can avoid that on my part if I do my job right, and frankly, they end up happening even if I apply a list of rules an arm long.

Tamerlane has it pretty much right, sadly. It’s up to management to simply stand its ground and say, “you were being a jerk, in our opinion, so we are suspending you, and comparisons to other situations aren’t relevant.”

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Your “opinion” is spot on. You try to be nice, and see what it gets you. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thank you Dudley for the OP. I will ask the mods and admins a related question. I have been thinking of asking it for some time. Probably should be it’s own post and probably breaking a rule. But it is related to over-moding and rules.

Where does the wit, the humor, the general irreverence, that is daily exhibited by Cecil and staff on The Straight Dope column go, in between the Dope and the SDMB? The fun. Some program strips it away in the translation, or what? The column is the basic attraction toward SDMB.

It’s like the Coke Zero commercials where they want to sue Coke for copyright infringement as if the two are unrelated.

Now there are people here who LOVE to argue, we know who they are, and the people they argue against do too. Probably keeps both parties occupied with harmless activities. Unless there is a real threat to person or board it helps keep them off the streets and out of the local PTA meetings.

Why over mod these arguments? Usually everyone else leaves the thread and both parties make fools of themselves. It’s entertaining. Warn a couple times and lock the thread once it devolves to nothing usefull but a couple of people who don’t like each other, and will not on the next thread, yelling back and forth.

And back to the wit, humor, and irreverence. You got all that stuff in a recycle bin somewhere that you can restore? Maybe have the mods read? Maybe a new rule: no wit, no humor, no irreverence, nothing new to say, thread locked!

Hope I haven’t broken a rule by asking.

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I agree with DudleyGarrett that we have too many rules, and I’d like it if we could keep things simple and above all intuitive. “Don’t be a jerk” used to be it, and Ed Zotti said the only other rule - in the AOL days, I think - was “don’t make us make more rules.”

On the other hand it’s entirely reasonable that people want to know what to expect and want a solid basis for moderating decisions, and why one situation might be seen as jerkish and another might not. But the end result is that I think there are too many defined specifics, and it’s more about precedent than about common sense. It’s impossible to make every situation totally clear cut, but I think it’s better not to have people guessing.