because posting on message boards is serious business!
I have read all the way through them. The problem is the stuff changes and I know I don’t know the latest changes. I wing it and wait to be told I violated a new rule. I’m all for letting the administration just telling you your an ass, and not being a nitpicking asshole disagreeing every time they tell you to stop something because a rule doesn’t exactly clarify something. I hate zero tolerance policies.
Damn right I’ve read all the rules. I belong to five other boards, and not one of them would allow the excuse of either “I ain’t got time to read the instructions that are in front of my face.” or “They don’t do it that way on the other boards!”
Read it? Hell, I helped write a lot of it!
Usually, when we make changes, someone writes the first draft, it’s sent around the mod email loop, and criticized, and rewritten, and then we all sit on it, and rinse and repeat. We hate making changes. For the Registration Agreement, Ed will bold the latest changes, so it’s easier to find the newest additions. In other words, no excuses, Harmonious Discord.
I do wish that we could make it much, much shorter, but unfortunately, the posters who love to be rules lawyers have made that unfeasible.
No, common sense keeps me clear of most violations and ubiquitous mention of the rest by those that might have crossed the line informs me of what might not have been intuitive. Not that I’d recommend this to a newbie but it’s worked okay for me. 9 years, no slappage.
Like I said say bad boy and I stop.
It’s also pretty hard to get banned if you follow this policy.
Yes, as long as “skimmed” is a reasonable substitute for “read”.
Moving from IMHO to About This Message Board.
see?! i didn’t know that! 
<insert profuse apology and excuses here, plus some barely audible mumblings about how imho might have more traffic though, come to think of it, the poll is about this message board.>
“Have you ever read the board manual?”
You mean, like, in braille? Can’t say as I have.
I’m sure I’ve read most of them at some time or another.
The only rules that are important are “don’t be a jerk” and “no sock puppets”. Everything else is details. If you follow those two, the board staff won’t do anything worse than scold you.
I’ve skimmed a few of them, typically when they’re linked to in a thread. Haven’t gotten in any serious trouble yet- it’s not rocket surgery, gais.
It’s kinda pointless to read them all, but I have. It’s pointless because there are plenty of rules that are not listed, and no one will listen to my pleas to put everything up there. And the mods have made it quite clear in the past that they pretty much decide everything not based on rules, but their own judgment.
I say that’s arbitrary and tyrranical, and leads to most of the problems any poster has with the moderation, but what can you do? The best you can do is wait for the worst offenders to get burnt out making so much work for themselves.
Basically, that’s what the Registration Agreement and all the other instructions say, yes. And if we could all agree on what being a jerk is, we wouldn’t have nearly so many problems. Personally, I think that spamming is being a jerk…even if you are a regular on this message board, that doesn’t make it OK to link to your eBay auctions, or your Etsy page. However, there are enough people who think otherwise that we have to point this out to them.
I have read pretty much all of them, but I agree with the sentiment that it should be common sense as to what is acceptable. This is the only board I frequent that seems to be constantly getting its knickers in a twist about rules and violations.
I don’t think I have read any of the stickies except the one about computer questions. I lurked here for quite a while before joining so I had a pretty good idea of what was acceptable by observing. Five years, no formal warnings. I think a mod may have told me that I was out of line once. If rule changes or ignorance of the rules caused me to have a lot of negative interaction with the mods, I would simply stop posting.
I pretty much follow the “don’t be a jerk” rule. I guess it covers all the rest. But I’ll go read them now.
Of course, and these are the other things I’ve committed to memory:
Cell phone contract
Employee manual
All 52 pages (not joking) that each of my kids’ schools mail to me before school starts each year
U-haul rental contract, especially paragraphs 17 through 42
Mutual fund disclosure statement
Ingredients and warning on Tylenol and Advil
Parking garage limits of liability statement
FAA regulations
etc.
Most of these I look for updates quarterly and re-do my 3 ring binder with plastic sheet covers and separators. Once I’ve fully internalized the GNU Free Documentation License, I plan on moving my binder into a Wiki format using WikiMedia.
Manual? I don’ need no stinkin’ manual!