Oh, come now. How many times have mods actually been called cunts? Nazis, yes. Assholes, frequently. But cunts? The incidence has been inflated by those rather sensitive to that word. Not that I don’t understand. It is far from my favorite.
Okay, so quoting from a PM isn’t against the rules per se. Got it.
I’m a bit confused by this – having clear lines for those offenses you know you want to discourage or prohibit is win-win for you guys. The “posters who hang around in the interest of making up new definitions” (a pool which I think is far smaller than it’s made out to be) will be less effective with clear boundaries, because they can’t claim innocence or inconsistency.
You don’t have to paint yourselves into a corner by spelling things out clearly – it’s just a matter of condensing all the information that is already out there in different places into a single, easy to find post, and then patching all the holes. You can still leave yourselves a disclaimer at the end that the moderators have the discretion to warn or ban people for jerkish behavior that is not on the list.
Honestly, put yourselves in the shoes of someone who just found the boards. Read through the Registration Agreement, then the ATMB stickies. The Registration Agreement is mostly boilerplate not vouching for the accuracy of anything, the staff reserving the right to do whatever, and the policy on contact and personal information. The ATMB stickies are all over the map – the Official Rules sticky (the one with all the “Major Rules”) has a bunch of stuff like how to edit your posts and change your username, but hardly anything about insults, which probably make up 99.9% of all warnings handed out. Moreover, it’s pretty unfocused – it would be great to have a plainly spoken summary of how the rules work around here. Write it like you’re taking a man off the street and having him fill in for you as a moderator for a day. Here’s what you always warn people for, here’s stuff that’s borderline (i.e. it depends on the situation), here’s when you just step in and tell people to cool it. It doesn’t have to be a legal code, but I think it would make life easier on the mods and the posters. Write it in ATMB and let people help make the language clear and unambiguous.
And don’t be afraid to add stuff. There’s clearly been a movement of late to clamp down on sassing the mods and admins – if pissing off the staff is likely to get someone in trouble, just put it in the rules already. Why not? Then telling Lynn to go fuck herself or posting Tuba’s angry PM as your sig is something people can expect to be warned for, and there don’t have to be contorted explanations about threats or copyright or whatever. This would hardly be the first message board to have such rules, and I think people would appreciate the honesty.
God, that makes so much sense.
Lordy, ain’t it the truth.
Just an add-on to my last TLDR post, since several posts took place while I was writing it – I don’t think anyone wants a list of every last possible thing that will get a warning, with everything not on the list by definition acceptable. Instead, think of it in terms of giving people detailed examples of behavior that has led to warnings in the past and can thus expect to draw a warning in the future.
Thank you.
Yes, it’s an email forwarder. The problem with going to IM is that we all have jobs, and we span ten time zones. We just can’t be at our computers all at the same time.
That’s a good idea (it would make my job easier), but as Marley said, it removes all discretion. If a new member starts a spam thread as his very first post, it’s an automatic instant ban. If a “99er” makes a post that we construe as spam, we’ll talk about it. If someone with seven warnings and two suspensions blatantly insults you in MPSIMS, I’m tossing his butt out of here. If someone with a clean slate (or a single warning four years ago) does it, he’ll get a warning. If someone has gotten a dozen “please cut that out” requests, the next time he sticks a toe over the line, he’ll get a warning, whereas the normally well-behaved poster wouldn’t.
They’ve picked us as moderators because they trust our discretion. We try our best to look at each situation and figure out the best way to handle it. The more we tie it down with specific rules, the less discretion we have, and the more rigid everything appears.
For example, in my year moderating the Game Room, I never suspended anyone, banned only spammers, and issued very few warnings. Most of the time, saying “cut that out” fixes the problem. Now that I’m in MPSIMS, I’m having to issue a few more warnings, but it’s still nothing compared to what the GD mods have to do. The rules vary from forum to forum, and we really try to apply them consistently.
All that said, we probably do need to clean up the FAQ and rules a bit.
By SmartAleq:
Ain’t never gonna happen and you know it.
Yep, that’s pretty much just perzactly what I said in what you quoted, to wit:
Switching to something like Instant Messaging might not be as much of an improvement as you might think, given the wide variances in time zones of the mods. They could not possibly all be on IM at a moment’s notice at the same time.
OK, well, I tried to have a reasonable conversation with you, but it seems you are not capable of that, so I will leave you to your rantings. Good luck with your approach.
Which is why I suggested earlier that there should be strong guidelines for WHEN to Ban, Suspend, Warn. Something that would have prevented the stupidity of insisting for a whole day plus that Seven absolutely deserved a ban, and a suspension wasn’t worth considering. Which reaction was received by me privately from more than one staff member before cooler, saner heads got involved.
As a teacher, I can assure you that what upsets people faster than anything is uncertainty. Consistency is always a good way to start when you are dealing with “rules” and consequences. No, none of my students likes having a cell phone taken away, even though it is in the rules. But what really upsets them is if Teacher A takes the phone but Teacher B doesn’t, or, worse, when Teacher A will only take the phone sometimes, and other times lets it slide.
Seven’s ban was upsetting in the main because it appeared capricious. Yes, there are posters who would have complained about anything other than a mild warning. But in my opinion, the thing that dragged so many posters out of the woodwork, posters who normally do not post in these “complaint” threads, is that we assume that we will get at most a suspension for anything but the most flagrant fouls, the most over-the-top jerkitude. Even if Seven had been a new poster as of April, and had done NOTHING but post snarks, he should have received warnings, followed by suspension, followed by a ban if he persisted. But that didn’t happen, and in my opinion, it didn’t happen because there simply is no solid set of guidelines for the staff to follow when dealing with jerks. Someone got their nose bent out of shape, a few others discussed it, and WHAM, one gone poster. Eventually, a much larger group of people discuss the matter and guess what? It turns out that the ban should never have occurred. Had strong guidelines on the subject been in place, it never WOULD have occurred.
And Seven is not the only person to feel this wrath of the gods. ashman got banned the other day, and there wasn’t even an ATMB thread about it. Just a post at the end of a thread that he wasn’t even a “good troll.” I don’t recall his having been suspended (I’ve got to believe without searching that he probably had been warned 
). Now maybe the lack of outcry over this is indication that there is consensus he should have been banned. But the point is, it isn’t clear that there are guidelines in place. Just some behind the scenes discussion among goodness knows how many of the staff, then BAM. Game over.
Shouldn’t be that way.
Dude, for all you know, ashman could have been a sock. Those are insta-banned.
I pretty much agree with the rest though…ghod help me…
That’s thoroughly irrelevant, since I don’t enjoy being called an asshole either.
I think that’s precisely what SmartAleq suggested upthread, actually. Perhaps I’m misreading “complete overhaul of the rules sticky, to include any and all warnable, suspendable and bannable offenses and the escalation schedule leading up to banning.” At any rate, I get your broader point, and do think the rules would benefit from some revision and clarification.
So is that just YOUR view? Or is it a consensus mod/admin view.
I, personally, could not care less what some anonymous person on a message board calls me. If it were in person it would be different.
Since I’ve been back, I’ve come to respect you Mr. Gfactor. The thing is, the rules would have benefited from revision and clarification all along but it was NEVER DONE. All that’s ever happened is that more inconsistency has been added on top of inconsistency until no one is really, exactly sure, just what is or is not allowed.
ETA: Never mind. I goofed.