New Rule: No Personal Attacks

[Eilonnwy]

Syn, the IRC chat is not the forums, first of all.

Second, kicking is not a ban. I do it all the time as a joke to other people, Adrian has done it to me. Some of us have it set up so that when we get kicked we automatically log back in. It's a pretty ineffectual little jab. It's not meant to be taken seriously, but since you did, I apologize for that. I didn't realize you would take it as me booting you out to not come back.

It seems to me you are arguing for unequal treatment of our members. To put new members under a microscope and let old members do what they want. First off, the problem was not just with new members. I've noticed a trend of old veterans beating on new theists pretty hard. I don't think that's fair.

Second, we're not about treating members differently because of seniority. We want to treat every member the same, and to do that we have to enforce the rules equally. Furthermore, to not have an insult rule but only a flame rule leads to a lot of subjective moderator action based on who deems what is an insult and what is flaming.

To ban Godhead or Edward for their behavior immediately would be unfair when some veterans are giving as good as they get. Hence, they were not banned immediately. In fact they were banned for reasons not covered by the personal attack rule, but different ones. We had to wait for them to break another rule before we could act if we were to treat members equally.

The better thing to do is enact a fair rule that allows us to handle the bad apples immediately and treats everyone fairly. We don't want to alienate new members by holding them to different standards then how we hold veterans. We want to welcome them and make it feel like a friendly place to come to. We can only do that by not allowing personal attacks by members, veteran or new, and that includes moderators.

Hey, I've been insulting in the past, I've admitted as much before. I'm not proud of it. I regret it. I don't think I have a right to throw around attacks and then deny that to a new member, because I'm a veteran, or worse a mod. I would also much rather present myself in a much more civil way anyway. We want to hold everyone to the same standard.

If you feel members aren't being held to the same standard, let us know. Report a post. Reporting prompts discussion by all staff members, as it creates a thread in a private staff forum. Remember, we're all humans. There is a lot of activity here. I try to monitor posts and I know the other mods do to, but we still can and do miss bad behavior. That's why reporting is so important. If you think we missed something, report it. The worst that can happen is we deem it not actionable and do nothing.

Long story short, this new rule will allow moderators to act sooner, like in cases of Edward and others. Meanwhile, it will allow new members to come in and feel welcome because sometimes a new member might say something that a lot of people disagree with, they get called an idiot and don't come back. Both scenarios, of letting a troll survive longer than he should, and scaring away members for possibly having a different ideology, are not conducive to the goal of this forum. This rule neatly solves both problems.