Rule Change (New Staff Power)

[SteelCurtain]

Say what you like, but it won't take long for staff to abuse this new feature and eventually some users will be driven away. Guaranteed, we just play the waiting game for now.

Wow. I'm glad you have such a solid grasp of how staff does things here, and how corrupt we are, just waiting for an opportunity to abuse a feature we agonized over creating in the first place. You really pegged us, all in just nine days!

No worries. Just to clarify:  For me (can't speak for anyone else), the problem is if there is a member who is categorically not breaking any rules, but is just a complete arsehole, are we okay with giving staff the option of banning them (regardless of whether this option is ever used)? And are we okay for the staff to decide (regardless of how unanimously) for us as a membership who we deem as such arseholes?

Napo, you know as well as I do that this would never happen without an overwhelming impetus from the forum-at-large. You know how many reports staff gets about members that are making the forum uncomfortable. How many of those reports we have to vote "no action" because no rules have been broken. I said it in the Staff Thread, I'll say it here: in the entire time I've been on staff, I would have given my +1 on the nuclear option to just one member. DFDM.

It just opens a can of worms that doesn't need to be opened in my humble opinion when we can already collar these 'arseholes' for actual rule violations. If someone is skirting the rules so much and the disruption is so obvious, why can we not simply ban them for that? We have done so in the past. 

I just see this whole thing as creating a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and in the process it seems to undermine the rules themselves by saying they don't actually matter because we can ban you even when you aren't breaking the rules.

The problem actually does exist. Otherwise, we never would have discussed an option to correct it. We have, as a staff, felt like we are letting the forum down when we can't do anything about people who routinely make this a less desirable place to be because of their attitude and their harassment of new people and long standing members. The problem exists because these people aren't breaking any actual rules. They are, however, doing everything the rules are there to prevent from happening, which is making this place a nice place to be for the rest of the members.

I think you know how ridiculously conservative staff is concerning using a ban. There is a reason Randy Carson lasted for 6 months here. That is the atmosphere that we foster among staff, and the one that Tiberius maintains.