lol. once again either make a case or **** off.

you always want to challenge me in the vaguest ways possible.

like i'm just supposed to assume that behind your mesh of ginger beard and your rigid use of wiki fallacy crap there's an actual point to be made.

you say you don't wanna have to spell if out but if you're gonna keep insisting on your fallacy bull**** then yea i'm saying spell it out

Its to early to be drinking and derailing this with hairbrain politcal disscussions, go start a thread about it, your favorite thing to do remember.

yea but i liked your post though. really i wanted to find some inspirational battle hymn to play behind it

lol@ last 2 pgs

I tried, Soulflower.

so your point was that the context for the decisions concerning the rules of this forum isn't necessarily the same context as the american civil war... is that your wiki wisdom oh enlightened one?

Yes, in the same way that it'd be fallacial to compare the 2000 election to the MB Awards unless you're ready to back that statement up. Saying 'what about?' means nothing when you can't explain why they're similar (to a reasonable degree, not some vague and conspiratorial correlation).

quick someone moderate Trollheart for making a short nonsense post

How ironic that this thread is actually making its point better through the behaviour of the likes of us. We're doing tore's work for him. Sort of. Like Jansz says, back on topic or you hand tore the victory. Nobody wants to score an own goal.

Is it possible to have comments disabled but the poll still left active? Bit mad maybe, but I feel that so much of the conversation here has strayed away from the idea of the thread, and what is to be said has perhaps been said; everyone is kind of either ignoring the topic, making fun of it (including me) or else anyone who is making actual comments on the topic is just rehashing old points and going round and round in an ever-decreasing circle.

sorry, lol. please continue to debate over whether we should enforce forum rules or something like that. i'm sure we all have much to learn.

snarky comment aside, i actually am sorry for derailing the last 2 pages if people really have something they want to discuss here. i thought this **** was pretty much dead by now but yea

:p

OK , we really need a final vote date, that way we can actually have a start/end date if a trial run is implemented. We need a non partial mod, cough* ( Yac) to maybe tally everything and if its what we the posters of MB truly want we need someone to write out the amended rules.
All my opinion but right now its kinda a headless snake, and it being open to long allows both sides to shoot themselves in the foot. If adopted after the month or two month trial we should discuss and modify again if need be.

Thoughts on this mini proposal?

The vote closes in about a week and a half. If the current voting trends continue, it seems like this might be the things the majority will want :

• 1A. The rules should be applied equally to all members (ex. rules apply equally to mods and users)
• 2B. Rules should NOT apply equally to all forums (ex. "Safe Zones" less strict)
• 3B. Outside safe zones, mod policy should discourage short, nonsense posts
• 4B. General mod policy should allow for mods NOT to react to an instance where a rule is broken
• 5C. Details of rule enforcement can be subject to public scrutiny
• 6B. For punishment, there should be a general policy to use warnings, infractions / bans
• 7B. For rule enforcement, moderators should use their personal accounts
• 8A. A new moderation policy should have a trial run first (ex. 1 - 2 months)
• 9A. The mod team should be bolstered with additional mods.
• 9C. The current mod team should be retained.

Out of these, the bolded options are the ones I assume are out of the ordinary and would require some work to implement, if that was to happen.

I think the best way to implement wanted changes would probably be to appoint a project leader for this and delegate the task to him / her. One of the mods may want to do this. Then they're in charge of making a plan for how to implement this, get feedback from the community on things where that might be necessary, and then try to work through that plan.

edit :

I would volunteer, but not unless there was a decision to implement options 1A, 4A and 6A. Based on how the poll is going (not to mention the previous one), that seems highly unlikely.

Maaaan.

Hold up nah, let's talk about this. Imma help you work on your salesmen ****. There you go again wit dat same song and dance, of "this is what you will want".

Let's talk about imposing on Yac, because he is the Mac daddy mod, kinda like taking it to Mount Olympus.

Edit*Salesman**** heheh totally the best typo eveah

So pretty much, people want things to stay as they are. Well, this has been time well spent.

I'm sorry the details of why people are infracted should be private unless the people involved give permission to devulge it.THIS really bothers me.I'm deeply private and Id be offended if people choose to share on my behalf. I got no problem telling the community if you all asked me but that is my choice . And I show all of you that respect those perma banned, those infracted etc. Please show me that respect in kind.

Edit: Bro I love your new avy! 16\sex.

Seems like it at the moment, but some policy tweaks may be called for.

We'll see after the two weeks.

Perhaps, in the most passive agressive way possible; join your neighbours party and then chitchat with people, telling them you don't really care about parties.

I understand where you're coming from, but you'd probably get infracted for something you made public (posted on the forums). People would already know. Rule enforcement being available for public scrutiny can work in both mods and users favour, but it generally favours the user, for example if you got banned for no good reason.

I understand that you are missing my point.

I know how they work I have some. I mean I don't want there to be an infraction bulletin board thread or an infraction wall of shame thread. That is not OK.

Edit: You missed my response to your salesmanship. Ahhhm.....you have some control issues we need to address...

No, scrutiny basically means that the information is available to searching, investigation, examination and so on :) F.ex it might allow you to investigate the events (PMs f.ex) that led to a members permban.

Walls of shame was not what any of us had in mind.

edit :

I'm not sure I understood it :p:

Oh I know, I'm just throwing it in the mix because it needs to be said.
Sometimes things start out one way and then morph into something else. I voice my concerns as I tink of them.

Goddamn you people have alot of time on your hands. Good luck.

If a rule or guideline was to be made, one could write something like : "If there is an inquiry into the details relating to a punitive action between a moderator and a member, details of the incident, including correspondence between the moderator and member relating to the punitive action in question, should be made available for investigation".

That might help a transparency rule work as intended and prevent it being used to make walls of shame and the like.

I missed you so much!

I didn't vote for this option because I'm a deeply private person. I'm not buying this option please stop selling this to me like a witness.

It's an internet forum infraction. Who cares? You just sound paranoid. Stop watching Fox News.

That's Rox News! ;)
And leave her alone; if she wants her privacy she's entitled to it. I wouldn't be crazy about having my dirty laundry out there for all to see. In any case, it's an opinion and a choice, which she's entitled to.

Also: "should be made available for investigation", tore: investigation by who?

I think it should be made illegal to say pointless truisms like this. The entire point of making our opinions public is so that we might compare and contrast them, and even possibly develop new opinions based on our experiences with conversing with others. Otherwise we might as well all just shut the **** up and not say anything to each other.

Stop watching me.

In the case of option 5A, noone. In the case of option 5B, moderators. In the case of option 5C (which is the one we discussed), the public.

My votes:

1B. The rules should NOT be applied equally to all members (ex. mods more lenient with regulars)
As I mentioned previously, I don’t think this issue is expressed well in the poll so I guess this is the option I’m forced to choose. What I support is fair moderation, which I think has always been what we go for here. I honestly don’t even know what it would mean to apply the rules equally to all members regardless of post count since the rules themselves clearly differentiate between new members and longer term members (e.g. our rules about who can have what in their signature, our rule about who can have a journal, our rule that you need 15 non-lounge posts before you can create links, etc.). I don’t think these rules are unfair or unreasonable, and I think it’s a fairly common human expectation in all kinds of communities that long-term participants have earned a bit more leeway within the group.

2B. Rules should NOT apply equally to all forums (ex. "Safe Zones" less strict)
We already run things this way (e.g. the music sections are a little stricter than the lounge, the journals are more heavily moderated than anything else) and it seems pretty reasonable so no reason to change it.

3B. Outside safe zones, mod policy should discourage short, nonsense posts
For the record, I think we should also discourage long nonsense posts. It’s really the nonsense part that’s the issue, not the length. And of course the way this should be enforced is very context dependent.

4B. General mod policy should allow for mods NOT to react to an instance where a rule is broken
I think context and judgement are the reason that we have human moderators instead of bots so I’m in favor of applying rules judiciously rather than automatically.

5C. Details of rule enforcement can be subject to public scrutiny
I think they can be, but within reason. Members should be expected to recognize things that are over the line (e.g. repeatedly questioning a moderator about something long after the fact, questioning the moderation in a situation where the rule enforcement was clearly directed at a spammer) and people’s privacy should be respected.

6B. For punishment, there should be a general policy to use warnings, infractions / bans
This is how we currently operate and I think it strikes the best balance between having some kind of structure and not being too cumbersome.

7B. For rule enforcement, moderators should use their personal accounts
I don’t really see the point of using an anonymous account.

8A. A new moderation policy should have a trial run first (ex. 1 - 2 months)
I really think this depends on what kind of policy it is, for example if it’s something driven by Google, having a trial run doesn’t really make sense. But sure, as a general guideline I think having trial runs could be a good idea.

9A. The mod team should be bolstered with additional mods.
Sure. The ranks have gotten a little thin so a new mod or mods could be a good idea, if we have the right candidates.

is it cool if i just vote or do i really have to go through each one and explain my reasoning?

What are you talking about? Are you saying La Rox is not allowed her privacy? I'm saying it's her choice not to have her transgressions aired publicly, and her opinion that it would be a bad idea. What does that have to do with what you wrote? Are you high again or suffering tobacco withdrawal?
You don't get to vote. You shot the president.

All joking aside, this is something of a serious point I have to make, which will probably annoy tore. It's not meant to: I did like tore (note the tense here) but the way he's conducted himself throughout this whole enterprise, essentially trying to push something on the community that a majority said they did not want (see Exo's incisive analogy) has forced me to rethink how I feel about him. Sad I know, but there it is.

Anyway, the thing is, I feel I would have given this whole proposal more attention, importance and significance if it had come from someone who's here all the time, be they mod or not. Someone I was used to talking to, or seeing talking, making threads, making jokes, doing reviews, joining in conversations. But for a long time now tore has been, to quote his usertitle (or his one up to a very short time ago) an "absent friend". He hasn't been involved with the community and I can't help but remember the last significant contribution he made, that I can recall, was when a little while back he invited anyone who wanted to to leave MB and join him in setting up a new forum. That didn't happen, and then a while later we get this.

So to my mind (whether right or wrong) it's like tore didn't get his new forum, so now he's trying to mould, bend and force this one into a shape he is comfortable with, while sadly tending to ignore the fact that so many people don't want that. This is the main reason why I don't agree with his proposal. It's like someone has been away for years and then comes home and says "I know how this place can be better." The initial reaction would be "Who the hell are you? You haven't been here for years." I know tore was/is a respected member and ex-mod, but to me this is just a little suspect, and it may be coincidence but I'm willing to bet it's not.

And I personally don't want (and again, I hope no offence is taken) someone who has not been here for years to come back and tell me how the place should be run, change it all up and then, by his own admission, perhaps leave and not even be part of it once it's been changed. I'm happy with MB as it is, which is why I will continue to oppose any attempts to significantly change it.

I would also like to know: is tore's proposal still alive because he said this poll was "something different". So what is it? I think I certainly at least, am still labouring to connect the two, and definitely feel the one is the product of the other. To put it in terms you Americans will be familiar with, it feels like it's a sneaky rider being attached to a bill?

It could have been worded better. By the basic intention of the option, the rules you mention are not regarded unequal, or at least not the kind of unequal that was intended to bring up. Rather, those rules are circumstantial which is similar, but importantly different. You'd probably agree that people who are blind should not drive cars. Hypothetically, it is applied equally because if you yourself become blind, you are not allowed to drive and the same goes for the president of the US. It doesn't matter who you are, it only matters whether or not you are blind and blindness is important in this case because it makes you less able to drive safely.

If you are blind and allowed to drive a car, then you're treated differently.

Likewise, all these circumstantial rules that affect newbies would also affect us if we were newbs (thus applying equally to all in that circumstance) and newb is an unspecific term that doesn't differentiate on things like the colour your skin or gender - rather like the no-driving-rule for blind people.

It's hard to get all this into one 100 characters option, though.

I think only two of us have explained our votes so far. It's up to you, but if you do, I'll read it.

lolwut

@tore

i mean my basic reasoning overall is that i want the rules to be as loose as possible

so just apply that principle to each question and you can probably fill in the blanks

I don't give a **** what her opinion is or is not. If she wants her privacy, then that's fine (I think she's being goofy in this case, but whatevs), but just because she has an opinion doesn't mean it should automatically be respected (No offense, Roxy, I'm just talking about the respecting of opinions as a general principle.) The whole point of this exercise is to debate opinions, so when you voice an opinion here, it becomes free game to be dissected, studied, and then cast into the biohazard disposal thingy when it fails to hold up to scrutiny.

Wow, Briks and I agreed on every single choice.

Same. It's my same approach toward gun rights as well (let's not have that derail BTW): whether or not some things about gun rights/forum culture might be good or bad, I'd rather there be an atmosphere of relatively hands off permissiveness, than one micromanaged by heartless logic and statistics.