WTFBBQ?

Where did you get that link?

Rules were made to be broken.

 

You used to use my actual first name as part of your screen name? It was creepy enough when I thought it was just some random stranger, now its... more creepy. Like finding you wearing my pants or something. Except I'm pretty sure you had no idea what my name is, which ought to de-creepify it for me, but somehow doesn't.

All right.  So the mods have finally come together and worked out a policy for dealing with those who decide to break the rules.  Offenses are a discretionary term used to describe breaches in the rules and/or behavior unacceptable within the scope of the rules.

1st Offense:  A warning will be issued to the person.  This will be done to the person in private by a mod, but will still count as a strike against the poster.

2nd Offense:  The poster will be muted for 3 days.  At the end of the muting the poster will issue an apology to the community.

3rd Offense:  The poster will be muted for 7 days.  At the end of the 7 days the poster will send an apology to a mod which the mod will then post as a poll.  The community will then decide if they want to accept the apology and give the poster their voice back or leave the muting on for a further 7 days (after which voice will be returned).

4th Offense:  Ban-hammer.  By this point the poster has shown fundamental differences in character which indicate they do not belong as part of the community.

As always we welcome your questions, comments and concerns.

I hope that instaban is still around for those who join only to spam us with keyloggers disguised as russian porn, and other such malarky. (Ha! I managed to use malarky in a sentence!)

Do we have a mod list yet?

Could there be a statute of limitations sort of thing? If someone's first offense was so long ago that the mod team forgot it, say, two or three years, could it sort of fade from the record? What I'm thinking is that if a person simply hangs out anywhere for years or more they're going to tread on a few toes. Making four mistakes over the course of four years and then being banned is a lot different than making four mistakes over the course of four months and then being banned.

Quote from: Badger on June 22, 2006, 03:46:36 PM

What if the poster doesn't feel he's done anything wrong and prefers not to apologize?  Will an apology be absolutely required, or is the second offense essentially a banning if someone doesn't agree that he's broken the rules?

If they don't apologize, then they are muting themselves.

I'm mildly uncomfortable with this.  It feeds the assumption that when an apology is given, it's not necessarily a sincere one and that it was only given to get posting privilieges back.  I guess I kind of look at that as worse than someone not apologizing at all.  Perhaps it's just me, but if someone royally pissed me off, attacked me or another poster, and got muted for it, I'd rather any apology to me or the forum in general came out of an understanding that he had crossed a line, not just lip-service to get his posting rights back.  Again, it may just be me, but I'll likely be looking at most of the apologies and thinking, "He's just saying that so he can post again."

Update:

Added: "On this forum, you will, most likely, eventually come across statements you find offensive. That's fine; you have every right to take offense to anything you like. What's not fine is expecting the staff to censor someone's writing just because you don't like it. You do not have a right to be protected from being offended, and I'm not extending any similar priveledge." to the rules.