There appears to be some confusion amongst some of the regular chatters here about some warnings about pushing some boundaries of the rules resulting in permanent bans. Yes we did have a moderators only chat about some of the consistent boundary pushing, some of the people who have been involved lately, and the fact that anyone who pushes limits consistently should be permanent banned from using the chat rooms here.<\/p>\n
It would be easy to label just about any conversation that someone did not like as generally fucking annoying or GFA – and it is in the rules that being GFA can get you banned. This could and does encompass all kinds of things, but this rule was created when we had a number of people who cam to the chat for no other reason than to troll the rooms, and annoy people for the lulz. This rule was often invoked quite often when we had a lot of visitors from Asia who simply would not listen, or could not understand some basic etiquette that we as a community suggested time and time again that they follow.<\/p>\n
The recent warnings were not about those people who come to the room and only annoy people, instead these warnings are intended for those who know the rules and follow them most of the time.<\/p>\n
Some have asked us to pinpoint the exact things in which are considered pushing the boundaries. This is not so easy to put down in orange and black. I could go through some chat log examples to drum up specifics, but let’s just say that when a few people start pushing some limits they often pull other people into doing the same. When the others start following the examples of the regs who push the limits of certain things, the newer folks will tend to cross over some lines, and then we get situations where we have to start deciding, well person A posted only two links, and person B posted 3, then person C posted 7 links – so person C should be banned, but then there is confusion with person C – as all they did was the same thing that others were doing.<\/p>\n
This is not just about posting links, it’s about other things as well – but I think you can see the point. Some people make it hard not only for the moderators to keep everyone on the same people, but they make it hard for the newer visitors to understand what is cool here and what is not.<\/p>\n
In the past I have gotten into long debates with some users who refused to use the block button, and instead were quite happy to engage others with rude or outright mean remarks, calling pmer’s out by name – which often led to defensive behavior in the others, and it became not only a way to be snarky, but it became a method of getting other people banned. That debate still lingers in the older comments around here somewhere, and it’s one of the things that led me to create the challenge to the regs – in which I tried to explain that even discussions that were not technically against were out of place in the main lobby.<\/p>\n
I tried to explain that there is no need for a few people to take over the lobby with the way they think they should handle discussions only to confuse and ruin things for the other visitors. I challenged people to think more about how other people would perceive what they were typing in the chat room before they hit the enter button. I suggested that if they really wanted to engage in comments that would likely turn into a back and forth bitch fest, that they could move those discussions to a side room, but keep it out of the lobby.<\/p>\n