| Torillian said: So as someone who was part of making the "fanboy" rule I suppose I'll stick up for that decision. Basically at that point in time people were using calling someone a fanboy as a means of attacking the messenger instead of the message. Any argument someone didn't agree with they could call the person a fanboy because, although it was already established that you couldn't insult other users, fanboy was seen as such a weak insult that they wouldn't get in trouble for. Personally I think that any kind of attacking the person instead of what the person is saying is detrimental to discussion in a forum so I'm generally happy with that rule. |
The problem with the rule is that it works in theory, but in application it just results in users basically saying the same thing in a different way, and many users have become extremely adept at skirting the rules in this way, as for how that can be resolved, the more we double down on words people can't say to one another, the more new ways people will find to continue and work around the rules and the more blurred the lines between a normal post with any tint of sarcasm or humor gets taken the wrong way.
In essence we make the job harder for ourselves.
I firmly believe what is needed is a more updated rule set, and a more robus moderation system, as it stands right now if a user is moderated a few times, the time they serve scales upwards, but if then suddenly change their ways for a while, when they next get banned it returns back to a short ban or just a slap on the wrist, even if only a few weeks have passed.
Essentially this makes moderations mean nothing beyond the time served, the ban lengths should be, warning, 1 day, 3 day, 5 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, permanent. and scale based on each infraction, so if you break the rules 4 times for example, your next infraction is 2 weeks no matter how long since your last ban, and anyone clocking in 8 is gone for good.
If a "reset" on this for people who change their ways is truly needed then I would give the reset a fixed period, 6 months for people with 4 or below infractions to be reset to 0, one year for 5-7 infractions.
The system we have in place right now, does not work at disuading users from continuing to break the rules, we all know this clearly, something needs to give.
