The current tone of the posts in here gives this thread a sense of irony!

I might have missed some posts but which rules do you disagree with and on what grounds?

I wouldn't say so that makes me a nobody Please don't assume that your opinions are the general opinion.

a) You either are for criticism or against it, you can't switch sides between consecutive posts.

b) Posting on a public forum is the equivalent of inviting criticism. If you can't take direct criticism, perhaps you should find a more private setting.

c) May I suggest Mozilla Firefox, as it has excellent features, including embedded spellchecker.

ETA: Oh dear, I forgot to merge my reply

Nice job with the rules, clear and well structured, nothing new, however, relative to just about any other forum out there. Conservative.

Maybe this is not a proper request, but can we discuss what had just happened? Just so everyone is generally on the same page of what's the acceptable code of conduct and which are frowned upon..

Really? In this post, you literally say "please go elsewhere", which is, in English, the same as "go away". The sentiment is the point, not the exact wording.

The point I was making is that you were being rude and telling people to bugger off when they didn't agree with you, and then calling for moderation when it suited you. The same type of moderation you're objecting to now, and calling fault with in saying the moderators are being "buddy buddy" with their "pals". (The English word for someone that does that is hypocrite, in case you're not familiar with it..)

Nor is it your computer. I find irony in a person posting multiple times to the same thread within minutes admonishing others to "get a life".

Please, just one thing I ask of you. Acknowledge this: This forum is NOT a public or government run forum. You have no rights here other then those granted by the forum owners. Period. You keep saying things ignoring this simple fact. This is not an democracy, this whole forum runs on a computer that is private property. You have no more "right" to say or do anything here than I have the right to log into your phone and change your wallpaper.

It's just like to local pub down the road: You're welcome to come in and chat, drink, etc. If you behave, the owner probably won't even notice you. But if you get unruly you can and will be asked to leave, and will be forcibly removed if needed. Just as a pub owner has the right to do that, so does the owner of this forum. Imagine the local pub owner asking for people's input on how to handle the number of violent drunks that have been stumbling into his bar and causing a mess. Do you see that happening often in real life? No. They make a rule, hire a bouncer, inform the staff of the change, and enact it. The fact that we are being invited to comment in, or participate in the crafting of, these rules is a gift.

If the owners so decided, they could implement whatever policy they wanted and ban people outright on a whim. (There are lots of private forums that do that.) That's their right as the forum owner. You are a guest here, as are we all. If you start thinking you're entitled to something, or have a "right" to say or do something here, you've overstayed your welcome as a guest.

Personally, as I said, I'm all for this change. I am not friends with any moderators here, and in fact have been in hot water a few times for being blunt and somewhat crass at times. I'm also man enough to admit that at times I post rash comments, but am happy to apologize for them later and/or accept the consequences of my actions. I can easily see myself being blocked for a day or two in the not too distant future under these new rules. But I can also see the forum as a whole becoming less of a bickering mess, which will help in the long run. Seems like a reasonable trade off to me.

Shouldn't there be something in the Infractions about frequent offenders? (i.e. accumulate points, lay low until they expire, repeat)

And please, abill_uk's said he's going to leave this discussion. Lets just take his word for it and get back on track.

So, back to the topic at hand....

This whole mess has gotten me to thinking about the difference between intent and approach. Clearly, for example, it was not Abill's intent to start a flame here (I hope), but the approach sparked just that occurrence. That made me think of alternative approaches to moderation. We're looking at stricter direct moderation because self-moderation (which was the norm here for years apparently) is now failing. But often in life things are not black and white, or a dichotomy. What other alternatives are there?

For example: One issue we have it a lot of top-posts (multiple per day in some cases) on topics already covered by other threads. Moderation (merging, etc) is one approach, but it's laborious. So I started looking at the ways other places are handling this.

On some sites I go to when someone wants to post a new thread they ask for just the title/subject first. When the user submits the title it extracts out some key words and does a search based on them, showing links to "similar existing threads". It then gives them a choice between clicking those links or continuing on to create a new thread with the submitted title.

Could we implement something like that here? It would be a little more of a hassle for those that are posting a legitimate top thread (like an announce thread, or something unique), but would stop the dozens of new threads every day/week about map loading and other common topics that have been covered dozens of times already.

What other solutions can we come up with to augment this new policy? The less moderators have to use the "rules" the better I think we all will be. But maybe some simple tech changes could offer a way to auto-fix some of the issues. (Like multi-post to a thread becoming a merged edit/bump.)

Not sure about other sections, but at least in Applications that's already implemented. When I wrote my announcement, I was asked to first check out a list of threads to make sure I won't create a duplicate topic.

I thought we had that already. (Although I have to admit it's not perfect.)

Edit: Ninja posted by Nathraiben.