Gethsemani said:
runic knight said:
And this mentality is what helps foster the rules lawyering, the passive-aggressiveness, the banjumpers blight the site had to deal with, and other such issues. "The rules are the rules" is a lovely sentiment when they are clear, fairly enforced, and stop negative behavior itself. If even one of those aspects are flawed, problems occur. Lack of clarity leads to confusion and complaints of "I did the same as this guy because he wasn't punished and I thought it was ok". Any perceived bias, true or not, makes people bitter and resentful of the favoratism. And if they allow some negative behavior, such as trolling people with nothing but dismissive snark or passive-aggressive sniping, then those unhappy with being punished for reacting to it will simply learn from the way the management wants them to behave and adopt the "condoned" behaviors to respond to it with.
People aren't stupid. They learn from the culture they are part of, they see what is acceptable and what is not, they learn who is valued and why, they pick up on what behavior is being encouraged and condoned.
Simply saying people have to follow the rules, but ignoring the concerns and criticisms of them, be it lack of clarity, concerns about enforcement, or just holes within them, well, it wont work well. And it clearly hasn't around here.
Don't try to mix apples and oranges. The rules are quite clear and can be summed up as: Be respectful and polite and don't post stuff that's not PG-13. If a poster decides to not be respectful and polite or to start posting content that's not allowed, that's on them. It is not on other posters for doing it first. It is not on the moderators for being inconsistent. It is on the poster who decided they could be rude and disrespectful.
That said, the CoC can be discussed, as can the moderation process. However, if that's what you (not you as in Runic Knight, but as in the general sense you) want to discuss you are better of doing that in a vacuum, and not using the CoC or "mod bias" or "inconsistent moderation" as arguments in your on-going effort to explain why you deserve to be exempt from the current rules.
Stick to the CoC and you are safe. That's the gist of it, and if you get a warning that's because you didn't stick to that simple guideline.
The rules are not clear, they are vague generalities about acceptable behavior that are open to individual interpretation. Look at the wording of the core ideals of the rules past and current.
"Don't be a jerk"
"Don't be Rude and disrespectful"
Trying to touch on the core idea reveals just how abstract the idea you are trying to harness is in the first place. And that isn't bad in its own right, just requires careful handling. But the enforcement of vaguely defined rules justified as being by the letter of the law is defeating the purpose of either strictly defined rules, or entirely subjectively enforced rules. It tries to have the flexibility of interpretive rules with the stability of defined rules, and fails at both. Instead enforcement, especially controversy, feels arbitrary, and justification hand-waved away as ruled as "written", or feels ignored, with justification for not enforcing being dismissive of the rules as written to favor the subjectiveness. Regardless of intent to do that, the consequences of such a system is discord in the community.
The closing of the WW is a good example. The rules as written defining the subforum are ignored by the mods to enforce their will to solve problems there, and justified because the rules as written included a "get out of jail free" card to allow subjectiveness to overrule them as written. This makes an already unhappy with the decision community as "what is the point of written rules when they do what they want in the end anyways?"
But lets look at the core concept even. The very spirit of the rules.
What is "being rude, disrespectful, or a jerk"? Well, here is what I have learned about the rules by how they are written in the CoC and how they are actually enforced.
Insults seem to count as rude, but not so if they are only implied rather than directed at another user. So if you put forth the same meaning with the same intention in a weasel-worded reply that only implies the person you talk to is a nazi sympathizer, a progressive cultist, or a defender of pedophilia rather than outright stating that they actually are, that is acceptable, you can still insult people all you want. Accusations of horribleness are disrespectful, but if you can feign ignorance about your intent to make them, they are passable. Snarking back and forth with friends to solely to talk shit publicly about groups of people who as members in the discussion itself is fine, but directing that at people themselves is not. Dismissive, add-nothing snipping remarks that serve only to antagonize are fine, but calling that behavior itself no better than trolling is not.
This is what is "taught" to people when they read the rules and then see how they are enforced and used by some users against others. This is the type of user the current rules and the enforcement of the rules currently is fostering and rewarding.
Can you at least admit that when your rules are vague like that (and that is vague and open to mod interpretation from the start), and if you regularly see people posting nothing but snide, mean-girls-esc commentary, antagonistic accusations, or dismissive, disruptive snark, that maybe it makes it looks like the rule are just not very well done in allowing that sort of toxic behavior to slide in the first place? Maybe the rules aren't stopping the problem, but merely serving as a tool to be used by those behind the problem to hurt others. Because, that is all I have seen for over the past 5 years, this "breed" of poster being created and groomed that is cancerous to any sort of forum growth, community longevity, or civil discourse, and the rest of the posters reacting to them by either jumping ship, being swallowed by the ban-hammer, or mimicking their style to survive the hostility.
Because saying "Stick to the CoC" doesn't stop any of that now any more than it did half a decade ago when people were still complaining about those same problems. The CoC being followed but excusing if not openly encouraging those sorts of behaviors is the problem I and others are pointing at. For all the time that has passed and the changes to the site, that underlying issue has never properly been even acknowledges, let alone addressed.
Now vague rules like those, they can work if done right, with the right crew managing things, and the right community that respects and trusts them to be honest, fair, and just. But how they are applied here? Where there is a game-able system of strikes in place? Where people actively dodged bans solely to harass people and piss other users off to get themselves in trouble? Where posters can use disruptive tactics to get threads they dislike closed down? Where they can be passive-aggressive antagonistic instigators, poisoning any debate or discussion with childish behavior, dishonest derailments, and outright trollish behavior that is protected only by the letter of the rules? It simply can't right now. It is no wonder that the community is in the state it is now with that core problem never addressed itself.
You can dismiss complaints of inconsistent rulings as simply wanting to be immune to the rules, but that is not true and never was. When those who complain about it, and I mean this on ALL sides of the usual forum bickering, they have only ever used it to demand why someone else wasn't punished for what someone else was, or why someone was for what someone else was not. Both sides of that coin are about fairness in ruling being complained about because of the very system itself relying on interpretative rulings resulted in often demonstrable unfair and inconsistent rulings. The ease to see bias motivating that inconsistency is not hard to see why, nor when compounded with the result of the constant ignoring of the core problem in the first place that breeds the sort of behaviors that spit in the face of the spirit of the rules.
Sticking to the CoC does not make one safe from the toxicity of the forum's passive-aggression, worthless snark, or disruptive sniping. It does not prevent the behavior that people hate on this site. All it does is let you stick around long enough to learn how to do it yourself to reply to the blatant hostility and "acceptable" kind of disrespectfulness with your own.
That is not fixing the problem, that just perpetuates it and telling people to stick with a solution that never worked in the first place.
People are complaining about service, and you tell them to stay in line while ignoring one of their complaints is that others keep cutting in line in front of them. When complaining to the people in charge doesn't work, they leave, or do the same to not be cheated further.
What is your solution to disruptive, antagonistic, hostile posters who follow the rules? What do you do when people weaponize the rules against people they dislike? What are users suppose to do when they are picked-on, harassed, and antagonized but get punished if they call it out for what it is? How are people suppose to have debate and discussion and even civil argument when a small band of people will actively sabotage things, derail threads, and seek to get them locked because they dislike the topic, or the direction the topic went? What are they to do when a user creates a million sock puppets solely to antagonize and troll, and gets supported and even praised by other users who are just happy he is targeting their "opponents"?
What is a user suppose to do when "following the rules" doesn't stop the crap the spirit of the rules is suppose to stop in the first place?