I think that the recent posts have been pretty constructive, with actual questions being asked and helpful answers being given. "Filibuster" implies (to me at least) that people are talking without reason, which I don't think is what is happening here. (That said, you might not personally care about any of the issues here…)

That's in the works.

Personally, I'm in full support of having the moderation team, but I believe that the moderators should exercise extreme restraint with their powers. They should only step in when it looks like the community isn't stopping something that is becoming a problem. I think our first line of defense should be the members using peer pressure, then if they fail to get the job done send in the moderators to use actual powers to get the job done. This way, nobody thinks of the moderators as acting heavy-handedly and the people who were totally against having moderators in the first place are met halfway. We would then be a self-policing community with moderators who occasionally are called into action. Now of course the moderators are also members so they can use their own peer pressure to try and diffuse a situation before it becomes necessary to use their actual powers. The report this post button would be a good way for the members to signify that they want the moderators to step in.

That's all my thoughts for the moment.

WB Cratylus and Scandum.



Sure. If you read back in the thread, you'll discover to your chagrin that I am the new moderator.
I believe the announcement is in the post where I call you a fascist.
Anyhow the way it works is:

1) If I catch you doing anything naughty, I'll give you a warning.
2) After I tire of giving warnings, I'll open up a thread on TMC to flame you.
3) I may give you a courtesy link here.
4) Sending me a PM probably won't have an effect.

Firstly, an adminstrative warning to all the scoundrels and scofflaws who were crudely muzzled by the prior regime:

1) You may want to consider not stalking each other across threads.
2) Avoid dropping cheese in threads.
3) It is possible to ignore each other.

Secondly, to all you complainers and blissninnies, before screaming troll:

1) Consider others just might be as smart as you and have figured it out for themselves.
2) If others haven't figured it out yet, you can have fun watching.
3) It may be an attempt at humor, sarcasm or satire.
4) The poster may genuinely believe it. There's all kinds of wierd beliefs out there. Sure it's okay to be shocked or offended, and post that. It's futile to argue it, and probably better just to ignore it.
For example here's just a tiny slice of silly, shocking and offensive beliefs that I've read on various mud fora:
* "Al Gore won the 2000 election"
* "Hobbits are benign creatures"
* "God doesn't exist"
* "Adults play DBZ muds"
* "The moon landing was faked"
* "LUA is spelled Lua"
* "Women ought to have the right to vote"
* "Elves suck"
* "John Kerry served in Vietnam"
* "We focus on RP not TS on our Mush"
* "There isn't a secret Nazi UFO base in Antartica"
* "Hope and change"
Anyway I'm certain you have a list too.
5) It may really be cheese.

Hmm…I just noticed there's some other cabal of admins/moderaters so I suppose I should hand out some warnings:

1) One might consider sending a PM to a poster even "before taking action".
2) Imperious language is an invitation to disdain. If we're peers in some sort of mud community that is. JC Lawrence of the Mud-Dev mailing list was one of the best "moderators" I've ever encountered. The email warnings about posts, deleted or allowed though would contain suggestions like "I know what you're trying to say", "here's a way to say it better", "what I think the other poster is saying is…" and "maybe you should gracefully end the discussion". It was almost impossible to disagree with or not respect that level of thoughtfulness.
3) Maybe "they" will tire of arguing, what's the rush? Nobody's going to die from thoughts expressed if you don't hit the lock button.
4) Seriously, if you're going to have General Chat forum inviting people to "shoot the breeze" about anything, I would recommend you "lighten up" there. This site is about muds, so why be more concerned about someone derailing a non-mud topic there, than mud topic on the proper board?
5) IMC causes cancer.
6) I am not really an asshole.

Disclaimer: If the reader is confused as to which of the above statements is meant to be taken as humor, cynicism or serious advice; don't ask; just disregard it and move on.

I'll be brief: Considering the severity of this rule, and its nature in relation to posting, doesn't it strike you admins as being something of a Very Bad Idea™ to stuff the above rule down at the very bottom of the rules page, in the Disclaimer section, and not make any mention of it whatsoever in the actual Posting Rules section?

I disagree with your assessment.

You should review your post about DavidHaley being blameworthy based on his post count.

I will for now limit myself to remarking that your reasoning in this post addressed to me is extremely poor also.

BTW you're not that far from the mudmeet. You should come.

I'm curious of rule 14 has been repealed or if it's now just a hidden, unspoken yet enforceable rule once again?

Still there, though it was sort of buried in the disclaimer. I've moved it to a more prominent location.

So, I can put up a picture of the moon with a pornographic ascii image worked into moon craters, and then get in trouble?

This is such bull****!

I QUIT!

Ok, I suppose I wasn't specific enough; my bad. What I tried to point out is that you have a rule, and a special section set aside to hold such a rule, but instead of the rule being in that section where it should be it is put somewhere else. That's just defeating the purpose of even having such sections in the first place. Sure, it's near the top of the page now where it has a better chance of being read (though it should at least be bolded/underlined to make it stand out, if it's absolutely going to be left there), but the idea is that if you're going to have specific sections for rules then all rules should be in those specific sections and nowhere else; it's a matter of being consistent.

How sure are we that we actually need "rule 14"? Its existence implies incompetence and/or intolerance (for were it needed, it would be because people were rather unhappy with moderation). I don't think we need to make that implication from the very beginning of the new moderators' career. If people are politely discussing moderator action, is that so terrible? If people are discussing moderator action with flames etc., that's already covered. In other words, there are already rules to cover bad things, and it seems somewhat childish to stamp out even polite, considerate and thoughtful discussion of moderator action.

The last 24 pages should be enough to answer why we have it and why it's not going away. I strongly suggest people simply get used to the fact that it's there, it's not leaving, and other normal forums throughout the great wide internet have had a similar rule for ages and the world hasn't ended because of it.

I thought that a lot of the discussion here was actually pretty constructive, and a fair bit of it is shows precisely why it's important to earnestly discuss moderation action and policy. I guess you disagree, but the fact that we're even talking about all of this and that something came out of it all suggests that in practice you don't disagree as much as you say you do. That is why I am trying to keep the reasonableness we have seen here, and not enshrine the incredibly heavy-handed attitude that no discussion whatsoever is tolerated.

Continuing this in PMs - lets just keep in mind that policy is policy and discussions concerning actions taken as a result of it are not allowed.

For now the rule will stay, we will review it in 6 months.

I'm not normally amused by Tyche humor but these are pretty good jokes.

I would go on to jest that if people can't handle outlandish opinions in
the general chat forum, then the general chat forum should be abolished.

If what's causing all the locking and fisting is some kind of sense that
MB is about muds-only, then let's make it so programmatically. You know
how folks keep saying that a mud admins are goofy for having rules about
looting when they could just program the mud to prevent the undesired
behavior? Well. General Chat. Get rid of it, and just forbid offtopic posts,
and kaboom, problem solved.

Otherwise, talk about what's allowed and how and why seems not only
totally germane but downright necessary. The events that occur when
folks enforce rules are therefore entirely fair subjects of discussion.

I don't think that's even in dispute.

The question is should it be discussed in secret. If there's nothing to
hide, I don't see the point in hiding it.

So obviously I'm not allowed to make any critical comments on this so I won't. Instead I'll just say that I wish there were a way to have a group discussion of these things that wasn't a one-on-one PM system (yes, I know you can PM multiple people, but there's no guarantee every reply will reach every participant in this crazy chain). If the rules forbid public questioning (which is a rule I'm obviously not intended to make any disparaging comments about), it seems unfortunate that one is forced to operate under such constraints. I would much prefer not having to go through hoops of PMing every single admin/mod only to meet a response of, "I dunno, ask <Person X>." Even if I were to receive a "guarantee" that this sort of thing will never occur, it would be silly to believe that that guarantee would be indefinite.

In sum, public discussions are taboo, but bringing multiple people into those discussions does not make them public. Maybe expanding this feature would be a good addition?

The PM system doesn't really have reply-to-all – although it does list the recipients of a message (which I believe is a new feature). So it is rather cumbersome to have several people in one conversation. The PM system in general is best for very light-weight messages IMO, and pales in comparison to email for longer or more involved conversations. All this said, I don't believe there is much point discussing this particular issue any further, in public or in private.

Alright, fuck it, I give up. I'm out.

I think that by having those discussions in public, you prevent new users from having to ask the same questions a million times over. If it's done over a public thread then a new user bringing up a certain topic can be referred to that thread so you don't have to deal with the same arguments 15 times. This is really just a matter of efficiency. You can set aside a board for this reason and have it heavily moderated if you like (though I don't think that would be necessary). There really is no reason to NOT have discussions of that nature in public. It doesn't prevent problems from cropping up, in fact it seems to be causing a problem by just having that rule. Though we've had mostly civil responses thus far we're still seeing that the rule is causing more problems than it will ever solve.