Arkady
President
I'm not fond of most rules on forums like this. I don't care if I get called a "racist," etc. It's not my forum, but if it were, my rules would focus on usability. Having someone call me even the most vicious of names doesn't make the forum less usable for me, so I don't care about it. What I care about are things that make the forum harder to use, or which otherwise waste time or make it hard to track substantive discussions.
For example, people should not over-indulge in top posts, since it sometimes scrolls other posts away before discussion can develop. Another example of something hurting usability was a poster who would mechanically go through and "rate" my posts negatively without reading them: sometimes dozens in the course of a few minutes. That makes the rating system useless, since it no longer reflects actual opinions about the posts, and is instead just a way to vent emotions about the posters. Yet another example is a poster who regularly calls me out in threads where I'm not even participating, and which have nothing to do with me (e.g., insulting another poster's intelligence and referencing me in passing, with an "at-Arkady" coding that makes sure it shows up in my alerts). That makes the forum less usable, since the alerts no longer are a good way to spot instances where one's views are genuinely being discussed or solicited.
Most forum censorship just strikes me as a way to shelter overly delicate feelings, and I have no use for it. But if we're going to have censorship, wouldn't it be better to focus is on behaviors that actually hurt the function of the forum?
For example, people should not over-indulge in top posts, since it sometimes scrolls other posts away before discussion can develop. Another example of something hurting usability was a poster who would mechanically go through and "rate" my posts negatively without reading them: sometimes dozens in the course of a few minutes. That makes the rating system useless, since it no longer reflects actual opinions about the posts, and is instead just a way to vent emotions about the posters. Yet another example is a poster who regularly calls me out in threads where I'm not even participating, and which have nothing to do with me (e.g., insulting another poster's intelligence and referencing me in passing, with an "at-Arkady" coding that makes sure it shows up in my alerts). That makes the forum less usable, since the alerts no longer are a good way to spot instances where one's views are genuinely being discussed or solicited.
Most forum censorship just strikes me as a way to shelter overly delicate feelings, and I have no use for it. But if we're going to have censorship, wouldn't it be better to focus is on behaviors that actually hurt the function of the forum?
