Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Okay, I'm about to leave this forum again anyway, but I figured I'd throw this out there since everyone considered my tirade in that other thread to be a plea for modship.

Basically my suggestion is this:

First off, I'm glad that you guys listened to the complaints about banning several months ago and evidently created some sort of striking system for it. Now I'd like you moderators to reconsider the rules that you have.

For those of you who don't know, my complaint stems from the user who's been posting in purple. That bugs the crap out of me. I can't concentrate if the text is in different colors for no reason whatsoever, and I don't give a damn how dark it is; it still annoys me. Going out of your way to make every single one of your posts a certain color is a clear violation of rule four (no headaches -- specifically, overuse of bbcode), and I brought that up in another thread. It was immediately shot down with rule one: it doesn't bug the moderators, so it's allowed.

Alright, think about this for a second. Why do we have rule four if a 100% violation can be ignored because moderators (who are only moderators because they've managed to spend a long time here without offending anybody, not because of any superspecial qualities. i was even considered to be one, that should be enough proof for you there) don't happen to care? Why don't we just toss rule four out and let the moderators decide what constitutes a headache? Why have guidelines if the guidelines don't matter?

Consider rule six: Users use hell and damn and misspelled swear words all the time, and never get called on it. I use hell and damn and misspelled swear words all the time, and never get called on it. Is that okay if the moderators aren't offended? Hell no it's not.

If you think about it, several of the rules are broken often. When people call me a prep and say they don't like me for it, isn't that a violation of rule two (classism?)? Every time someone criticizes a religion or lack of one, shouldn't they get their first strike? I don't have actually have an example for this but I'm 99% sure the R&P board has sparked hundreds of these. If a Christian tells an atheist he's going to hell, is it okay if the moderators are Christians? If an atheist tells a Christian he's a fool because of his faith, is it okay if the moderators don't believe in God?

My overall point is this: rule one cannot throw out another rule. If the admins have the final say in all matters, that's just peachy, but their final say SHOULD NOT BE "oh, well, you can break the rules because i like you". Why do the rules exist if the moderators don't enforce them? Why do we have moderators if they just make up their own rules?

I can think of four solutions:
1. Change the rules. Allow colors.

2. Get rid of all the rules but rule one. That way the moderators can arbitrarily choose when someone is doing something wrong. The forum can then be the dictatorship you all say it is. It would be silly but it would work.

3. Get rid of rule one and strengthen the remaining rules. That way every dispute can be handled by a quick check of the rules. If it breaks 'em, the moderators can/should step in. If it doesn't, the moderators can/should ignore it. If it's not in the rules but should be, a new rule can be added. If it's controversial, the admins can vote, or the moderators can vote, or the entire user body can vote.

4. Make the moderators what the name implies: users with no say in forum politics but the ability to enforce the rules. Make them more like policemen than Congressmen. Rule one even says that only admins have the final say, not the mods. If all controversial forum decisions are left up to the admins, things will be fair...otherwise we just have a team of members with their own specific biases and it just becomes a race to see who can lock the thread first. I'd like to see this option happen, but I'd be willing to guess that you mods adore your decision-making powers too much to give them up.

To conclude: Either keep the purple text and adopt options 1 or 2, or stop the purple text and adopt options 3 or 4. Consider all the options though, because no matter how much you want to keep The Faceless Evil happy, options 3 and 4 would provide for a stronger, better, less-dramatic forum.

Everything I said here is true.

edit -- actually you could do options 3 and 4 AND keep the purple text, now that I think about it. Throw a clause into the rules that very dark colors are okay. It would still tick me off, but whatever. Honestly, I'd just like to see a revamp in forum politics... if you guys could realize how much better this forum could become by adopting 3 and 4, and actually go through with the change, you have no idea how much respect I would gain for you.

(in b4 immediate lock)

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Agreed 100%.

If this gets locked, then this isn't a problem about rules anymore, it's a problem with the mods.



And sometimes not even long...

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

As far as I know he is the only one who has objected to you using your purple font.

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

I rather dislike the purple text.

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

Umm.....I think you might want to edit that a little bit...

As for what you have been speaking of TEF, remember when I used to post in blue text? I didn't get rid of it because it was against the then tighter rules, but because it was annoying a lot of people, such as IJ. I don't really see purple as annoying. It's not like it's bright yellow or something.

There is something with the rules though. No-one's ever going to be completely happy with them. There will always be people who think they are too tight or loose, not enforced enough, or whatever. We are human, we make mistakes. We can't be right all the time.

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Quick! Lock the Disktionary!


I agree that there still has to be a few changes to the rules, though I'd like to see Rule 1 stay. At this point in time, a lot of the rules are basically placeholders since the admins and mods have the final say in a situation. It should be like that though, because having rules being followed in a completely laid-down format is just asking for them to be broken either intentionally or accidentally.

I'd say that colored text should be allowed when making a full-blown post, though it should stay in darker, less eye-straining colors. Less eye-straining colors are debatable, but I'd say colors that blend well with the backgrounds for posts. This would also make it so it looks like nobody is getting any special privileges on this front.

I'm not sure what to say to the rest of it. Maybe I'll form a better opinion on some of these things in a little while.

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

Teff is a master burner.

I think the rule should be edited saying that darker colors would be allowed. But when stuff like green and red and such come in then it's just annoying everybody.

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I dunno, I don't think it would be too bad with this color, or this color. Anything subtle should be fine, I don't see why not... Everything, in my opinion, should be used within reason.

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

Yeah, any face-burning colors would be considered "headaches" under rule 4.

In my mind, adoption of options 3 or 4 > getting rid of purple text.


just sayin'.


come on guys, ditch rule one or ditch the moderators. it's the smart thing to do.

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Personally I don't even think of rule one as a rule, more like a last resort if a better option cannot be found. So I wouldn't care. Strengthening current rules would be nice too.

Your whole 4th point makes me lol for some reason. It's just such a good burn.

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or we could just keep things the way they are now. Things are way less dramatic.
Rule 1 says we can allow things if we want.
TFE's purple text is about as easy to read, maybe easier on the "dark" background, than the black.

It's not over-using, it's not annoying, and it's not causing headaches.

People get all butt-hurt when we are really strict, so we tend to bend a little on things (like TFE's purple text) when it's OBVIOUSLY NOT causing any troubles.

Sure, sometimes, I wish she'd use the standard black text, but she's an otherwise good user, causes no drama, and tends to not take things too seriously.
Works for me.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

If you ditch the mods, we current mods will have to become admins, because Ramrod and StrongRad can't cover this forum alone.

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I think by ditch he means make you guys have no say in forum decisions at all. If not then he kinda contradicts himself.

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Wanna make out?

Seriously, if anybody (who is nice about it) is bugged by my purple text I will try to remember to reply in standard to them, out of politeness. But ultimately, I'd rather just like to speak in purple. Or I can switch it up to brown, I like brown too. How exciting is this? Broooooown~~~


RE-VO-LUUUUUTION~

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

wtf

Do you guys want loose rules or strict rules, make up your damn minds

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

Strict rules worked wonders for this place but the same success can't be achieved again.

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Ace if you haven't figured it out, we are in a no win ball game.

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

I completely agree that the rules need to be enforced better, I've been saying that for months now. We can change the rules to fit what we want, but whatever rules we do have, we need to enforce them.

However, I don't agree with the stuff about TFE's purple font. The rule is "No headaches", not "no overuse of colors", and, as rule 1 says, we can interpret the rule how we want. We decided that the font wasn't disruptive, so we didn't consider it rule-breaking.

My love of your postings says "yes". The ring on my finger says "no".

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

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Meanwhile as The Faceless Evil closes in on the hapless, sleeping, populace...
Across town in a shanty one-bedroom, an old woman feeds her parakeet.

The first thing.

Jesus, I think Noid was the only one who actually read the first post in this thread.


I'm sayin' one or the other. We can't have this sometimes-strict sometimes-not crap.


Mmkay fine. I'm willing to concede to the purple font if we can strengthen the rules. I'd also be willing to concede to the purple font if we can loosen the rules. I just hate being stuck in the middle.


For the record though, my vote goes to strengthen.




Edit: Also I didn't actually read this thread, but lahi seems to agree with me. I'm suggesting the same thing but for ALL the rules.

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What the hell...

I can't figure out who's being jerks in this thread. My brain hurts.

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That's not good for your case, Lahi went insane.

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