A year ago posting any form of swear word would get you one of those warning pages and (sometimes) a day ban if it was your first offence. Now? Nothing. You can do that. Was the rule dropped or do you not enforce it as strictly>

Vic Rattlehead wrote:

A year ago posting any form of swear word would get you one of those warning pages and (sometimes) a day ban if it was your first offence. Now? Nothing. You can do that. Was the rule dropped or do you not enforce it as strictly>

After your post I took a look around for some cuss words and found very few that had escaped moderator action. So I'm not sure where you get the idea that bad language suddenly became acceptable, because there's no evidence to suggest that. Since some cussing does occasionally fly past our attention, every now and then I like to do a purge. But language standards are still enforced as best they can be.

I wouldn't however say that language would always result in a warning page or a ban. Bans are particularly unusual for a first offense. Usually the only reason we'll ban someone without warning is if their behavior is bad enough to warrant a ban, and also falls under the "duh" heading of things a person should have known were wrong to do. Sprinkling in bad language occasionally doesn't really fit that profile, but a flaming tirade laden with F-bombs has a high probability of drawing a ban without warning.

Lummox JR

Lummox JR wrote:

So I'm not sure where you get the idea that bad language suddenly became acceptable, because there's no evidence to suggest that.

I should probably mention that in the past couple of months or so I've been seeing much unhandled bad language posted on the forums, sometimes even by repeat offenders. Even more, on some occasions when I've browsed the forums and encountered multiple cases of swear words in a row, the lack of moderator action felt blunt and I wondered where the hell they are.
Some of that may have been bad language that was handled late or slipped past the moderators, but still I have to mention that people aren't talking on empty air; the enforcing of this is not so good and does feel random. Whether moderator action is taken seems to be based more on things like the mood of the moderator and who the offender is than the content of the post (not taking into account extreme cases). Or, maybe the moderators only catch a low quantity of the cases.

Lummox JR wrote:

suddenly

I don't think anybody meant anything here happened "suddenly", if you get what I mean.

AJX wrote:

Anyway, my question was a foolish one considering common sense will dictate what you can or can't do. And if you have to think about whether or not you can do something, you just shouldn't do it.

Common sense isn't.

Airjoe wrote:

Foomer wrote:

Lummox JR wrote:
You know, like if you were speeding and a month later the cop shows up at your door to give you a ticket...

Well, with those speed cameras they do usually mail you the ticket a month later...

I totally wrote that in my post. Hmm... It seems that my post in this thread was deleted. I wonder what else was in that was deemed "inappropriate."

Hiro the Dragon King wrote:

I totally wrote that in my post. Hmm... It seems that my post in this thread was deleted. I wonder what else was in that was deemed "inappropriate."

Because it contained a strikeout in a quote and a single word: "fix'd". [link] ;)

There's been several unnoticed "hidden" F-bombs, like in abbreviations. "st[you know the letter]u" is one that seems to get unnoticed often.

Perhaps BYOND should have some form of report a post function? Report a post and have it added to a list to be edited/deleted by moderators (if it needs to be, maybe the moderators should have someone review them, or just have a moderator do it if it's not alot), then take action from then down as to whether the author of said post gets warned/banned/nothing.

Foomer, that last sentence has some pretty bad logic.
Certain TV shows let the swear word that can also mean "Richard" be said, and some censor it. That's one example.

Again, poor logic. What if "hell" isn't against the rules by most moderators, but one finds it offensive to his religion?

Vic Rattlehead wrote:

Again, poor logic. What if "hell" isn't against the rules by most moderators, but one finds it offensive to his religion?

Then when that one moderator comes down on you, the other six or seven active moderators will come down on him. Once that discussion is opened, Lummox will make his opinion known, then Tom will have a say and the entire thing will be over with. (Most commonly, that's the order of events.)

Moderators are accountable to each other and the higher powers.

And Mobius is 100% correct. Setting rules in stone will result in stupid and petty things. For instance, if we neglect to mention, say, cross-posting (same post in multiple forums), people will ark up as soon as a moderator deletes the offending post because "it's not in the rules". We see this all the time in games, why would the forums be any different? They are essentially the same people.

Then you have to take into account how these forums work. Warnings are sent privately, and other moderators can't read the warnings sent to the users, all we have a a moderator log saying "[x] sent warning to [y]". People will assume that we aren't sending warnings when we punish apparently first time offenders and what not.

The approach we have now works. If something looks out of place, another moderator will pick up on it (as it's common for all of us, we love to read through the mod log and see what's been happening. I do it every day, and we do make mention of things that we don't understand). Just because you guys aren't privy to the discussion, doesn't mean we don't have one. Please keep this in mind.

Then you have to take into account the moderators perception of the rules. I'm a very literal person who follows everything I'm told by the higher powers to the letter (which has put me in strife once or twice), someone else might be far more critical of rules and someone else could be very lenient. You'll end up with exactly the same problem, only people can now specify "it's not in the rules, so it's legal!" Then the moderator will have to make an appeal to the higher powers, a large discussion on the merit of the rule so on and so forth. It's just an ugly, painful time waster.