I wish I didnt have to put rules up here, but it seems I do.
The Chaser is by its nature relatively impolite and disrespectful, and if you didnt broadly approve of this, I doubt youd have joined the forums.
We are fine with witty, clever insults that are said in jest. In fact, we spend about 90% of our work time making jokes at each others expense. And we have fairly thick skins, and so should you if youre here.
Its okay for the forums to reflect this, but some users dont want to be exposed to it and thats their right. (After all, its extremely self-indulgent.) So we expect it to take place only in this area.
In other words, people are free to lay into each other in this area only, but because of past negative experiences, there are some rules.
This forum has zero tolerance of language that stops the forum being a fun place to visit. Dont be sexist, homophobic, overly graphic, or in other ways post things that cross the line from "in jest" into "inappropriate". To use one recent example, mindlessly calling people fags, etc, will simply not be tolerated.
We and our moderators will decide what is and isnt appropriate, and act accordingly. You wont necessarily be warned.
In determining whether things are or arent appropriate, the standard of the average user of this forum will be applied, not whether or not the person you were talking to was offended. After all, its public.
Flaming is only to be done in this area. Dont hijack other posts to do it. Posts that hijack existing topics may be deleted from that thread, or the entire thread moved to this area,
If you have a problem with someones post:
Discuss it via Private Message with the person that made the post.
Discuss it via Private Message with one or both of the moderators.
Press the Report button on the particular post.
When discussing with a moderator, ensure you include the link to the thread involved.
If you have a problem with a moderators decision:
Private Message that moderator
Private Message another moderator.
If you feel the need to publicly air your unhappiness with a moderator’s decision, know that your post may be deleted, or simply ignored.
At the moment, the forum operates on the basis of trust. Anyone can join and post. I can easily change this forum so that only moderators can edit posts to scrub out inappopriate language, and only approved users can post, or various IPs are banned, or whatever.
But I really dont want to, both because I couldnt be arsed putting that much time into it, and because I think this ought to be as unfascist a place as possible. So please, use the freedom youre allowed reasonably responsibly.
That said, I am broadly in favour of insults as long as theyre done well - after all, one one level, thats why we started the Chaser in the first place.
Oh, and if this area descends into total chaos, Ill just kill it... such is the joy of setting up your own forum.
cheers Dom
