If I may take ONE more moment away from the topic at hand...

It appears a lot of you are wondering why I issued a warning for trolling to Sheena, so I'll make part of our private messages public, for the sake of clarification.
Quote Originally Posted by LocoColt04
Again, more to make a point than anything else. I mean, seriously, break your post down and then look at the rules. I couldn't find a single word in your post that had a direct relation to the topic at hand. You may have made an attempt at helping, but in the process, you hijacked the thread for your own means, even if it was entirely unintentional.

Also, having just updated the rules, I didn't want people to get the idea that staffers were exempt from them. If I had tried to get the thread back onto its topic, and left your post completely alone, it may have called our integrity into question. Consider that, my friend.
More than anything else, it's that final statement which made my decision. And he gets that. It's not like it's some mark on his permanent record or anything. He's not in any real trouble. I gave him the pre-warning, not the full warning.



THAT SAID, let's hit up what Pete and FFGuru have attributed to the topic at hand.


If I may add my own odd number of cents here, I think a lot of activity has reverted into the Visitor Messages, and what sucks about those is that it appears to have turned into an instant messaging service for a lot of you. The trouble with that is pretty obvious, at least to me. When you have a lot of quick messages back and forth, you're not putting as much thought into what you're saying... things can easily be misinterpreted, or tempers can flare in the moment and something may be said which isn't meant to be said. Then the fights break out.

Worse yet, those things are a bitch to moderate, because there can be a hundred remarks on someone's "wall" over the course of an hour. I don't know about you, but I can't keep up with that shit. I have a full time job and a social life to manage.

The point is, rather than posting in threads, a lot of you are all just messaging each other. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a forum.

I really don't like Visitor Messages, but at the same time, I don't want to remove a feature that so many of you utilize. Pete makes a good point. All of these new "bells and whistles," as he put it, really detract from what makes a forum a forum... the threads.

I think we need to find some balance. But, to solve what appears to be one of the larger issues at hand lately, I need all of you to do me a favor.

PLEASE, PUT SOME THOUGHT INTO WHAT YOU SAY. If you're going to utilize Visitor Messages, remember that those too are under forum jurisdiction. You break a rule there, and you're going to get a warning for it.

Don't spam each other. That's annoying as hell. I'm not suggesting that you need to treat them like actual posts, but you shouldn't be obnoxious about it either.



The problem I'm having is that everyone's deciding to leave for reasons that are specifically forum-related. That bugs the hell out of me.