board77

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Puts my way too short hair up into silly little Pollyanna braids and starts dancing around the town square with an ice cream cone.

Wow. That's arousing.

And yes I think the reason the last attempt failed was because it tried to do too much too soon. Baby steps.

it won't work to take baby steps.

I still don't understand why people are so attached to what's there, which NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION TO ANY MORE.

but, people don't want my input anyway, so I'll echo TED. It's not worth it.

Well, I pay attention to it. When I'm serving as a ranger and people ask for the f*** word to be edited out of a thread title, I look at the charter to see if I'm allowed to do that. When someone accuses someone else of a personal attack, I look at the charter to see what I'm allowed to do. When someone goes on a rampage and disrupts the entire board, I look at the charter to see what I can do. When I served as a juror in the hearing, you can darn well be sure I looked at the charter. I studied it!

I said this to the other rangers, but I'll repeat it here for the benefit of all (whatever that benefit may actually be ). I had something I wanted to do to the person(s) involved in this latest blow-up. I think I could justify it decently based upon what we already have in place in the charter. I was just waiting to hear from the other rangers before acting. That didn't happen and now the time has passed, I think.

I am not happy about that, mind you, because I think people need to be held accountable for their actions, and I think--no, I know--that has not happened in this case.

But I am considering drawing up a protocol for this type of situation that I think future rangers could use if this happens again. It doesn't require a charter amendment. Now, repeated violations probably should be addressed in a charter amendment.

No one ever mentioned changing the charter and applying the changes retroactively, so I want to lay your concerns to rest, Estel. I can't think of anyone here who would be so unfair.

It seems like I had more to say, but now I can't remember it.

Lali

Lali is an awesome ranger, or poster... just awesome.

So you don't intend to get rid of things really just add to it to cover certain situations that did not come up when the charter was written right? I am all for that. I don't actually think there is too much wrong with the charter but I do think there should be temporary bans (like week long). When things get out of hand. I think that is the only thing that needs adding. Everyone needs a time out now and again. (Not rewriting from scratch. People participated in far too many votes and discussions for that to be all thrown away)

At one point someone suggested a list of some sort outlining the basics. I think that should be drawn up with key principles so that it's easy to read and won't put you to sleep (like the charter, no offense founders but it's a snoozefest).

It doesn't matter who wrote the charter what matters are the people here now that have to abide by it and if we want to still abide by those rules. If we do then leave it alone it there are fundamental problems with it then we should work those out.

I just saw this on another board, and thought that if Rangers had this sort of power, it might limit the scope of the explosions. Would it be possible to amend the charter in some fashion to allow this sort of thing?

Quote:

Forum Policy Update: Dealing With Overexcited Members
« on: February 01, 2007, 09:28:34 AM »

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Hey, folks.

Lately, particularly with the advent of the television show, we've had a number of heated discussions and overexcited members going places with their discussions that we aren't always comfortable with. However, the volume of discussion is such that the moderators themselves can't keep up with all the posts that are happening; we have to rely on posts getting reported to us by the community.

While we aren't guaranteed to take action on every reported post, we will at a minimum take a look at those posts and make a decision about whether or not it's "actionable". If we think it isn't, we're not going to say anything about it. If it is, we're going to do our best to enforce the following policy reasonably consistently. These statements and actions are going to take place semi-publically; sometimes there will be a post made on the thread in which the offense is occurring, sometimes it'll be taken to private message.

First warning: "Hey, cool it". Just a friendly reminder that this is an easygoing community and to help us keep it that way.

Second warning: "Continuing this path of behavior will lead to a temporary ban." Clearly, someone's not doing that "help us keep it that way" thing. So this is us taking out our Moderator Stick and putting it on the table -- a reminder that it can and will be used.

Third warning: "You've been banned for 3 days." The penalty box. We still want you to be part of this community, but you need a break from it, and it needs a break from you, in order to "reset" and get back on an even keel. These actions won't be done with malice; please understand that we're acting to address the health of the community as a whole.

Fourth warning: "Please stop coming here." If you come out of the third-warning cool-off period swinging for the fences, you can expect to get permanently banned from the board. It's clear that taking a break isn't enough to get you to reevaluate your priorities for participation in a way that is healthy for the community, so it's time for us moderator-surgeons to cut you out of the system you're poisoning. Dig? -- If it's been a reasonable length of time since your last "third warning", you've got a buffer, however. We may consider your counter reset to an earlier warning-level -- permanent ban is meant to be used as a tool to address chronic abusers, not people who've happened to have more than one bad day over the course of the year.

Finally, beyond this policy for taking action against specific users, there will occasionally be an entire thread that looks to have taken on too much toxicity in order to remain productive and healthy for the board. At times, again for the health of the community, we will shut down such threads, setting them to "locked" and making it clear that the thread/topic has been closed for discussion. In such cases, we strongly encourage you not to go start a new thread that picks up exactly where the closed one left off. If you do, we'll consider you to have already gotten past the "first warning" stage, at the least.

Again: we need your help to keep the community easy-going and pleasant for EVERYONE involved. While I'll certainly grant that we've been inconsistent with enforcement, the sheer volume of traffic we've been seeing lately is the greatest reason for that. We're going to do our best to get consistent from here on out. From you, we need:

* Pleasant cooperation with our judgments when enforcing the above policies, and:

* Helping us to spot problems as they're occurring (use the "report this post" tool!)

Thanks everyone!

Kind of lacks that power to the people thing we've got going.

Yeah, actually, I think that'd probably be a very good way to set up a messageboard to start with. I don't think it'll fly here, since we have already established that this is supposed to be a board with very limited ranger power.

For good or bad (and it's both, I think).


Lali

That sort of thing could be implemented as long as we rely on a jury of peers to uphold the ranger's decision and make the temp ban a ban to the Bike Racks.
It would have to be altered to fit this board, but it does have some merit.

Holbytla wrote:

That sort of thing could be implemented as long as we rely on a jury of peers to uphold the ranger's decision and make the temp ban a ban to the Bike Racks.
It would have to be altered to fit this board, but it does have some merit.

I'm pretty sure there are some people on this board that wouldn't trust anyone to be on their jury and can you blame them? I think it's been proven that some of us here refuse to listen to facts because they've had enough.

At this point most can't be impartial. Democracy has failed for this board I think we need something cut and dry.

Large blows ups wouldn't happen if Rangers isolated people so that they can't snark at one another back and forth and then a discussion can actually be had since the BS wouldn't be allowed to happen.

I'm telling you had you tossed hal in the Bikeracks/Jury Room he wouldn't have been able to respond to both Eru and Jewelsongs persistent posts. I'm only using this situation since it just happened.

I have nothing against something like that being implemented, as long as we continue to Ranger in rotating shifts as we always have. That, in and of itself, is a pretty good check against anyone letting the power go to their heads.

I agree, Mary.

And I still think it can be done with what we have.

Then it can be tweaked with a charter amendment later.

Lali

I guess what I was saying was, that as long as the decision could be contested that would at least provide some measure of checks and balances.

And I refuse to believe that all impartiality is gone.
Besides, the defendant gets to pick from a pool right?

No the defendant does NOT get to pick from a pool.

I guess I just don't see the need to go through and entire charter when we don't need to change that much. Most people get along on the boards we just need some small changes to handle major blow outs when the do happen.

I don't believe that anyone who's been on this board would ever intentionally abuse power as a Ranger which is why I don't think we need to treat this as a huge deal. If Rangers rotate then all will be good .

First off you had better not be raising your voice or rolling your eyes at me or I'll force feed you raw fish and runny tomatoes.
And I basically agree with you. The title says amend the charter.
Give the rangers some power while keeping the checks and balances system.
It really isn't a big deal.

No, and I think the course of action described (temporarily banning someone to one forum) can be well justified by what we already have. The amendment would deal with two things, imo: securing that course of action (because I'm sure a lawyer-type could swiftly undermine the justification thing I have going) and providing a course of action for repeat offenders.

Lali

Estel wrote:

I say we just go back to the original rule of this board - Be Kind to Each Other.

Anyone involved in a dispute - both sides - automatically get a one week temporary ban to cool off, but are welcome to communicate off the board during that week to try and work things out.

If they can't work it out off the board in that time, then they had best accept that it can't be worked out, and try to ignore each other as much as possible.

I never believed in all the rules in the charter. One rule - be kind.

ok, two rules,
1. Be kind
2. Stay the hell out of TOE if you're to young or haven't been here long enough.

Anything more complex than that, and you start getting loopholes and having to deal with weird shit.

Just bumping this for obvious reasons. We're moving to a new domain name and host. Time for a fresh start?

I agree on the fresh start. The charter, to my mind, unnecessarily complicates certain issues.

However, to go the other way entirely isn't, IMO, a solution. Who decides what constitutes "kind"? Who decides when someone crosses the line? The rangers? But if there's a rotation, then the rules in effect are tweaked slightly each time someone new is rangified. And what if two rangers disagree on whether someone has crossed the line? Do they endlessly ban and unban until one of them is derangified?

Personally, I like the idea of the rotation of rangers, but can I suggest a slightly different model?

A core of say three permanent rangers, or maybe less, depending on activity, with two rotating. The permanent rangers can, if they get sick of things, step down and appoint one of the two rotaries on at the time as a permanent ranger, and the rotary post is filled by the next person in the pool.

Not a bad idea Crucifer. There's a couple of names I'd be happy to nominate as permanent Rangers, people who embody what this place is all about.