No, the guidlines are not about anything important. But I'm defining anything important as being things that will require kicking someone out.
Why have them at all? I don't think we need them at all. The whole point is the group of people present, if they are respectful and all that jazz, don't need them. Are there rampant swearing posts, meaningless posts, violent threats, and echos of "first post" everywhere? No, because of the reasonable expectation of intelligence and good behavior.
the actuall RULES would have things that were important, things that would require kicking someone out. Those should be agreed upon and well documented, and rules for how that occurs should be agreed upon and documented.
What about "guidelines" against posting grotesquely obscene or violent pictures, or threatening violence against another poster? Should those be optional, too?
I think these would be covered in the rules. As I said, I'm not in favor of no rules.
Hal, fair enough. May I ask a few more questions to develop what you said?
A place where people could be free to do as they wished, while still maintaining an expectation of intelligence and decent behavior.
How would you like us to decide what constitutes intelligent and decent behavior?
I don't think anyone should decide this. I don't think something should be "actionable" even if it violates this. The thing about a message board is, people of like minds tend to hang around. Right now, we have a bunch of like minds, even if we always disagree. We generally do have intelligent and decent behavior. I can think of almost no examples otherwise. People who don't behave intelligently and decently, won't stick around too long, because there's no value in it for them. You're keying into the wrong part of what I said. That's the last thing on my list. It almost falls out of the rest of it.
If one poster thinks another poster's behavior isn't 'decent,' to whom should they express this opinion, and how?
They shouldn't have to. If it's not obvious to a lot of people, or say, a ranger, then it's probably that persons isolated opinion, or they misunderstood, or didn't get the joke. Regardless, the only one they really should express that opinion to is the offender. That's always what I thought the "self moderated" bit of our board was. Not pointing it out to a ranger (who is not a moderator), but making it clear to the offender that you didn't think it was appropriate.
But by decent behavior, what I mean is, none of the typical non-moderated internet board crap.
I don't know what this means because TORC was my only mb experience before coming here.
Things like Ain't it cool news, where people are just rude to be rude, and mean to be mean, and have no respect for anyone or anything there. With moderators, this stuff goes away, because it adds a level of behavioral expectation.
Can you give me some examples of unmoderated behavior that you think should be allowed here but which you believe to be forbidden at the present time?
No, I said that unmoderated behavior was something I think didn't belong here.