MS Update Mod Squad Update - 2/21/07

<font face="arial" color="#004080" size="3"><b>Moderator News</b></font>

Katya_Jade is going to Ireland 2/26 - 3/9. She says if she finds a leprechan, she's not sharing anything, so we're pretty disappointed.

Rogue1-and-a-half is on reduced time for next 1-and-a-half weeks. His job has got him working overtime, and he will receive 1-and-a-half times pay.

HanSolo29 has decided she likes us enough to stick around, so we're promoting her to manager.

<font face="arial" color="#004080" size="3"><b>Forum News</b></font>

The Arena Mods are still busting their tails hammering out game ideas, so keep an eye out!

There is discussion of adding Cricket Icons for the upcoming Cricket World Cup.

<font face="arial" color="#004080" size="3"><b>Reminders</b></font>

Users are reminded that posting while drunk is prohibited on the boards:

Drugs and Alcohol

1. Discussion of illegal drugs should be kept within academic or newsworthy limits or confined to discussions primarily in the Senate. "How to" discussions and/or "I'm so stoned" posts may result in repercussions ranging from a warning to immediate and permanent banning, depending on previous history and the context of post as well as the nature/content of post.

2. Posting while drunk or otherwise glorifying underage drinking or smoking or any other activity that would violate local, United States laws isn't allowed. Discussion of such illegal acts should again be confined to newsworthy or academic limits or confined to discussions within the Senate.

<font face="arial" color="#004080" size="3"><b>Problem Users</b></font>

Problem users were banished to the gap between dimensions.

 

Guess i'll lead this off. Good update and I'm completely sober so no worries.

 

It's 'leprechaun.'

 

> 2. Posting while drunk

What is prohibiting "posting while drunk" supposed to achieve, exactly? Especially if the person is not spamming, causing disruption or breaking any other rules of the board?

Can I say for example, "I was drunk yesterday" without repercussion?

Can I say "I intend to get drunk tomorrow" without repercussion?

If so, how is that fundamentally different from saying "I am drunk presently" which now results in an instant ban?

Can I say "I'm a bit out of my mind on codiene after getting my tooth pulled?"



Also, this thread is linked to in the Official Comms Index. That's the common sense way the rule used to be administered;

If I think of/write something while drunk is it okay to post it once I've sobered up?

It clearly highlights why, in the past, so long as you were behaving and not 'glorifying or promoting drunkenness', it didn't actually matter if you had a few under the skin.

Dingo: "As far as I can recollect, there has never been any rule about someone posting while drunk. You cannot post threads that celebrate and encourage it (especially underage drinking), but unless you are going wild and breaking spamming, trolling and other assorted rules, there isn't anything that is greatly wrong with it. "

Raven: "Anyhow, if it's something that wouldn't be a problem if you're sober, it's not a problem when you're drunk. You can even post drunk, unless as Dingo says you're celebrating drinking, and you're not posting anything that wouldn't also be a problem when sober."

When policy is changed, perhaps it would be wise to remove any refence threads contradicting said change from the Official Comms Index to save confusion.


And speaking of leprechauns, if this whole thing is about discouraging alcohol use / abuse by impressionable youngsters, I would like to reopen the case for removing andything to do with alcohol consumption this St Patrick's day, and also have grave concerns about Seb-X's hilarious mod-squad banner where several prominent mods are sitting at a bar with stacks of empty shot-glasses in front of them. Though I really doubt you know what you're trying to achieve with this new crackdown.

 

I honestly don't see the big issue with grown adults being online after having a few drinks. I mean if they get out of hand, and start harassing people, and announcing obnoxiously that they're drunk... "I'm so wasted" etc.... then yes, it's a problem. I'd rather see grown adults practicing safe and responsible drinking, than outright prohibition. I mean, there are several alcohol related threads that don't glorify irresponsible alcohol use. There's a beer making thread, a person who was considering taking up drinking ,
what's your alcoholic beverage of choice? , etc....

Again, glorifying underage, excessive, and irresponsible drinking, of course, should most definitely be frowned upon.

I mean, there's an icon of Obi-Wan having a drink... the St. Patrick's Day banner, as jp pointed out, has the Guinness logo on it. I'm not clear on where the line is.

 

Just joining in what harpuah and jp have already said. The line for "glorifying drinking is a very blury one. As for simply 'posting while drunnk' seems the regular TOS apply regardless, so I'm not sure what the point is, unless we have to submit to breathalizer tests from now on.

 

"I'm so stoned" posts may result in repercussions ranging from a warning to immediate and permanent banning, depending on previous history and the context of post as well as the nature/content of post.

Posting while drunk or otherwise glorifying underage drinking or smoking or any other activity that would violate local, United States laws isn't allowed.

obviously no mod is going to know if you're drunk, high, whatever, whilst posting, if you're acting within the confines of the rules. thus, practically speaking, you CAN post while drunk. if, however, whilst drunk or stoned you break the TOS by spamming [as has been the case with myself], flaming, etc, then your inebbriation is revealed and a ban, obviously, is justified -- i don't think anyone has an issue in regards to this.

the only real issue, then, is the "I'm so drunk" posts. i think most would agree that advising underage people to get drunk is a no-no. however, simply stating that you are drunk is NOT doing this, just like saying you just had sex with your gf, which is fine, isn't advising underage people to have sex.

the question is why simply stating that you are drunk, in a jovial or lighthearted context, without necessarily encouraging underage usage or breaking the TOS, is against the rules.

 

I won't comment on the first issue since jp already quoted my thoughts on the matter.

I also agree with jp about the St Paddy's day stuff and the banner that appears in the JCC at times. If the decision is being made, then it has to be stuck to. You can't have it both ways banning users from doing one thing and then doing it yourselves.

 

My main problem with this part of the policy is that it seems to operate under the assumption that all "posting while drunk" is illegal and glorifies illegal drinking. We all know that's just not true, so maybe we should separate the issues of "posting while drunk" and "underage drinking and smoking."

Further, saying something along the lines of "when I'm sober, I'll do x" implies that one is in an altered state of mind, but doesn't explicitly say it. I could right now claim that when I'm sober I'll come back and re-read my Comms post about drunkenness, but you have my assurances that I am not drunk at 9 AM on a Wednesday morning when I have class in an hour. The only thing this sentence makes a claim about is that at some later point in time, I will be sober. Talking about sobriety is surely not against the rules.

One note about drinking in board themes and banners, where will we draw the line? Fictional drinking? We can assume pictures of Owen and Beru drinking blue milk on Tatooine don't involve alcohol pretty safely, but a picture of Obi-Wan taking a test-tube shot in a Coruscant nightclub would be hard to imagine without some kind of mind-altering substance.

And on a seemingly unrelated note... I hate to sound like a broken record, but could there seriously be a crackdown on people moderating outside their own forum? This is important ESPECIALLY when there are moderators of that forum online, posting in a thread in question, and it's a judgement call issue rather than pornography or adverspam. In these cases it seems really quite inappropriate for a moderator who hasn't been asked to moderate that forum to override the obvious judgement calls of the one who is specifically assigned there.
I know we hate to talk about this, but moderators are rarely, if ever, punished for their mistakes. Regular users get spanked all the time, but apart from malkie and KK I can't think of any other mod who's gotten spanked or demoted as a punishment for their actions.

I think it would be great if you guys instituted a 24 hour demotion for anyone who wrongly enforces policy.
The two benefits here are:
1)it would make the moderating team accountable to the rules they are supposed to be enforcing
2) it would encourage moderators to think before they moderate outside their forums where they're apt make a bad judgement call.

 

We can't measure your blood-alcohol level over the internet after all, so as long as you obey the basic rule of not promoting it, we wouldn't know if you're intoxicated or not. The rule is an encouragement where we rely on the user's common sense more than anything else. If you let the entire boards know you're intoxicated, you break that rule and will be retired for the evening. If you combine the public announcement of your intoxication with inappropriate posting, you'll be out for a good while longer.

This was gabe's comments about posting while drunk in the JCC policy thread. I think it pretty much sums up how I feel also.

I don't care if someone is posting drunk. If I can't tell by their posts and they don't announce it to the forums, how do I even really know (or care)?. If you announce it, then it becomes something else according to what I've seen. If it's not black and white , a PM sometimes is all it takes to say, "you might want to be careful". I've done this before.


If I say, "I'm going to party my *** off this weekend and get drunk". That's like saying, "I'm going to flame you if you don't stop saying that." I don't act on threats, only if there's an actual violation, though one could argue that it's "glorifying alcohol", which a pretty gray area.

I'm one of those that believes it's always better to defer to designated forum mods if there's any question and it's not an emergency, so you won't find me arguing on that. A good rule of thumb for me is if I've seen the mod post in the thread and I think it's questionable, PM them.

 

why?

why is a statement as to ones level of inebriation considered a) a glorification and, more pertinently b) against the TOS? ie what is the reasoning behind the rule?

 

When I say it could be glorifying alcohol, I mean the "partying my *** off" part. Even though that's one of those judgement calls that I personally would take into context with the rest of the conversation and the intent of the thread.

 

Unless someone flat out says they're drunk, funked, and posting, I don't see why it's even an issue. There are plenty of users that post here that have clearly missed their meds on a regular basis, or at least overdone them at times. Clearly, posting style, unless it gets rank, isn't really a factor in enforcing the no drunk/drugged up posts allowed policy.

 

This is my new catchphrase.

 

You're correct. Posting style will take care of itself. The spamming, flaming, etc. that one does "while posting drunk" is an offense of its own, more than likely. If you do it sober, you'll get the warning/edit/ban, also. Granted, sometimes it's easier to tell someone is drunk (i.e. spamming JCC) by abnormal behavior for that particular poster, but it's still the actual spamming that's an offense.

 

The particular incident that has caused this to be re-addressed was that after New Zealand beat Australia 3-0 in a cricket series (where Australia fancy themselves as the best in the world) I was joshing around with some Aussies & Kiwis in the Arena cricket thread. My inappropriate posts were;

'You may have got my drunken euphoric quote..'

'I'll PM you when I'm sober'

So, I said my quote was drunken, not that I was drunk, and the 'when I'm sober' line could have referred to my come-down from the cricketing whitewash and as Dani says, just because I say I'll do something in the future when I'm sober does not necesarily mean that I'm not sober right now. An arena mod was one of those partaking in the conversation at the time with no issues, and a half hour after the conversation had ended, a non-arena mod came back to the thread, removed the words drunken and when I'm sober from those two lines above and banned me for it.

If you're moderating on semantics alone (as appears to be the case in this rule), I think my 2 sentences above could be interpreted in a number of ways, some of which to mean that I personally wasn't intoxicated at the time.

When questioning the ban I was told "Anyway, despite your vast history of infractions this ban was only 24 hours." I know for a fact in the 7 years I've been here I have 3 actual usernotes against me. Calling someone an idiot, saying '*damn', posting a picture of a questionable golf trophy, and now this drunk posting thing.

I'd still like to know if I can say "I was drunk yesterday" and "I'll be drunk later today" without fear of banning?

 

THIS is my new catchphrase.

 

My guess would be so long as you didn't post yesterday, and you're not planning on posting later today, it's fine.

 

Well, what if I say "I'll be drunk later today", and post later today before drinking enough to be considered drunk.

Oh, and how many standard drinks am I allowed before being considered drunk by the administration? Surely it's a little more than the blood alcohol limit for driving?

 

A 24 hour demotion is a terrible idea because it would simply open a whole new can of worms on what does, and does not constitute a demotable offence - and the JC does not need another can of worms, does not need more rules. If a mod errs to the extent that they genuinely annoy a user, then someone is gonna cause a stink about it... and the Comms bandwagon kicks off. That is enough to keep the the house in order. For my part, Comms drama annoys me no end, and what drove me to not make mistakes was, in part, the thought of someone whizzing off to Comms and piling a headache onto a migrane.

 

The defence now calls upon the ghost of Darth_AYBABTU;

Do you mods really want to deprive the boards of such incredibly hilarious posts?

 

I'd look at your comments. If you tell me you will spam later, and I don't see evidence of it (i.e. or in the "drunk while posting" case outright saying "I'm drunk right now"), I'll do nothing.

 

Right.

So I can say "I was drunk earlier" and I can say "I'll be drunk later" without fear of being banned. But I can't say "I'm drunk right now".

What are you actually trying to achieve / prevent by enforcing this 'no saying you're presently drunk' rule?

 

That's like saying I'm going to ban someone for telling me they are GOING TO spam.

If they don't do it, or I don't catch them at it.... what would be the point?

 

Well, I can only assume banning someone for saying that they're drunk is to prevent them from breaking the rules in the future while still intoxicated. Isn't that the same thing, and just as ridiculous as the spam example you just gave?

If there's another reason behind the 'can't say you're drunk' rule, I'm still waiting to hear it.