ModSquad Update - July 20 to July 26, 2003

Mod Squad Update for the week of July 23

Modinfo:

• Since he didn't get a mention in last week's update, we figured we might as well officially note that the Senate Floor got a new moderator, Kimball Kinnison. And this week, so did Jedi Council Community. If you?ve been following Communications, then you already know that jedi-mind-trick is the latest addition to the ModSquad. But, they?re not the only moderators we have news on. It's gone by so quickly, but KnightWriter has had his 1st anniversary as a moderator. A whole year. And while you may not have noticed it, the foursome of Darth_Dagsy, Chris Hanel, RolandofGilead and AmazingB were all promoted to Managers. And on the flipside, Dark_Lord_Erik and cbjedi are no longer moderators. We appreciate all of the hard work they both put in during their time.

Problem Users:

• We had several problem users this week. Our plan is onstead of bannings, we?ll throw them all into the Thunderdome and let them duke it out there. My advice is don?t bet on the guy with a midget on his shoulders.

Satan?s Wearing a Parka!

• Zerosleep made a number of server upgrades. The sum total of these being that we should no longer have all of the recent technical problems and more importantly there?s a definite increase in the loading speed of the Jedi Council forums now. Grilled-Sarlacc summed up the ModSquad?s thoughts the best with, ?Thank the maker!!?

TPM Forum Banner:

• Oakessteve got the new TPM forum banner ball rolling. The ModSquad is currently voting on six excellent entries. Good job to everyone who submitted an entry!

Do It Yourself Sig.?s

• AmazingB noticed that some manual sig?s were getting out of control and wondered aloud about the various in's and out's of the issue. Darth Sapient had this to say, "But size does matter." (It was about the length of manual sig?s, you pervert.)

Indefinitely Banned Flaming

• The ModSquad tended to all agree that it's bad for people to be flaming users who are away from the this site for an indefinite amount of time. Darth Sapient clarified the Administration position: "I would treat the flame the same way as if the person were not banned." (Of course, it was noted that those *******, *************, ***********, ****** train trolls from Lit. are always fair game.)

Gay Comments in Comms:

• The Modsquad discussed whether or not it's alright for people to make gay comments in comms. We encourage you to view the latest Comms discussion on the matter, here.

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Forum

• Dehrian brought up an idea for a new fantasy forum which was actually brought to him by a user. The idea was for a ?choose-your-own-adventure? forum. If you believe the ModSquad decided to add a new Choose-Your-Own-Adventure forum, please turn to page 32. If you believe the ModSquad decided against adding a new Choose-Your-Own-Adventure forum, turn to page 56.

What?s the Appropriate Forum!?!

• Dp4m wondered about which forum is more appropriate for certain topics, JCC or the Ampitheatre. Discussion was pretty much favoring that things were in their proper places right now and no further moderating was required.

Ask Josh

 

where is this Josh linky? goes to his profile.

thanks for the update. gay thread now locked. moving on......

the manual siggys were kinda large, but the one that burned out my retinas was kinda bright.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. The "Ask Josh" thread by Joshua Griffin is a ModSquad forum thread.

All links for all mods' names go to their profiles. That way, people who may not be as familiar with them can see who these people are. If you know who they are, then you can just ignore the links to their profiles. I know Comms has its regulars like every forum, but I also like to accomodate users who may be visiting Comms for the first time as well. Might as well help them out a bit. Not everyone here's an oldbie.

 

It's good to see something was done about some of the more outrageous manual sigs. I use mine as more of a visual cue for my own benefit than anything else. A few unobtrusive words shouldn't bother anyone.

But some people were getting out of hand, like Jedi_Satimber. His manual sig has 72 words in it. The average number of words in the last ten JCC posts where he affixed this manual sig is less than 22 words. The sig was so out of proportion to the rest of the post that it just looked ridicuous, and it created a need for unnecessary and inefficient scrolling. I'm not picking on him, but using that case as an example of why this decision was needed in the first place.

A big hand for the Administration for finally deciding to use sound judgement about this issue rather than try to set some nonsensical hard and fast rule. See how well using good judgement works?

AYBABTU?

 

Great update Genghis12!

Darth_Dagsy, Chris Hanel, RolandofGilead and AmazingB are managers! Congratulations!

 

re: flaming of permbanned users:

Why should people who are not members of the JC be under protection of the TOS?

 

Banned members are still registered members of the JC.

 

We protect the registered names on the JC.

 

Technically, yes. But they are no longer members of the community.

Would it be a bannable offence to call Beal, for instance, a retarded jackass?

 

Yes, so please don't.

 

If there was a trophy for dumbest rule ever, you'd be teh winnar.

But there's not. So you lose.

 

Thanks.

 

Sweet, I got a plain face out of Sape. I'm proud of that. It's always fun to make a PR man lose that plastered on smile.

How about this: for people who will obviously never ever be unbanned, why not delete the name?

 

The Modsquad discussed whether or not it's alright for people to make gay comments in comms.

I assume this is just badly worded.

 

No, your assumption would be wrong.

 

Well, there's whole lotta people who need to stop posting in comms then, and alot of them have coloured names.

 

I would've agreed the other way you had it. But, that's not because of any gay comments.

 

Also RE the flaming of banned members: what about when the adminstration gave Darthy the custom title of "DINK". That is flaming, and whoever did it should be punished.

 

That was well over a year ago, and I'm sure you already know about the controversy at the time it happened.

 

As is well known, posting a comment that someone might find objectionable is enough to get your entire post editted or deleted.

If you consider the most likely understanding of the sentence in common parlance is that gay would be a pejorative,

For example, "Don't make any more gay comments." Could be seen as "Stop talking about homosexuality, but is mro eliekly to be understood as telling someone to stop saying stupid things.

I understand you may not have meant it so, but then again it's quite obvious there are multiple ways to udnerstand the sentance and the MS would have been well advised to say the same thing in a slightly different way.

The Modsquad discussed whether or not discussion regarding homosexuality and TFN's policy toward it should be allowed in comms.

 

(Bah, I can't keep up with the edits. )

Regarding the Dinky Darthy Deal, we're not going to be retroactively penalizing anyone for things they did more than a year ago simply because the administrative opinion on certain issue has shifted from what it was. There's not a retroactive clause on this one, I don't think.

 

Yeah, those "shifts in administrative opinion" are ticksy little things.

So tell me this, how come it never shifts in a positive direction? Every new decision is more restriction, more rules, more censorship.

 

Because we want to see how far we can push you and frustrate you. We are out to get you and we will ban anyone who ever posts again.

 

Began the Ban Wars has.

 

// applauds Sapient


Rick McCallum hates drama!