Snerk, Misha.

They can go somewhere else, and perhaps find a group of people to talk to who aren't driven crazy by their personal style. Or not, but either way, it's really not that big a deal.

As someone who has self-removed from boards (including this one at WX), I gotta agree with Jesse's point. World keeps turning.

What becomes a bigger deal to me is when we, as community members, get all worked up and cranky with each other around this kind of issue.

Yes, especially when we're getting worked up and cranky about handling the problem of someone who is showing little-to-no regard for community standards.

I think one of the problems that's resulted from the very, very long debates and discussions in here are the posts I've seen from people that they're "loathe" to bring things up in here. I've seen it at least twice in the past couple of weeks, and while I certainly can't blame those people for feeling that way, I think it's indicative of a problem.

I prefer long debate with attendent risks to a quick "we know trouble when we see it and we see you" approach. But then, I also subscribe to the theory of "let ten guilty people go free before convicting a single innocent soul". Representative politics/community maintenance is not a pretty/tidy/neat thing.

Connie, in law I agree with the "let ten guilties go free" idea, but we're not talking law here. The system is designed to measure effect, not intent; it doesn't matter whether "you" intended to cause offense, or are incredibly blind about one issue, or need tact lessons, or are crazy, or are a dumbass. None of that matters. What matters is that offense is caused, and it is linked to a specific poster, and that offense is getting in the way of normal Buffista functioning.

I'm glad that there's some gray area in the rules, so that things can get resolved outside of Bureaucracy if they at all can. Things only come to Bureaucracy, and warnings if normal Buffista functioning is on its way severely out of whack.

Warnings are more like a "time out" system in a classroom than they are like a Perry Mason trial.

Warnings are more like a "time out" system in a classroom than they are like a Perry Mason trial.

Yes. This. I hate that we treat warnings like they're the end of the world. If someone is making 10 people nuts or causing people to no longer post in a certain thread, then there is a problem and it needs to be mentioned. It doesn't mean that they're going to get banned. Just that the effects of their bad behavior are going to be pointed out to them. I'd much rather see us warn sooner and save the truly heated debate for the considerably more serious step of suspension.

Warnings come after people have tried in thread to work out the problems. After. Because we make the rules for warnings clearer doesn't mean were suddenly going to stop trying to make every effort to work out situations between ourselves and start running to have someone officially warned at the first time there are problems.

Someone isn't going to end up being officially warned much less banned without being asked to change their behaviour and told why their behaviour is causing problems.

I may be wrong but there seems to be an idea that if we clarify these rules then as an idividuals we'll change and stop trying to work things out amoung ourselves, are people really worried that will happen or am I misreading things?

Warnings come after people have tried in thread to work out the problems. After. Because we make the rules for warnings clearer doesn't mean were suddenly going to stop trying to make every effort to work out situations between ourselves and start running to have someone officially warned at the first time there are problems.

Thanks for bringing that up again, I think this is key. Any request for a warning when there hasn't been an in-thread attempt should be considered invalid.

That's #1 in the proposal, "A user-complainant will try to resolve the complaint on-thread. If unsuccessful..."