Naive.
naive to codify forum-banned persons and subjects? the bore had a more accurate list of era's own secret rules than era does
It's naive to think that:
- You'd ever really come up with a set of rules that applied to all times someone should probably be banned/warned
- You'd find a set of moderators to perfectly objectively apply these rules
- People wouldn't freak out and cause an uproar anyways
They'll never know, because they'll never try it, because "special rules for one group that don't apply to others" is by design.
It's not hard to write a list of general purpose rules, and then apply them equally to everyone.
It's also not that hard to add new rules if people find ways to be disruptive that don't fall under existing rules. Or when you do that notify users about updates to the TOS that will be enforced from now on, rather than just dropping into a thread and saying "this is banned now!" then banning a bunch of people for breaking a rule you just invented retroactively.
It's also less work as a mod to drop into a thread thats getting a ton of reports and clarifying what acceptable behaviour is, than doing a "locking due to volume of reports" sweep and going through and deciding which posters you like who get away with calling people pieces of shit, and which people retaliating in kind you want to ban because they're not on a mod butbuddy list.
Make reports a drop down rather than a write in. If someones writing in something that's not an actual rule, warn them they're abusing the report system.
If someone is regularly reporting people for things
they don't like in lieu of posting an actual rebuttal,
they're more likely the problem user.
If someones writing in something that probably should be a rule, propose it to other mods, and vote it in / reject it, then say why that new thing is / isn't a new rule.