Please note that inflammatory, malicious, or derogatory statements in the topic line are not appropriate and will be edited or deleted as needed.
Inflammatory, malicious and derogatory are... as with many, many other adjectives, subjective. While each term can be defined it's going to come down to the interpretation of the individual to determine when the definition has been met.
Starting a thread that was titled say... "Generic Example- Bad Guy" might be considered all three of those things if Mister Example was not legitimately a bad guy. The question really comes down to the moderation team, led by Rich's direction (such as it may or may not be at any given time depending on how much effort he's choosing to invest) and what they feel crosses a line strongly enough to warrant the shared culpability of an edit. The above example, while it might meet the definition of all three terms isn't likely to be a signifigant enough infraction to warrant direct action.
"Generic Example- Idiot who wears underpants on his head, practices necrophilia and steals reptiles" when none of those are true or a thread title that is in clear violation of the profanity rules
might result in a different response. The important thing here though-
is that it's their decision about when the line has been crossed and when a potential infraction will warrant editing or a thread will warrant deletion. They (and most specifically Rich) are the ones who would be held responsible, so they are the ones who get to choose when, how and most importantly IF that sort of rule gets applied.
A lot of this recent rules talk has reminded me of junior high american history classes... The debates about ridgid or elastic interpretation of the constitution. Ridgid interpretation argued that the federal government could only take actions that were specifically detailed as being the duties of the government. Elastic interpretation argued that the federal government could (through appropriate channels) take any action which was not specifically prohibited in the constitution. It seems these days that similar wrangling with the rules is going on- people demanding (well, if it's not a demand, it's certainly not a polite or altruistic request) certain interpretations of the site rules to fit their own agendas or their own personal views of how the site should be run or in a way that nails someone they just don't like. Or the flipside; people making posts that the mods see as infractions, then arguing that whatever they did wasn't specifically prohibited.
I can kind of understand why there's room to argue one way or the other- the emphasis on certain infractions and the interpretation of the people who actually matter has changed a bit as time passed. These changes are all pretty clear cut and obvious though, so it's not like anyone who reads the boards with any regularity can claim any legitimate confusion over it.
When I was your age we were allowed to use adjectives like scumbag, garbage, crook and con on the BOI and misspelling someone's name as a juvenile and kinda idiotic way of insulting or irritating them was ignored as the childish noise that it was without any warning points being issued (I haven't done a search to verify this, but a good chunk of the uses of the word seamen and it's various misspellings were probably made by people trying to annoy me because the spelling of my first name shares some letters rather than refferences to the actual substance) and "overly abusive" meant just that... OVERLY abusive- not mildly inappropriate or slightly frustrating. We also had to walk eight miles through snow drifts higher than our heads with no shoes on every time we wanted to use our 28.8 dialup connections to open the site.
Most rules on most websites... and when it comes down to it, most laws and rules anywhere else... are generally reactionary in their creation and intended to be a deterant in their existance. Meaning that they exist almost as an emergency clause, to be taken out and used when the people responsible for enforcing them feel it's appropriate to do so. Derogatory statements in a topic line
might[/m] be edited or deleted, it's "as needed" and that determination is made in a democratic fashion; one man one vote. Rich is the man and he's got the vote.
For a guy who claims he wouldn't be a mod if he were asked to, you sure spend a lot of time worrying about the way the rules are interpreted Jim. My guess is that that you're showing some false modesty since you spend as much time as you do looking out for the rule violations of other members and crying about the terms of service- hoping... what, that your dedication will be reccognized and you'll be rewarded with a supermod spot? Or maybe you really do want to be in a position to determine how the rules are applied without actually taking on any of the effort or responsibility or hassle of doing it yourself. Not technically hypocritical, but it definitely smells similar.
