Hello, fellow debators. In lieu of recent events, and past events which have sorted themselves out, I have been granted moderator powers in this wonderful debate forum. What will this mean? Will I become a crazed tyrant who simply mutes everyone who disagrees with him? Will I send a crack team of adolescent ninjas to attack your secret volcano lair with hilarity and ass-kicking because I don't like you? Will the next Star Wars Prequel be as horrendous as the last two?
I can't answer that last question for certain, but the other two are certainly "No." I am not here to stamp out ideas. I believe strongly in the principle outlined by Voltaire: "I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Therefore, if you absolutely must post a treatise on how George Lucas is actually a neo-Nazi in disguise, you may do so, and not be afraid of being attacked. If you want to say you support a group that uses terrorist tactics, be my guest. If you want to say that there are redeeming qualities about the Teletubbies, or that you enjoyed the lastest Star Wars movies, go to a different forum. No, I'm kidding, you can say these if you want as well, but the Star Wars stuff should be in the Star Wars forum.
So I've rambled on long enough, let me throw down some information in easily digestible little bites so I can be clear on the subject:
1) All of ChefElf's rules still apply. You DO NOT talk about Debate Club...
2) No personal attacks, whatsoever. I don't care what the person has brought up, or how absurd it is. If you feel the need to attack something, refute the person's ideas. Don't try to nullify them by demeaning him or her. I believe I have been guilty of this in the past, although I try to keep my insults lighthearted. I apologize right now for all past transgressions and will do my absolute best to avoid this in the future. If someone attacks you, let me deal with it - don't invoke Hammurabi's Code. It just makes things worse. If you've been guilty of this, your name is clear from this point on just so long as you cleanse yourself in a bathtub full of Dr. Pepper while chanting "I will not be a smacktard anymore."
3) Cite your sources. If you quote someone or something, let us know where your quote is from, by whom, and all of that. It's rather irritating when people think someone else's writing is your own. Listen to Uncle Slade, kids: "Intellectual theft is just not cool, even if all of your friends are doing it." In fact, I'll make it really easy on you by giving you the proper quotation syntax for the forum, just substitute the HTML signs <> with brackets [] and no quotation marks.
<quote="Person's Name", Month day year, time>The quotation goes here.</quote>.
So to quote me, you'd type out (if you didn't click the quote button) <quote=Slade, Dec 1 2004, 7:27 PM>I am the new moderator. Fear my power!</quote> or something like that. Now I'll do an actual example, just to make sure I've done it correctly.
4) Try to refrain from really really long articles, please. Not many people
(at least the ones I've known) have the attention span to read a novel on the Internet discussing a topic. If you've taken this from an Internet site, just give us the link to read it ourselves, and then give us a bottom line or two or three. This isn't a large issue, just a curtesy concern.
However, if you've written an entire lengthy article on a subject, and you feel that it simply must be read by the people who frequent this forum, that's great, don't hesitate to put it up. Just try to break it up by skipping lines between paragraphs, using introductions and conclusions, and other things to make it more friendly on the eyes and gray matter. Coherency and cohesion help immensely. It's rather dismaying when you spend hours writing a piece and no one can decypher the first three paragraphs because they are a tangle of something that only vaguely represents standard English. To be pointlessly redundant and metphorical while providing another example: That brilliant critical analysis of the biblical allusions in the works of John Steinbeck in classical Latin may be A+ material, but if we can't read classical Latin it's not going to help.
5) Stay on topic. Or at least fairly close. I know it's rather difficult at times, due to numerous non-sequitur people (myself included) lurking on the Night Life forums. I won't yell at you unless it's a very deliberate and malicious sort of action, but I'm asking you to at least try. Do it for the children.
If you feel that I'm missing some rules, or am being too restrictive, let me know and I'll work something out. I look forward to hearing many different opinions on a variety of subjects, and hope that I'll be able to spend my time debating and not moderating. But if it comes to that, you have my assurance that I will take no action without careful deliberation on the potential rule breaking and proper punishment.
Speaking of punishment: Minor transgressions will simply be noted and frowned upon until I (or someone else) feels that it is getting out of control. For example, if you begin sliding from refuting an argument to refuting a person, I'll remind you to stick to the ideas. If you go around being deliberately ignorant, and simply insult people's opinions and/or themselves, I'll yell at you and eventually edit out portions of your posts so as to save you the embarassment of looking like an asshole to everyone around you. In all cases, you can petition in defense of yourself and/or or be judged by a jury of your peers if you'd like.
Like I said, I'll attempt to refrain from having to moderate as much as possible. I don't like pushing people around, please don't make me. I just want to make sure this forum remains a positive, open environment where people can say what they want to without fear of attack or ostracism.
Ok, so I guess the rules weren't exactly concise, but I tried! Ugh... now I feel like a bloody Dictator. If I came off that way, I apologize.
<afterthought>And if you're new and/or don't know me very well, I'll often be sarcastic or insulting in jest but leave off my <sarcasm> tags. Sloppy coding standards, perhaps, but that's just me. If I really want to insult you, you will bear the full force of my (arguable) wit and sting as a Scorpio; I won't just call you a wanker (or tosspot), for example. And none of that will happen in this forum if I can help it.</afterthought>