Animation Source Forums

Mastermind, I'd like to hear your view on this. Let's say there's an argument going on, or a topic being discussed which violates site rules, and no mods are around. Does a standard-level user have the right to say, "Guys, this should stop"?

The members around who are aware of the rules and are aware that a rule is being broken -should- kindly pinpoint the members involved to the rule they are breaking, how they are breaking it and why they should stop. If a kind approach fails, they should use the report feature.

I agree with what Mastermind said. Members should kindly point out if others are doing something against the rules. In my opinion, a member should not be forced to do anything more than that, nor should they think they should do something more. Handling problematic members is the staff's job.

Can you give me an example of the "kind" approach? I've tried different ways of going about it, and usually it ends with me eing called a pain in the neck and getting more guff from the mods than the rule-breaker does, if and when the mods even show up.

I'll try to give a good one.

Person 1: Hey everybody! Look what I found! -link to inappropriate material-

Person 2: Oh, nice find!

Person 3: Hey guys, that's not really in line with the rules....I don't think you should be posting that.

Person 1 & 2: Oh boo hoo, why don't you just keep your mouth shut!

Person 3: I will. (While in the process of reporting person 1 and 2.)

(Note: This is not a real situation, it is something I thought up.)

-

Now then, person 3 could say something else, like "you're reported", but I would imagine it's best to not even tell them that they have been reported, because they might start flaming you. And when a mod shows up, they might think you were part of the problem. My strategy, in this case, would be to keep your involvement to a bare minimum (person 3 is a good example.), so that the mods do not get confused, and so it's easy to see that you were not part of the problem.

A kind approach could be what Ghost wrote above me, however I'd have gone for:
"[name], that's not really allowed to say/do, since it violates rule [number] of the site. You can read the rules here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=832"

And if that doesn't work, one can only report the member and the moderators will deal with it.

OK, thanks. You guys are really helpful.
BTW, I know that when you report someone the report includes a sampling of previous posts. How far back does that go?

It includes one page of the chatlog. So if you report it after a few minutes of the incident occurring, we might not see the correct logs.

Thanks.