Animation Source Forums

The Ranting Board - Rule Suggestions

Why do we need stricter rules?

• 1. The Ranting Board has too much freedom. Too much naming and shaming, pointless rants and annoying personal conflicts.
• 2. The Ranting Board is for solving problems on the websites, but now it often leads to flame wars and
  JerseyCaptain wrote:
  thinly-disguised flames
  .
• 3. To prevent the aforementioned.

Suggested rulechanges:

• 1. The Ranting Board is only to be used for website-related issues.
• 2. Attempted flaming is forbidden. This can, and will be punished by bans. (attempted flaming includes, but is not limited to harassment, personal attacks, cursing others, and the list goes on)
• 3. Personal conflicts should not appear in the Rant board. These are for PM's, and PM's only. If necessary, the moderators can help both parts resolve it, but this will still have to be done over PM's.
• 4. While you are free to rant about anything ASource-related, keep in mind that moderators have every right to lock or delete your topics if they deem it inappropriate without prior notice.
• 5. Try to maintain a level of maturity in here. Questions are to be taken to the questions section of the website. And keep cussing at an absolute minimum, or better yet; don't cuss at all.
• 6. All the other Forum rules still apply. The Rant Board rules are not exhaustive for this section.
• 7. Do not revive year-old flame wars that have been resolved. Better yet; try not to revive old topics.

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Naturally, I am strict by nature ^^ Feel free to add to this list, and I will edit my post.


Current additions to this suggestion: Wolflux,

I've made sure to include a few things to watch out for in my own topic regarding the modulation of the rant board, Flux.

I think there should be an explicitly stated 'no calling anyone out' rule. I mean, keep a level of anonymity when the rants involve a particular example or a particular member. Also, cussing should not be allowed period. Also, I think that there should be a rule for the mods as well - meaning that those who are too ingrained in the fight/involved/taking it personally - should recuse themselves from it. When it comes to fights on the rant board, everyone who is arguing is at fault for continuing the fights.

I'm ok with these rules, but they're not precise enough :

How do you define an "Attempted flaming"? Which minimum "level of maturity" is required?
As for personal conflicts, well I have the feeling that the rant board will become very quickly inactive with this rule...

Updated my first post with an easy definition.

You are quite right. Therefore it would also be necessary for this to be changed. You should not have a problem with someone and take it to the Ranting Boards. This would be Naming and Shaming, and common sense (and some unwritten rules, I guess) forbids public humiliation of other people.
As far as I know, the Ranting Boards were always intended to let people blow off some steam about problems happening on BaltoSource. It is only recently where members have begun flaming each other's behaviour there.
However, Mods have always locked topic regarding personal conflicts and problems with someone in the Rant boards, which points out a question; "Is it really meant for personal conflicts in there?"

The answer: No. Taking personal conflicts to the Rant boards would make it public, and these conflicts always lead to flame wars and other nasty events. Not only that either. It would also be a source of humiliation for the topic creator, and to some degree also humiliate the member(s) involved in the conflict, and even attract more. We have seen this happen to a certain member already (I believe we all know who), and I'd rather it did not. It leads to nothing good for either side.


Rule #7 conflicts with rule #9 of the website, yes. However, if you look around in the other pages of the Rant Boards, you will see that all topic that are ancient are locked the moment someone revives them. Why? Because they are often already-resolved flame wars.


Perhaps the site rules need some updates as well?

Well, it was, yes. The purpose of the section was to tell which problems you had on the site, and this included personal conflicts.
If some visitors were a bit more "mature", this would have worked very well, but it seems it's not possible anymore.
So I will change the rules and description for this section.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they always say. But yeah, with the bigger population, it needs changes, otherwise there's the danger of flame wars.

This won't do jack-squat unless we have a dedicated mod for the rant board.

We've got three or so heavily overworked mods on the forums thanks to however many inactive ones which obviously needs fixing. The new rules will be a bit of a handful to add to the already piling work these three mods have on their plate. Give them a break.

Some site moderators read topics too, so it is their duty to make a forum moderator aware if something has gone out of bounds; as well as members who see things like this.


Either way, setting all these rules for the Rant Board would make it die. The purpose is ranting, and it is the work of the moderators to decide which rants are constructive and which ones aren't.

Basically, the rules that apply everywhere else on Balto Source/TLK Source apply to the rant board. So why complicate it?