I've thought about this post of mine for a while today. I've begun to think that perhaps I'm being a little harsh to the evil dog and his crew. That cartoon dog always seemed to be intelligent and relatively good natured, if a little conservative. So I will say that while the admins may have the power to ban whomever they please, that doesn't mean that they exercise that right. I simply think that the no personal attack guideline should become a rule, that what constitutes a personal attack should be spelled out and that everyone (yes, even the admins themselves) should follow the rule.
SkinWalker does a great job. I'll be fine if M*W gets banned, and I'm amazed Carico(right?) and Buffalo Roam are still able to post. I voted yes, what's the worst that can happen?
Mob rule? We don't even have checks and balances anyways, it's a dictatorship which we choose to live in.
I fully agree with this. The problem, now, is that the rules allow for quite a bit of "hedging". The standard applies to some and not others, which makes it not so standard. All of us may be equal, here, but some are decidedly more equal than others...
Policy doesn't seem to stream down from just one person around here; if anything, I'd call it an oligarchy. Anyway, I've been treated worse by members then by mods here, so I'm not too keen on this mob rule idea. This doesn't mean I don't think there's room for improvement; I simply think that making it clear as to what would get one warned and/or banned and having everyone, including admins, following those rules, would be quite helpful in getting people to view the process as fair.
My thoughts precisely Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. Even if what constituted a personal attack was spelled out a bit more, I doubt any guidebook could cover all the terms that would be deemed sufficiently offensive, especially when you take into consideration the creative ways to use language. So I'm sure that, even with the above mentioned rules, some people would still be a bit more equal than others, but I'm ok with that. Having a good framework doesn't mean that one reaches Utopia, only that things work better.
There would be leeway for mods to make decisions based on personal feelings instead of the rule of law. In fact, I think law is a good example; judges make judgements based on laws and precedents. The more precise the laws and precedents, the less leeway the judge has to base his or her decisions on personal views or vendettas. This, in turn, reassures people that the law is applied the same to all and not just to the masses while the elite can do as they please. Ofcourse, this can work in a negative way if the laws and/or precedents are unfair. I believe, however, that such laws and/or precedents are corrected eventually. I essentially view this self correcting process as a branch of evolution; evolution is nothing if not something that strives for efficiency and it's my believe that good governance is an efficient one.
Laws are always precise it is how they are applied, you have not taken into consideration that what you see as leeway are extenuating circumstances. Based on what examples?
If that were true, there'd be no room for interpretation on the part of judges. Yeah, like one guy is a mod and the other is just a member ;-). I recommend you read a bit from Richard Dawkins. He cites a bunch of examples in his second book "The Blind Watchmaker", but I personally prefer his first, "The Selfish Gene". Here's a quote I found here from the third chapter of said book: ******************************* Chapter 3 - Immortal coils Our DNA lives inside our bodies, It is not concentrated in a particular part of the body, but is distributed among the cells. There are about a thousand million million cells making up an average human body, and, with some exceptions which we can ignore, every one of those cells contains a complete copy of that body's DNA. The evolutionary importance of the fact that genes control embryonic development is this: it means that genes are at least partly responsible for their own survival in the future, because their survival depends on the efficiency of the bodies in which they live and which they helped to build. ******************************* He also coined the termed memes, which act like genes, only their evolution is much faster because of their nature. As wikipedia explains: **************************** A meme (pronounced /miːm/)[1] consists of any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus. ****************************
