
Originally Posted by
vern
What I think about this subject and about the recent threads that I haven't bothered posting in can span a whole novel ... so I'll just copy and paste ...
This is our house, we look for the same behavior we'd expect from any good house guest. That means name-calling, personal attacks, spamming, excessive self-promotion, condescending pomposity, general assiness, racism, sexism, any-other-ism, homophobia, acrophobia, and destructive (versus constructive) criticism will get you bounced out of the party.
That said, we don't want to be cops, we want to have discussions. So we're not heavy-handed with the banhammer. We aim to keep open minds, we like to hear y'all express yourselves (even when we disagree with you or you're disagreeing with us), and we stay pretty lenient overall about what goes on in the threads. On a given day, we might let something pass because we're feeling generous. On other days, a lesser offense might rub us the wrong way. It's an inexact science, and the decisions are subjective, and we are humans. If a usercontacts us and tells us something really made him or her uncomfortable, we are more likely to ban/give infractions to the offender for a comment. We want this to be a safe and friendly place for everyone to be.
Commenting here is a privilege, not a right. This is our party, and our job is to be good hosts. Your job is to be good guests.
Do you ban readers who criticize moderators? Nope. We thrive on constructive criticism. We're always listening to what you have to say and trying to improve. If you think we were in the wrong, follow these steps:
1.) Remember that there are real-life, flawed humans behind this site.
2.) Outline, calmly and politely, what you feel the problem is privately with the moderator or through the admins and senior moderators. Public lash-outs generally don't get you anywhere. We correct inaccuracies, and we love to hear your opinion, good or bad. However, if your comment is a disrespectful teardown that doesn't help us learn or make us do better, you're out.
If you got an infraction, live with it, it isn't so bad. Only people who repeatedly break the rules should have any issue with infractions. People need to remind themselves that iSTORYA has thousands of users, the majority of them never receiving an infraction. Staying within the rules is not very hard.
Infractions will almost never be overturned. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO YELL OUT LOUD THAT WE NEVER REQUIRE A MODERATOR TO INFORM PEOPLE WHEN GIVING GIFTS OUT? If a moderator overturns an infraction, that is a courtesy and nothing more. Admins do not have the time to track down individual infractions and review them. Admins trust moderators. Admins trust moderators to be human and can sometimes err. That is why they have been chosen as moderators.
I find myself forcing myself to stop because long posts like this which may be informative, generally aren't read by the people who need to read them. So I will end this here.