As we prepare to celebrate our second anniversary we can look back and see just how much this site has grown. What started out as a site among comrades has grown into something much more - a large and diverse community of people.
Over the past couple of years we've had to deal with our share of controversy. Some we handled well and without notice, others were not handled so well and caused alot of problems for the members and our moderators. During this time we also encountered what I would consider to be limitations in how we can respond to such events based on our rules. As such, the Administrators and Moderators worked hard for the past several weeks to include some provisions to cover the things we think we missed.
While most of the changes were very minor, a couple new items were added for clarity and to help the Moderators maintain a persons privacy and give them tools to help protect the site.
The biggest change involves the BANNINGS section which includes a new paragraph:
In order to maintain order, protect our members and this site, there may be extreme cases where Moderators can act as a group to suspend or ban a member whose actions are considered a threat to others. Legal threats, threats to "out" information about a member or the use of the site in a malicious manner will not be tolerated. The moderators, bearing this in mind, may be forced to take action without approval or knowledge of the full membership. This may include times when moderators are made aware of personal information about a member that may not be suitable for public disclosure. In such severe circumstances, the moderators may vote to suspend and/or ban an individual member without public notice or discussion so long as it is done by unanimous moderator vote and that the ban be made known to all members in the Announcements forum.
This clause is important because there are times when full disclosure of the circumstances involved may harm the individuals involved. Because the Moderators are entrusted with different kinds of information, it is reasonable for members to have some confidence that the information won't be volunteered to the public.
To keep with our system of accountability and openness, this clause does not allow for "hidden" actions - moderators must have unanimous consent (not easy to get with this group) and must still notify the membership of any actions taken.
Another big change was in the Moderator election/replacement process; most of the Moderators have been in place since the start of the site and while we've added a couple along the way, we may need to consider changing the roster from time to time and we needed to clarify the rules for doing this.
Small changes include:
Ground Rules For Smack has this addition:
6) No member shall post any information that may compromise another member's privacy ("outing"). This includes, but is not limited to, last names, type/location/place of business, addresses, phone numbers and any other information which has not been voluntarily offered by the member. Since it is impossible to predict all the different types of "privacy issues" that may occur, handling of any "privacy" issue will be left up to the reasonable discretion of the moderators.
The Guidelines for Suspensions were relaxed to give the Moderators some discretion over the term for a suspension. Some infractions simply cannot be resolved in 24 hours.
Hopefully the changes will propel us into the next year or so without needing any further modification; but, as always, your input is encouraged and appreciated.
oh reallllllllllyyyyyy. I seem to remember a certain time when YOU were Trey's accomplice. Poor Trey, he has has NO idea how close he came to gettin' a PBJ sandwich for dinner at the 4B.
oh reallllllllllyyyyyy. I seem to remember a certain time when YOU were Trey's accomplice. Poor Trey, he has has NO idea how close he came to gettin' a PBJ sandwich for dinner at the 4B.
oh reallllllllllyyyyyy. I seem to remember a certain time when YOU were Trey's accomplice. Poor Trey, he has has NO idea how close he came to gettin' a PBJ sandwich for dinner at the 4B.
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