Hello,

I'm new to posting in this community so I wont pretend to know the scope of the seeming "personal battles" between some users, mods, etc - however, from a moderation standpoint, there is a simple solution which does not include banning or causing rifts in a user community (important for a small one like this).

* Create a flames / trash / open anything goes-style section, and move all posts that include this type of comment there. Let the kiddies fight, some people take amusement in this and it keeps the other information/conversation-deep forums clean
* Lock threads getting out of hand early on, rather than letting them spiral downward
* Promote an ethic of turning the other cheek - rather than respond in anger and (encouraging item #2 above). Moving threads with a notice "This thread has been moved to Flames/Trash/Open due to comment#x" or whatever, is a simple enough reply, rather than taking defensive and often antagonizing stances.

Most major guilds with public access sections of forums use this style of moderation - because of the number of haters brought out by success. The fact is you will never be able to stop someone from coming again, and again, and again and causing trouble to _USEFUL_ threads, or useful boards, if the board is public. E-mail registration obviously doesn't make something private - nor does IP banning - both are so easy to get around they are pointless. Essentially by banning or "temp banning" someone, you're just antagonizing an already anonymous and invincible antagonist - in other words, throwing rocks at a bee hive. Better and often more effective policy is to ignore the hive, or (bad analogy) relocate it intact, and let the bees be bees. Charters are rather draconic, true leaders need not spell out rules, but create environments in which its members naturally abide by common sense rules and antagonists do not *want* to be. Naturally - antagonists get off most on being annoying, indulge the annoyance and you'll only encourage more annoyance

I only wrote this because I've found the quality of post degrade into battles between (the same people/mods), and it seems to be getting worse - not better.

Thanks

- Rick

/bump

see ya in game... now level maximus a bit more and we go AOE xp runs...

the trash topic place is a good idea. i'm moving this topic in the suggestion part and i'll think we'll open it.
the rest is intersting too, but i just had a quick look in the message before leaving, so i'll study it later.