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Commander Error wrote:

Rules wrote: Off topic will only be enforced outside the Member's Lounge

We've always locked or cleaned up threads when asked by the OP, regardless of subforum.

Adrien Victus wrote:

Commander Error wrote:

Rules wrote: Off topic will only be enforced outside the Member's Lounge

We've always locked or cleaned up threads when asked by the OP, regardless of subforum.

If you want to put forth a new / modified rule for that, I'm all for it.

But apparently most of the community feels enforcing on-topic "breaks the flow of conversation", or some such.

Commander Error wrote:

Adrien Victus wrote:

Commander Error wrote:

We've always locked or cleaned up threads when asked by the OP, regardless of subforum.

If you want to put forth a new / modified rule for that, I'm all for it.

But apparently most of the community feels enforcing on-topic "breaks the flow of conversation", or some such.

I think that's more from when the mod just leaps in and starts axing posts like jack the ripper.

I don't think anyone here is gonna be such an asshole as to not allow you some interpretation of the rules.

@Shadow Don't bet on that. Seriously, this community - with, by my count, 4 exceptions - hates any (ANY) rules beyond the absolute bare minimum.

Urrrr. But remember that, when those rules were written, I left a standing request that off-topic always be enforced in my threads? That wouldn't have made any sense if it couldn't be anyway. I'll look for the relevant posts, but I just got my eyes dilated and everything's a bit blurry now so it may be a while before I find them.

Adrien Victus wrote:Urrrr. But remember that, when those rules were written, I left a standing request that off-topic always be enforced in my threads? That wouldn't have made any sense if it couldn't be anyway. I'll look for the relevant posts, but I just got my eyes dilated and everything's a bit blurry now so it may be a while before I find them.

Eyes dilated? Be glad the forum has a dark color scheme :I

Adrien Victus wrote:Urrrr. But remember that, when those rules were written, I left a standing request that off-topic always be enforced in my threads? That wouldn't have made any sense if it couldn't be anyway. I'll look for the relevant posts, but I just got my eyes dilated and everything's a bit blurry now so it may be a while before I find them.

Don't have a stroke on us, now. Try drinking some water.

Shadowcat wrote:

Adrien Victus wrote:Urrrr. But remember that, when those rules were written, I left a standing request that off-topic always be enforced in my threads? That wouldn't have made any sense if it couldn't be anyway. I'll look for the relevant posts, but I just got my eyes dilated and everything's a bit blurry now so it may be a while before I find them.

Eyes dilated? Be glad the forum has a dark color scheme :I

I've got some sunglasses, so I'm OK with that. The problem is that my close-in vision is pretty screwed over. I can read this text, but not as well as I'd prefer.

I can't find the original rules change proposal. I found a post where Error states that the rule is that off-topic can only be enforced at the OP's request, and I corrected him because that's not what the rules actually say. I don't have any idea what's going on with the rules anymore. I have said before, and I will say again: The rules as we currently have them are broken. They do not work. As we're seeing in the Appeals subforum right now, they're not enough to keep idiots and trolls from doing what they do. You guys have shot down suggestion after suggestion, and now we're at the point where moderation is completely ineffective because our only Moderator believes that the Rules forbid him from keeping threads on topic, even at the OP's direct request, in the forum's main area. This whole situation is absurd. I've never been entirely clear on who created this set of rules or why they were changed, but they needed to have been written by the people who actually care about them being enforced rather than by those who usually troll themselves. I'm looking at CMA when I say that. IMO the whole moderation system needs to be nuked and rebuilt from the ground up, here on the forum and out in the open this time.

1; Avoid off topic posting. If a new discussion appears in a thread, a new thread can be created. Off topic will only be enforced outside the Member's Lounge (otherwise I'd be here all day).
8. Avoid off topic posting. If an off-topic discussion appears in a thread, a new thread should be created. This rule will only be enforced outside the Member's Lounge.

In the thread where these were suggested, a majority vote forced me to include the "at OP's request" caveat.

"Indeed the alterations passed. Off topic will only be enforced if the OP of a thread requests it."

And Jedi asked me to enforce it in all his threads. That, I can do.

Which thread is that? I couldn't find it.

Off topic or sudden topic changes? That's where the controversy lies. A thread about gravity can evolve into a conversation about lighthouses. That's the new topic. That's how conversation works, and there can be more than one conversation simultaneously in a thread. If you complain about that, then you're just being a whiny anus. Continually posting something that's completely against the topic of conversation and causes a sudden shift from the focus, like spiderman memes in an RP thread, for example, is a different thing entirely.

Once a thread is posted, it becomes the community's. The OP has as much power to decide where the conversation should go as someone that starts a conversation in the outernet. The exceptions are threads that have a specific, important purpose but aren't really centered around a solid thing. The RP lore restructuring threads, for example, had a specific purpose and required some amount of community cooperation. Those pages needed moderation because the continual flow of conversation needed to stay on one topic. That differs from a structured topic like Proto's FC pack, which is important but structured enough to keep the overall topic, no matter the offtopic between progress posts.

If an OP requests topic enforcement, I go by what the original post was about. Flow of conversation be damned; if you want a discuss-anything thread, ask me not to enforce ontopic.

It's simple enough.

At that point you're just confining things to one of two extremes.

Frankly I'd rather people just boycott any 'ontopic-only' threads because as cats said they just neuter any effective conversation. It's the equivalent of talking to someone about the weather then constantly trying to keep on about it; throwing a fit if you move on to another topic.

"If the OP requests it."

If you want all the effwctive communication you praise, don't request it. Dead simple, mate.

And anyone who does request it acknowledges they may kill their own topic.

How about the possibility to request the removal of the "offtopic about x" only?