What's up with the Lounge Policing lately?

[cire]

different boards = different rules.

Or, from another perspective:
different forums, same site = same rules, different parameters

I value consistency in the way forums are used on discrete sites. The different audience and lack of adherence to topics in the lounge offends my sense of symmetry.

[Disch]

Okay so it seems like some people agree with me and some don't.

So then the question is, what do we do from here? Because this is going to happen up again. And since we can't seem to agree on a policy, it's just going to lead to more frustration as the two viewpoints continue to butt heads.

Maybe we need a clear, authoritative response that is definitive. One that we all just have to live with.

But who can give us such a response? Twicker/admins never seem to post here.

[BHX]

That is the problem with this site. The admins haven't posted the rules anywhere so we are constantly having conflicts on what the rules are because everyone has their own idea of what they are. Staying on topic is more a common courtesy rather than a rule I suppose. Better than discriminating against users who post mostly in the Lounge saying they have no say in what happens to the site because they don't contribute, but even giving advice or debating in the Lounge is contributing in some fashion.

[JLBorges]

> So then the question is, what do we do from here?

We use common sense.

If the person who initiated the debate requests that discussion stay on course (as Catfish did here: http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/111264/2/#msg608938 ), do not treat it with utter contempt (as BHX and several others did in that thread).


> That is the problem with this site. The admins haven't posted the rules anywhere.

There is no problem with this site. We are adults, not children. We can comprehend what this means:

Feel free to participate in a constructive and polite way in any topic of this category.

Do you need an itemised list of do's and don'ts to educate you about what would be deemed polite?

[BHX]

JLBorges wrote:

Do you need an itemised list of do's and don'ts to educate you about what would be deemed polite?

No, it has become painfully obvious the whole site needs one as there have been too many problems come up that has shown that the users ("who help make the guidelines" according to an older thread) can't even agree on what the guidelines are. Threads that argue the topics that should be in the Lounge, threads on posts counts and how to deal with them, users that can't decide on what constitutes thread derailment, users pointing out admins have almost no known interaction with the users, post reporting that seems to go unchanged, users that have (as mentioned earlier) said users who only post in the Lounge and only contribute to the other forums off and on have no say in what happens to this site (discriminating basically), the list goes on. None of which ever came to a final decision except that no one could agree on any of the problems. If there were rules in place then it would be clear to all those problems.

JLBorges wrote:

We use common sense.

Common sense would tell us keeping a thread on topic is common courtesy. Yet members, both adult and children (as the site has had a few users who weren't even teenagers yet), derail threads (like having a discussion about religion, existence of God, science, Atheism, Christianity, the Bible, attempting to convert between religions, etc. when the topic was wanting a discussion on same sex adoption).

Past threads that have been reported and nothing happen, then similar threads reported and removed, members reported and banned, and members reported with apparently no actions taken tells me the admin(s) have a set of rules in place that no one but them know.

While I have respect for people who run sites with communities (as I said in another post I ran 3 game communities for my 3 favorite games and wouldn't do it again if I was paid), I can't help but wonder why make a site and community and be the only one moderating it and handing down punishment, if you don't have time to interact with the community of your site or clarify all issues that spring up. I can't think of another site, off hand, where the admin/moderators don't interact with their community on a daily basis. If the admin(s) are that busy, they need to make their iron clad rules made known so those kind of threads stop popping up.

[EDIT] Typos.