Recently, on this site (and others) I have been involved with arguments about a user, either myself of another Expert+ in most cases (if not, then a generally informed user), telling or describing a 'rule', then being backlashed with comments like 'It's not written down and there's no post about it so it's not a rule' or 'no moderator has said it to me so I'll do it until they do' etc. Although I do understand the concept of moderator discretion and some of these guys in particular were indeed..let's be kind and say 'not the brightest', but some of them do have a point. Many of these 'rules' we keep telling people are vague, have no real meaning or simply aren't well known by even more senior site members.
I'm going to use an example by Ninja. I'm not calling Ninja out, not one bit, this is just one that affected me at the time so I remember it better o3o. Ninja made a comment once or twice that he was going to deal out some sort of moderator warning or punishment for people constantly talking about relationships (often heavily) in chat (to clarify, I'm not talking about 'sexting' or anything like that, banning for that should be obvious). However, no other moderator really enforced this, it never really got around the site and the only reason I heard of it was because my constant conversations with..a certain someone both here and Showdown brought it to my attention. Not a lot of people actually know or remember this particular 'rule'. Once again, I'm not calling out Ninja at all, there's been several incidents like this (I remember trachy claiming he'd kick from chat for not giving warnings before spoiling events and plots for stories etc oeo).
Rules like these and rules with vague terms and not always understood descriptions (like mini-modding, people know what it is but don't know what counts for mini-modding and what doesn't) are confusing, for me, other seniors but ESPECIALLY new users. I just wanted to ask about these rules, the actual description of them and how they're enfoced. They're too spaarce and often hard to find just be used as references e-o.
Once more, making it clear I'm not calling any mod out or saying they do there job badly, not in the slightest. Just wanted to have some clarification, both for future references to new users and so I can say stuff without looking like a moron e-o.
