All,
The Moderation Team is in the process of reviewing a number of active reports, and we have been discussing some issues raised in a number of threads regarding the current state of the forums. We believe we've identified a few issues with the current forum culture, and have some steps to implement going forward.
The primary issue appears to be a spate of passive aggressive posting, where community members are working within the strict letter of the law, but completely ignoring the spirit of the law. When called out on their rude or petulant posting by the moderation team (or publicly by another poster), the standard response seems to be either "But it's true!) (Which we covered in our resource material thread) or "But it wasn't intended to be rude, you're misunderstanding my intentions!"
Going forward, this second response will not be accepted as a valid defence for rudeness in posting. To paraphrase Sir Ian Flemming in Goldfinger (The novel, not the terrible film adaptation): "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern". There is a very deliberate reason we have three moderators, being that we can settle votes without a tie and that we have enough staff members looking at reports to establish a clear lapse in communication style. If only one person thinks that a post is rude, that could be a single anomaly, if two people think a post is rude, that could be a coincidence. However, if a community member thinks that a post is rude enough to report, and all three moderators agree, then clearly there is an issue with the tone and language being used.
As such, if a post is found by consensus to be rude in nature, we will take action on it. This does not mean we will be treating all cases of rude posting with equal severity, and we will deal with each report on a case by case basis.
The secondary issue has been covered time and time again, in that people are allowing the poor behaviour of other posters to have an effect their own posting quality. We understand and accept that there has been a rise in passive aggressive and evasive posting, and that this rise has been frustrating for many members. We appreciate those who have tried to stay calm under these conditions, and hope to see things improve going forward.
TL;DR version: Cut out the passive aggressive posting, stop trying to exploit the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law, and if three different people appointed to steward the forums have agreed that you were rude, consider the possibility that you actually were rude.
