People come up with ideas on our server all the time. Most of these ideas are well intentioned, and we try to implement them. However, we do tend to take things to the extreme with more frequency than is expected.
Take the swearing rule for instance. A long time ago we decided that we should try to limit the amount of profanity in our server chat. This was a reasonable goal. However, we have now gone a step further and are attempting to eliminate all profanity. This has led to a lot of frustration due to our attempts to classify what words fall in that category.
Let's look at another idea that was taken too far: ban appeals. OPs make mistakes sometimes, and players get banned unfairly. It is reasonable to have a place where people can try to appeal their ban in these cases. However, we took it to the extreme, and created a den of drama nestled in an utterly chaotic system. It should have a way for players to challenge unfair bans, not a place for rule breakers to plead for a second, or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth chance.
A problem was identified: Caps can be annoying. This is true in a number of cases. Typing in all cap can be interpreted as yelling. On the other hand, it can also be interpreted as excitement. We now have a rule against caps. Is it a rule against excessive caps use? It is not. It is a rule against caps in general. A single word written in all caps is net with a chorus of people screaming "caps".
I could go on for pages an pages with more examples, but I won't no one would read this post if I did. But what I want people to take away from this post is that while there are problems that we need to deal with on the server, and while there are things we can add, we should do so in a responsible, reasonable, and mature manner.
Tl;dr - We have well intentioned ideas a lot of the time, but we take them too far. We should try to take a more moderate approach to things in the future.
Take the swearing rule for instance. A long time ago we decided that we should try to limit the amount of profanity in our server chat. This was a reasonable goal. However, we have now gone a step further and are attempting to eliminate all profanity. This has led to a lot of frustration due to our attempts to classify what words fall in that category.
Let's look at another idea that was taken too far: ban appeals. OPs make mistakes sometimes, and players get banned unfairly. It is reasonable to have a place where people can try to appeal their ban in these cases. However, we took it to the extreme, and created a den of drama nestled in an utterly chaotic system. It should have a way for players to challenge unfair bans, not a place for rule breakers to plead for a second, or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth chance.
A problem was identified: Caps can be annoying. This is true in a number of cases. Typing in all cap can be interpreted as yelling. On the other hand, it can also be interpreted as excitement. We now have a rule against caps. Is it a rule against excessive caps use? It is not. It is a rule against caps in general. A single word written in all caps is net with a chorus of people screaming "caps".
I could go on for pages an pages with more examples, but I won't no one would read this post if I did. But what I want people to take away from this post is that while there are problems that we need to deal with on the server, and while there are things we can add, we should do so in a responsible, reasonable, and mature manner.
Tl;dr - We have well intentioned ideas a lot of the time, but we take them too far. We should try to take a more moderate approach to things in the future.
