Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-9026519-20160405234042

You might have thought this title was a joke, and in a way it both was and wasn't. Let's start out this way: why are we banning users? The answer is because they break the rules. That's really the only reason we'd ban them. Here's another question- what happens if someone breaks the rules? There are two answers to this one, contradicting the previous question. The first answer is they get punished. The second answer is nothing. It all depends on the communties bias towards this user.

Now, I know people complain we don't enforce the rules enough, and they make a point. We don't. We've had what, two or three demotion forums for open breaking of the rules coming from a staff member, and so far, the majority of said forums have failed (as Len's most likely won't pass as things stand). Hell, we haven't even repirmanded them for breaking the damn rules. Why the hell should we even have rules if we need to go through a forum, which by the way, is a pain in the ass, when staff members, the people enforcing the rules, break them?

Now, I know we've all broken the rules and I blame this partly on the lack mood w/ enforcing them. You look at other wikis and their rules are enforced. What happens? People follow them. Plain and simple. There are wikis with heavier rules than ours that enforce them and the only people who end up breaking them are trolls. I'm not saying we need to go to daily reports and bans of every user for every small offense, but I do feel we need to at least step up our game a little. People are becoming way to confident in their ability to get away with breaking the rules. When you not only have people breaking the rules wo/ recieving punishment, but also have staff members doing the same, nothing will get better.

Admins these days say you should report harassment. Why should I report a staff member harassing me to another staff member only to have a forum opened for their demotion? Why isn't immediate action taken? Why do we need to communties support to demote or ban someone who has openly broken the rules? I mean, chances are, this staff member is going to be out for me, especially if they don't get demoted (which, chances are, they won't, looking at how things go these days). Becuase we have staff members breaking the rules, especially when it comes to harassment, people don't want to report them because they won't get demoted.Hell, they probably won't even get chastised.

So here's an idea (I don't want a vote, just an opinion). Why don't we unban every user who's been banned for breaking the rules (basically everyone who has been banned) because we're not banning others for doing the same exact thing? It sounds reasonable doesn't it? We're not willing to punish people we don't like and this wiki is supposed to be a fair place, so lets unban everyone we don't like too to maintain that fairness.

Also, just to point out, we have a set procedure when a staff member breaks the rules. We just don't enforce it... Like all the other rules. :c

Thanks for reading this long post. :^) 