From people's various public and private comments it is clear some understand the basic forum guidelines ('do not abuse others'), and others would like more clarification. Clearly due to the quantity and substance of the posts, a more elaborate written policy is in order.
There have been a few posts asking for that. I've posted information about this today, but apparently it hasn't been seen by all.
In short. We are working on said guidelines, and I'm hoping for a draft by next Wednesday (for now, see above: 'do not abuse others'). It's a lot of work. When the judgment about others behavior is always going to be subjective, making longer (rather than simple) guidelines isn't always the solution to the problem.
We are looking at policies on other sites and researching lessons learned elsewhere.
Guidelines isn't the only piece of the puzzle. And 'personal attacks and abuse' isn't the only issue. Another issue is what I'll call 'twitter/banter' and another piece of the puzzle is forum structure.
Another issue is what I might call the tryanny of those with a lot of free time. A lot of klov members have emailed me over the years saying they are either leaving the forums, or not joining because of the low signal to noise ratio here...that is, that there are constantly new junk posts in threads that make it tough for people with low inclination to this or little time.
Obviously trying to clamp down on what I like to call the banter wouldn't be appreciated by all, and isn't easily achieved through moderation.
The first attempt to address this second problem was the creation of what is currently called the Chat About Almost Anything forum. It clearly helped a lot, but not fully.
Possible choices now include:
(1) keep things the way they are, structure wise.
(2) create some new forum sections, ie:
(a) events, auctions, and shows annoucements; or
(b) maybe a Newsflash/Important topics section where important annoucements and newsworthy events could be posted but not in the same section as 'anyone have a photo of an gamename pcb?'.
(c) while on the topic of new sections, how about a 'New Member Welcome' section. I saw it work well on another board. New members could post: "i'm new, this is who I am, this is what I collect...etc.' and everyone else could welcome them...
(3) a chatroom. Adding a chatroom to the forums is a tough topic. It is inviting a free-for-all, though there are possible plusses
(a) the 'crap' wouldn't get indexed by Google
(b) it might remove some of the banter etc from the boards.... or then again, wars might start there that move to the regular forum sections.
(4) social groups. If the feature was turned on, members could create their own mini forum sections etc, and allow only those members they would want in. And back to the 'banter' problem it might help pull some out of the regular forums. Social groups seems to have extremely mixed success on other forums, which is why it isn't on here already.
The guidelines for behavior, and for mod action, wouldn't necessarily be the same for chat rooms and social groups.
As we look at how both work on other sites, it will become clearer if we should try chatrooms and/or social groups. Those answers effect the guidelines.
It's a reason it's going to take a few days. I'm running out of time for the forums for the next several hours, and possibly the rest of the night.
This is a good thread to give me any thoughts about guidelines, moderation, chat rooms, social groups, new forum sections, etc. If your views are controversial or overly critical, please pm them instead.
Please keep most of the off topic and joke responses out of this thread, lest it break the 100 response count sooner than necessary.