Voting:Level 5's and Up/Chat Policy Amendment - Passed

Out of all things, out of all of our progress and accomplishment over the past 6 months, chat still stands at the heart of our wiki as the ball of buzzing activity from which everything radiates. Generally speaking I have to admit that I'm quite proud of the way in which our chat has grown. Six months ago we could expect between three and six people to be on chat every day and now, as I look into chat, I see that we have 19. With so many people in chat one might expect the horrors of the internet to begin to take hold. One might expect trolls. Yet, for the most part, our members are extremely civil. Administrative action is rarely necessary to maintain order and when it is it's application is rarely controversial. Yet, of course, there are always exceptions. Over the past few weeks we have experienced a troll and several miscreant users. Even more recently we endured a series of in-chat offenses and then attempts by the user comitting said offenses to work around our official chat policy. As such I feel that an amendment making clear exactly where the lines lie between acceptable and unacceptable behavior on part of both regular users and chat moderators is necessary.

Thus I propose the following amendment:

Warnings:
Although this is already made clear in the Warnings Policy section this is here primarily to ensure further clarity.

Warnings should be conducted as follows:

Verbal Warning 1

Verbal Warning 2

Temporary kickban if deemed necessary

Warning 1

Warning 2

Warning 3

Apologies:
If a user has committed an offense and has received only verbal warnings he or she may make an apology. It is up to the discretion of the Chat Moderator as to whether this apology will be accepted or not. If an apology is made within 10 minutes after the last warning was recieved he or she may be forgiven entirely. While they may forgive, Chat Moderators are by no means encouraged to forget.

Warnings Leniency:
An Administration which attempt to enforce rules and policies exactly by the book without restraint or remorse is often regarded as a hated one; as policy cannot be crafted to fit every potentiality. Therefore, it is necessary that Chat Moderators be allowed to deal with situations on a case-by-case basis instead of according to rigid or specific rules and regulations which may not be applicable. At present reasons for warnings are as follows:

===Good Reasons Edit === ===Bad Reasons Edit ===
 * Personal attacks
 * Vandalism of the wiki
 * Incivility
 * Harassment
 * Spamming
 * Edit warring or revert warring
 * Sock Puppetry
 * Policy violation
 * Inappropriate username
 * Disagreeing with an administrator

Naturally all of the above, with the exception of Policy Violation, Sock Puppetry, and disagreeing with an administrator are entirely subjective. Thus, if an esteemed user, or perhaps an entirely new member, does any of these things once or twice leniency may be a reasonable response. However if this unreasonable behavior continues warnings may be necessary. Likewise if a user with a history of offenses does something he may be granted less leniency or none at all. All of the above is up to the Chat Moderator's discretion.

Disputes:
If a situation occurs in which the accused disputes the subjective allegations laid against him he may ask his fellow chat members for an appeal. In this eventuality all those present in chat at the time the incident occured will be asked to vote for or against the accusations. If the majority votes for, the accusations stand. If the majority votes against, they fail.

Note: If the accusations of a chat moderator fail, these are not grounds to make an accusation in return.

Cursing/Swearing:
At present, chat policy reads thus:

"Also, as there are many user's here who are young, the conversations should try to remain pg-13, an occasional slip of a swear may be overlooked, but heavy swearing, cussing, name calling, sexual innuendos or harassment will not be tolerated."

Unfortunately "heavy swearning, cussing, name calling, sexual innuendos, or harassment" is notoriously hard to define. Users are allowed to use the following: Damn, shit, crap, bitch, and their variations/combinations. Other words like "F*ck" should have at least single letter replaced by an asterix as shown. Cursing in other languages is generally tolerated. All of the above is up to chat moderator discretion and is subject to the warning/dispute/appeal system discussed above.

This is all I have for now. Please feel free to suggest changes to the above.

For:
Flamefang 22:29, October 5, 2011 (UTC)