1) We’ve had the same rules here for years and until recently have never really had any issues. If someone stepped out of line it was dealt with quickly and effectively and threads very rarely got out of hand. If the students feel that the rules need more clarity then by all means add it in but you need to be careful not to limit or overstep the scope of the rules. If you ban dissention you’ll never get any ideas that aren’t in step with your own, which makes the entire discussion meaningless. Now there’s nothing wrong with honest debate and well-mannered arguments, and I know you know this, but any rule changes will have to keep such “disagreements” in mind. There’s a fine line between disagreement and flaming. The current rules allow for those treading that line to be dealt with even though they may not be directly stepping over, if you get specific in the rules you may not be allowed to take action until they clearly step over it.
Banning trolling, flamming, and thread derailing is a novel concept, and we all know the endgoal is to banhammer me for it, but are you prepared to ban Liquid the next time he does it? Or Kazka? More importantly, do you think the next administration will be as willing to enforce the rules equally? What if there’s a disagreement about whether or not a post is in violation of the rules? What happens when someone is banned and complains to SGA about it? Are the club execs prepared to take the flak for it or will they cave and unban them with a “warning”? What if a negative post is made about someone not doing their job, does commentary on indisputably poor performance have to be spun in a positive manner? These questions have to be considered when deciding to strengthen the rules here.
2) A private board like that already exists. It’s visible to root admins only and that likely will not change because passwords and serial keys don’t need to be available to all club execs, lest we get a disgruntled VP or secretary hacking into the database or taking down the gameservers remotely, even after resigning. Before you say that won’t happen, it’s already happened before and the database password in the hands of the right *edited*ed off exec can be devastating. One command, run remotely, could delete the column that stores everyone’s passwords and then we’re pretty much boned.
As to the private sections, we started out with only one but split it off into two to allow for more people to interact in private discussions without infringing on the discussion of execs. The “exec discussion” board allows the current execs to discuss issues privately amoungst themselves and the “private discussion” board is open to the current execs as well as all previous execs, CLs, and alumni. If you want to remerge it and only have the exec discussion so be it but considering the recent downward trend in discussions held on here prior to being brought forward at meetings to be voted on I think you’ll be ignoring a ton of good advice that past execs and alumni have to offer. You are MUCH more likely to have flaming and extreme negativity on here if you don’t allow, or “forget” to have, a discussion on a big change before voting on it, especially if something’s been tried before and failed. When you strip a car down, you’ll always find an engine, the same can be said with gaming clubs. No matter the location, the students, or the games, there’s a fundamental set of variables that will always remain the same. The past execs, CLs, and alumni have been around long enough to know what those are and help you avoid the pitfalls that many other univerity clubs face when changing between generations but we can only do that if you let us.
Now I know who’s pushing this, and I know why he’s doing it, but like I’ve said several times now this is a great idea in theory but never works in practice. There’s always going to be discussions that don’t need to be seen by the public. Perfect example is from the WCUGA’s own message board, a private AIM discussion was posted that included things like stealing money and a half dozen other things that SGA frowns on but since they didn’t have a private section it was posted in the open for everyone to read. And everyone did read it. It was later deleted after they figured it out but by the time execs remove something it’s almost always too late to kill. An example that relates to us: what if you have an unruly member and you want to ban him from the board or remove him from the club? Are you going to discuss his banning in the open, where any member can comment on it including the member in question, or do you want that to be kept a little more private? Without a private section you would likely have to call an exec-only meeting to discuss it, which not only wastes everyone’s time but it usually takes a day or more of notice to get the entire exec council in the same room which means any truely pressing issue is left unresolved. The private section would eliminate the need for an executive meeting and all the hassles that go with it while simultaneously decreasing the time it takes to have execs weigh in on an issue and come to a consensus on the course of action.
3) The problem with a single moderator is that one person, or small group of people, are responsible for keeping everything in line. As it is now, if someone spams or derails a thread, any current exec or root can deal with it. That’s like 12 people. You’re much more likely to get things done than if 2 people are doing it. When was the last time an on-topic thread was editted or a non-trolling/flaming/derailing post removed? I think the driving force behind this issue is a fear that admin abuse will occur rather than stopping actually occuring abuse. Aside from a tiny handful of execs, which are no longer active here, we’ve never had admins abuse their powers to squash legitimate discussions or remove posts that weren’t in violation of the rules. Sure it happens occassionally, we’re all human here, but a few isolated incidents is no reason to overhaul the entire system. If something isn’t broke, and this obviously isn’t, it doesn’t need fixing.
Furthermore, given that exec use of the forums is at an alltime low, who do you have in mind to be the moderators? I’m sure you guys want students to do it but who in exec is truely active here, or can devote themselves to logging in 5+ times per day and reading every post in every thread? That’s what it takes to moderate this board. The first thought that comes to mind would be the PC VP but since he hasn’t logged in for over a month I’m not sure he’d even be qualified to pick moderators at this point. Not intending to offend or flame, it’s just the truth. You would need students who you know can do the job without bias or prejudice and those aren’t the dime a dozen they used to be. Also worth considering is what happens when the moderators don’t agree on something? You’d obviously have to have a “lead moderator”, which would also have to read every post in every thread, or a way to arbitrate disputes between them which means another mile of bureaucratic red tape. Is all that really worth it to fix a non-issue?