Ok I lied, I'll give you input. Personally I think that the rules only need to be slightly altered to get rid of political and religious discussion. But what really needs to change in my opinion, is the ninjas need bulkier banhammers. A ban doesn't mean much when you can make an alt and hop back on 5 minutes later. Ninjas need to be able to device ban or at least ip ban. But those are just my thoughts.

I like that people still care. But suggestions around here are like trying to have an intervention with a heroin junkie. All your reasoning and solid points fall on deaf ears until the junkie is ready to make the change themselves. Until then, it's all wasted effort. But I can't fault you for trying...

My list of needed changes. (If anyone has suggestions, add in response) [b]- notification when banned, what for, and (maybe) by whom. [/b] [b]- very defined guidelines on what is a bannable offense[/b] (cannot be allowed to be some "on a whim" type of action). For example, as someone said, no variation of "kill yourself", or anything that depreciates someone. Young people (myself included) behave in whatever way fits in. Propogating a negative mindset should be of the highest offenses. [b]- moderators should be more decisive on what types of threads they remove. [/b]For example, my old "the sun is made of water" thread from around december was removed 2 weeks ago. Meanwhile my thread linking to bastages thread, linking to the mighty Cheerio story, was still viewable. That is unacceptable. Removing harmless content, and leaving the linked NSFW content, is a sign of low moderation standards, and of a Moderator who is not deserving of their status.

Personally, I believe we need a bit stricter rules. That or better clarification and an easier way to view them on the app (at least on the iOS app, I'm not sure about the Android version.) An argument I've heard against the 2011 rules was the length and fact that people would argue X is not a specified rule, which I think is not much better than what we have now. Right now, our rules are meant to act as a blanket statement, but people still use that argument of X is not a specific rule. From what I've noticed, the rules and moderation aren't really feared or respected like they used to be. People treated moderators as their friends and fellow users, whereas now in places like Offtopic, they are seen as the enemy and are laughed at. Even when a moderator removes a post and it has the message "This post has violated the Code of Conduct and was met with Ninja Justice" appears, it becomes a joke. People mock it by modifying it and - I'd be surprised if it hasn't happened yet - use the hyperlink to misdirect people. Bungie did not do a good job readjusting the site for the flood of new users. When the site switched over, it was okay to assume older users knew how things worked. But as soon as they announced Destiny, they did not take action to organize the site for those new users. They didn't have sticky threads. They didn't adjust the rules. They just let things stay the way they were. Obviously, as a company they were focusing on Destiny and preparing the site for it with the stats pages, etc. But part of the process of getting prepared should have been making sure the forums were prepared. It's also hard to say if these things were discussed, but by the looks of it nothing was. One of the things I miss is the fact that Bungie made it clear that they owned the site. In Achronos' own words it isn't for "whatever the hell you want to post." I appreciate the tools they gave use to help shape our experience, but those tools only go so far. They need to shorten the leash and put their foot down because the community is more than likely going to tear itself apart. I don't know if Bungie was afraid of driving off users with bans and the like, but at this stage it's going to be the users who drive each other off.

It's clear the rules require a massive over haul. The lack of incentive for original content is staggering. These rules have promoted a hostile environment that lacks culture. As much as I love emoticons I would love to see ASCII art against the rules once more. Without any restrictions on it we plagued with walls of ASCII spam. Along with that [i]any[/i] statement that implies a "kill yourself". Which includes speak towards another to slit wrists, drink bleach, et cetera. The fact that that's not immediately bannable [i]especially[/i] with how young and impressionable the current user base is, is sickening. I report any instance of that and have seen no results. Deplorable behaviour and in my raw opinion should never be allowed on any forum who would believe themselves respectable.

The current system in place is insufficient for dealing with the community we now have. As a developer's website these forums shouldn't take the place of reddit, 4chan, or some other internet board. This is not to say that discussion should focus solely on the developer, and their games, things like OffTopic have value, but more so that Bungie.net shouldn't attempt to be a shining pillar of free speech. And even then, free speech should, and does have consequences. One cannot run into a packed movie theater and scream "fire," without expecting repercussions. Clarity is key. A set of well defined, common sense guidelines, providing examples of what is forbidden and what is encouraged should be implemented on this site. Well defined doesn't mean specific, either. An example would could be: [b]The harassment of other users is prohibited.[/b] [i]This includes attacking, threatening, or goading a user to evoke a negative emotional response.[/i] It's specific about the type of action it prohibits, it provides examples, and it's both vague enough to encompass items not specifically addressed and open to moderator interpretation. And that's another important aspect of what we should have. Moderators are assigned to their positions, presumably, because they are trusted community members. As such they should have the ability to some freedom of interpretation. Yes, this may result in inconsistencies between moderators, but that's fine. The alternative would be creating a rigid set of specific rules that would ensure consistent moderation, but ultimately leave a lot out an be ineffective. Ultimately these forums require a clear set of guidelines that are explicit in what they prohibit, but vague enough to be open for moderator interpretation, and the ability to be stretched to cover other instances. OffTopic should be restricted to some regard in the content they are allowed to partake in. Before it was allowed, I thought that religious threads might be a nice source of debate, but that's clearly not the case. That said, I believe that before specific topics are censored, a set of rules be implemented first. If these rules do not solve the issues, then the censoring of certain topics should take place. And finally, alts need to either be banned or restricted. Rules are useless if I can get banned and come back a few minutes later with a new account and not have to worry about any repercussions. Because of the ease to create a new account there is no sense of investment in accounts, and nothing keeping users from simply throwing away the ones they're currently using.

I demand more Ninja Brutality