Let's work out some official rules for this forum.

[Green1]

Agreed.

[Buster's Uncle]

Good.  I have to juggle a lot of different concerns, trying to find the best balance for all.

Now, go bump the themes thread for me, willya?

[Buster's Uncle]

I have a problem that I don't know how to frame as legitimate site policy, but I need to put it out there as a reality in play.

I am not a morning person.  I do not wake up alert and chipper and hard to annoy.

This forum is a better place for everyone if I don't log on in the morning to any PMs at all, or obnoxious, problematic posts.  I sincerely ask everyone, for their own good as well as my own, not to present me with people management issues or questionable behavior before I've been on for about an hour and gotten a coffee polished off.

I recognize that mostly, you don't know how long I've been awake unless you were on when I came onsite in the morning, but PLEASE act like I'm a morning grouch whose day you'd rather not ruin -or FEAR ruining, if it comes to that- and don't pull ANYthing while I'm not on at night.  Seriously; I'm asking people to work with me on a problem I can't help - and failure to respect that boundary adds to your sins crimes when you are bad overnight.  -And I will henceforth count 'bad overnight' in my deliberations, because it's got to stop.

So be bad when I'm wide awake, and you'll find me a lot more reasonable.  Please do not mistake me delaying action first thing while I know I'm not very rational for forbearance.

...You may be guessing that this has been a problem before more than once, and again just today; if so, you surmise correctly...

[Vidsek]

Vidsek <-------  Nocturnal. 

Mornings are for sleeping.  Then coffee.   Then thinking.

[Valka]

BUncle, what time zone are you in? Otherwise, we won't know when it's your morning.

[Mart]

I am kinda opposite. Sometimes I stay awake longer, and when I'm tired I know, I have less patience. My last job required tons of patience, luckily I'm done with it...

Anyway, my point is, there is some solution to these things. I happen to wake up tired. It is connected to quality of sleep, as I've read and noticed. Complex stuff, beginning from good day-night cycle, stable sleep hours, enough oxygen and little CO2, yes. Sleeping in a room without good air circulation can increase CO2 significantly. We do not get good rest then. Sleeping with open window has its drawbacks, but I do it as often as I can. Much can be said about it. Sometimes valerian extract helps to fall asleep, when I'm awake too long. But half a glass of red wine is good too.

Recently I had a conversation with a lady in grocery market. She was 71 and still working, actually walking most of her work hours. She was selling in that market. She told me, she had a heart stroke, cause she was drinking red wine. I said "Red wine is healthy." And she answered "Yes, but not in quantities I was drinking..." Anyway, I would never say, that someone 71 years old after a heart stroke can work like that. That was impressive. I wonder, how much that red wine was responsible for that stamina of hers.

I think we were talking about some of the above in some other thread. Do we want to continue this topic here?

[Buster's Uncle]

North American Eastern Time for me - and we probably ought to take it to Rec Commons, yes.

[Buster's Uncle]

And important point to keep in mind - I got an unplanned very late start today, and didn't feel up to answering a couple of straightforward questions waiting for me for over an hour after I came on...

[Valka]

The only times when I get impatient for answers is when they're time-sensitive.

BUncle, unless someone's question is urgent, you don't have to answer right away. We're all in different time zones, and some of us have odd schedules. So in most cases, it probably won't matter a bit if you don't answer or even read it until your afternoon.

One thing I discovered with Iron Pen is that just trying to keep three time zones in mind can be a challenge. I don't want the authors to miss the first 8 hours of the contest because they were sleeping or at work/school, so that's why it's started at odd times... for people on this continent. For the people involved in the contest, it was as close to early evening as I could make it.

Not everyone here is going to be able to calculate when it's morning for you, or know when you get up and are ready to deal with things, and of course we don't expect you to keep track of all of our time zones and schedules. It's a bit unreasonable to expect that.  My suggestion is just to make the decision to postpone dealing with whatever the issue may be until after your morning. Chances are that most things aren't deal-with-it-NOW urgent anyway.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's very hard on me, though, to have anything hanging over my head first thing - I can't NOT think about it just because I know I'm not thinking well yet.  Very bad way to start my day, and not a good deal for anyone.  No easy answer to that problem.

[Green1]

I have a problem that I don't know how to frame as legitimate site policy, but I need to put it out there as a reality in play.

I am not a morning person.  I do not wake up alert and chipper and hard to annoy.

This forum is a better place for everyone if I don't log on in the morning to any PMs at all, or obnoxious, problematic posts.  I sincerely ask everyone, for their own good as well as my own, not to present me with people management issues or questionable behavior before I've been on for about an hour and gotten a coffee polished off.

I recognize that mostly, you don't know how long I've been awake unless you were on when I came onsite in the morning, but PLEASE act like I'm a morning grouch whose day you'd rather not ruin -or FEAR ruining, if it comes to that- and don't pull ANYthing while I'm not on at night.  Seriously; I'm asking people to work with me on a problem I can't help - and failure to respect that boundary adds to your sins crimes when you are bad overnight.  -And I will henceforth count 'bad overnight' in my deliberations, because it's got to stop.

So be bad when I'm wide awake, and you'll find me a lot more reasonable.  Please do not mistake me delaying action first thing while I know I'm not very rational for forbearance.

...You may be guessing that this has been a problem before more than once, and again just today; if so, you surmise correctly...

Unless there is stuff going on behind the scenes, I never see any posts or stuff that are problematic. Nor do you have a horde of insane idiots like a lot of other forums get. But, then again, I am not as easily offended as some folks get online.

Now, you get a lot more posters, yeah. But most of those forums have mod teams. It would not be on you. You would just be a dude behind a curtain using beard powers to resolve disputes with moderation and flora placement.

[Buster's Uncle]

-Problematic is relative.  You have seen some of it.  A lot looks different when you're in charge and worrying about the long-term and trying to balance a lot of complex factors w/ only hard work and beard powers you need to apply gently.

[Buster's Uncle]

Like some other policy announcements I've made in this thread, this is something that's sorta always been in my head, but not worked out completely, so only fair if I put it out there in public, so's nobody can claim it's secret rule.

We're a community, and we have a style.

This is all really covered by what I said long ago in Building a Community: act like an adult.

We're nerds, right?  Poor (/weak/no) social skills being one of the defining traits - or else we'd be cool regular people who happen to like gaming and SF, like we'd rather imagine.  But we're nerds in a nerd community, and that means we have to be patient and tolerant with/of each other and make allowances.  Most of us mean well.  Period.

But I have to ask everyone - pay a little attention to the room you're in, to the atmosphere, the general style of the members and posts.  Be different, sure -AC2 is diverse and cherishes diversity as interesting and edumacationable- but try to not make your difference anyone else's problem.  Be well-intentioned and try, and you'll get a lot of rope while I try to work with you.

-Obviously, I've still not gotten this crystalized enough in mah haid and need to at least sleep on it and try to articulate more precisely and clearly in the future.

It's part of a larger policy principal I call Serial Vexatious Poster; if you're managing to annoy enough people enough of the time, the management reserves the right to take action w/o need of other specific rule violation.  You have to be bad overall for the health/happiness community in our opinion, which is a mighty high bar of irritating-ness to hurdle.  Not to worry; I would never resort to this one in any situation where the offender does not know (s)he is in the doghouse far in advance.  It's really not much more than a catchall to help that much with shutting up &^%$#@! rules lawyers.

-So, if you're only sometimes Vexatious, you're in good company, and have nothing to worry about...

Well, it's finally happened, and I had to apply this rule.

I'm not happy about it -I would have been in serious danger of such a rule when I was a newb, deservedly so- but some people have enough sense to avoid breaking any obvious rule in any obvious way, but not enough sense to adjust to the forum culture where they are and stop being a constant problem.  It was bound to happen here, but that's scant comfort.

Sometimes, it's possible for everyone to have decent intentions, but the differences are irreconcilable and impossible to ignore.  I just HATE having to be the one pulling the trigger...

[Buster's Uncle]

A word about trolling -

It is possible to, in all innocence, offend one or many members without meaning to, and our policy here is to not overreact - trolling is partly a matter of intention, after all, and none of us are mind-readers.  (However, I, personally, was once a 13 year-old boy far too fond of merciless teasing IRL, and I fancy I know a lot of the tricks.)

However, once a certain behavior has proved provocative many times and shows no sign of abating, it can come to a point that intent no longer matters.  You (rhetorical you) knew you were griefing and didn't stop.  Then it can become trolling without meaning to.  Persons persisting in this categorical error will be dealt with accordingly.

(P.S.  Style counts.  You can get away with a great deal more if you are wise in your choice of victims [friends who can take it, mostly, not intense or outrageous enough to upset bystanders not in on the joke] and/or entertaining in execution.  We're here to entertain each other -and be entertained- after all.)

[Buster's Uncle]

[shakes head, sadly]  The things you wouldn't think it was necessary to make rules against...

Hacking the forum/the accounts of others, or at least the attempt to do so, is a death-penalty offense.  We have IP logs of pretty much everything odd that happens, and no sense of humor about that crap.