Hey everyone, it's your favourite (German shepherd) watchdog Frie coming with a quick announcenemt: We (= the moderators) have noticed that the atmosphere in the forums has changed for the worse over the past weeks/months and we decided to react to this now:
On behalf of the other moderators I would like to kindly remind everyone of our posting guidelines. These guidelines do not exist for the sake of formality, they were created with good reason and intentions. So next time you post a reply or create a thread please read and recall what's written there before hitting the 'submit' button, it might make you rethink your post and change it. Even if you have been around for a while, refresh your memory and read them. Better yet, read them now.
Out of all these guidelines you should especially take what's being mentioned in section "2: Criticism" to heart, as it seems this rule has been neglected the most and is the number one cause for many discussions going downhill rather quickly recently (mainly in section "Gaming Discussion").
Main offenders are being and will be issued with warnings, as the moderators will surely monitor posts more thoroughly from now, so don't be surprised about mail in your inbox. Now before anyone feels threatened and panics, let me assure you, that this won't affect 99% of the posts around here, but we feel that getting rid of this small percentage of posts (that don't take our guidelines into account and drag down the mood) will have a big impact on many people's reading experience (for the better).
One last note: Of course our guidelines aren't perfect and in some cases can be construed differently, depending on the case and the moderator handling the matter. Some rule violations aren't as evident as "posting pornographic material" for example (contains penis yes /no)...just be sure that none of us likes to tell off somebody, but every now and then we need to friendly remind other posters of these guidelines, to maintain a friendly, welcoming atmosphere and an intelligible culture of debate.
That's all, thanks for reading!