Hello. My name is BlueSpeeder, an administrator of the wiki, and today I would like to discuss perhaps the most controversial topic that has popped up on the wiki lately: the harsh, reinforcement of chat rules that are seemingly "new", but are not. It has come to my attention that there has been a gigantic amount of opposition to a lot of these "rules", and thus I would like to discuss each rule and see if we should abolish all or some of the rules. Read this entire thread thoroughly before making you statement, since it would be greatly appreciated.
The Rules
First off, adding a description for links. Let me elaborate: while this is very helpful on letting users on chat know what they're clicking, many users (and myself included) find this rule a pain to follow, simply because it requires us to make a description for a link about something as little as a ten second video. Not only is this not necessary, but it's rather pointless, considering you can just click the link to observe what the link is. And with the recent allowance of users linking videos with swearing, I firmly believe that users should only make descriptions for links if they link something with swearing. Like I said, this is the most complained rule implemented lately, and it's better to get the main things out of the way first.
Second is the censoring the entire swear word. While this was touched upon by Myself 123[1], it never went anywhere. However, it's been more or less two weeks since these rules have been implemented on the chat rules on this wiki, and there's been plenty of complaining about this one. As Myself has stated, "if people are offended by the idea of swearing, then we might as well ban it outright, but that you [would] be ridiculously constricting on the community."[2] I believe Myself has a valid point: why should we censor the entire word rather than only censoring part of it? It's not like we're not thirteen year-old teenagers, right? Oh wait, we are. I believe we should revert back to how the swearing rule was prior to the updated policy changes, and I know that I'm not the only one that firmly agrees with this.
Oh, and one more thing about the rule: why must thirteen year-old teenagers be forced to not to even mention drugs, sex, politics, religion, and such? Before you write a storm of words, let me explain: I propose that we essentially loosen those rules up a bit. Like, not to where we absolutely cannot mention them, but rather we can mention that, but maybe have some sort of limit on to how long we can mention that. Seriously: outside of the wiki, yes, I comprehend that we must remain a drug/sex-free wiki. Completely understandable. But on chat, where only thirteen year-old teenagers can access the chat feature? That seems rather strict, don't you think?
Other rules (such as the emotional dumping ground rule) is a positively accepted rule on the chat, and therefore will not be discussed unless someone wants to abolish it. That's all I have to say about the rules, but this thread isn't finished yet.
Another Thing
I want to make this very clear: we need to have community consensus for anything major that an administrator and/or bureaucrat is performing. It doesn't matter if it's "administrator discretion", it matters that you're not being a "god" among the users and changing the rules or removing the emoticons for your own well being without any foreword or mentioning. Not only is that hasty, but that also means that you're attempting to demolish/build upon something to your own liking but it may or may not be a cup of tea to anyone else. I propose that, for now on, everything similar to the events of removing the emoticons or adding chat rules without community consensus MUST have community approval beforehand.
And before you start, I'm aware that administrators can add emotes for themselves and other users at anytime. That's fine, because you know what? That's minor. Removing all of the emoticons is not. - BlueSpeeder - Message Wall 23:32, December 29, 2014 (UTC)