Welcome to October

[Adrian Malacoda]

and boy, do I have some things to talk about! First things first:

LAWNMOVERS
Group has been eliminated. Everyone in the lawnmovers group is moved back to normal members/member+.

FEUDS/RUDE s**t
I've been noticing fights between members pop up on the forums lately. I've been hesitant to intervene because it makes me look like I'm siding with one party, which I never do. However, I finally grew a backbone and decided that I had to do something. Therefore, from now on DO NOT START FIGHTS ON GCLF. Effective immediately all existing "feuds" between members and/or groups no longer exist on GCLF. I don't care who started each feud because I'm ending all of them. If you have "beef" with someone else, take it up outside of GCLF.

IF YOU SEE A RUDE, INSULTING, OR THREATENING POST IN A THREAD: REPORT it. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT BEEF YOU HAVE WITH ANYONE ELSE IN THAT THREAD. DO NOT BRING UP UNRELATED s**t IN THREADS. KEEP ON TOPIC.
IF YOU RECEIVE A RUDE, INSULTING, OR THREATENING PM: REPORT it. PMs CAN BE REPORTED TOO! The Staff will take matters into our hands after a report is received.
IF YOU RECEIVE A RUDE, INSULTING, OR THREATENING MESSAGE OFF OF GCLF (ANOTHER FORUM, INSTANT MESSENGER, ETC): It is not a GCLF issue. Block/ignore the person and, if on a forum, take it up with the Staff of that forum. GCLF will not be a party to any disputes you have with people outside GCLF.

If you are attacked in a thread, do not reply back and let Staff deal with it. You are the better person for not fighting back. You are allowed to reply to flame posts. However, if you do NOT FIGHT BACK, the offending party (i.e. the person who starts the fight) will receive a +45 on their Warn-o-Meter. If the thread degenerates into a flamefest, this decreases to +30 for the starter and +15 for each person who flames back (INCLUDING STAFF AND MEMBERS+).

GCLF is meant to encourage intelligent discussion about Pokémon games and the glitches thereof. Don't feud with other members, because it makes US as a community look like a bad community.

DISPUTES INVOLVING STAFF MEMBERS
If a Staff member gets into a fight with another member, either party should ask an uninvolved Staff member to weigh in, because this raises questions of power abuse and other things.

STAFF MATTERS vs PERSONAL MATTERS
Just to clarify: If a Staff member locks a thread, warns a user, or edits/deletes a post, it does not mean that the Staff member "hates" the user. The rules are cold and impartial. No one is off the hook.

A FRESH START
Due to the item on feuds and fighting, in order to sort of "turn the tables" I am immediately resetting ALL Warn-o-Meters down to ZERO and removing all negative karma/glitch power.

FORMERLY BANNED MEMBERS
A while back, the ban list was reset. Some of these formerly banned members have started to return. DO NOT pick on them, demonize, or throw s**t at these people due to being formerly banned. In many cases, these bans were years ago. They have certainly grown up by then, and if they haven't, they won't be around much longer.

SMF UPGRADE
Effective October 5, 2009, this forum will be upgraded to the latest Release Candidate version of SMF (2.0 RC1.2 at time of this post). At this time, several modifications will also be installed.

WIKI UPDATES
As you might know, data from all Melchior documents has been migrated to the wiki. Effective October 10th, this data will be formatted into a "_dex 2.0" listing like the GlitchDex. Around this time, plans for GlitchDex 3.0 will be drawn up. Project Phoenix is expected to go live before Halloween.

All of this is effective immediately unless otherwise stated.

Feel free to comment.

[Dark Eternal Champion]

My bad. Won't happen again Abwayax! 

[Carl Miller]

If you are attacked in a thread, do not reply back and let Staff deal with it. You are the better person for not fighting back. You are allowed to reply to flame posts. However, if you do NOT FIGHT BACK, the offending party will receive a +45 on their Warn-o-Meter. If the thread degenerates into a flamefest, this decreases to +30 for the starter and +15 for each person who flames back (INCLUDING STAFF AND MEMBERS+).

Should be "increases".  And why does the starter get 15 less WOM if people fight back?

e: Also, who is the "offending party", the starter or the guy that doesn't fight back?

[Adrian Malacoda]

No, it's decreases (from 45 to 30). The intent is to discourage people from replying to flame posts; to let the moderators moderate. 45 is way past the threshold for "post moderation" status. Of course, if this doesn't work as intended than it can be amended. The basic idea is that fighting fire with fire = too much fire, however, you can call in the fire department (the staff) to put out the fire before it grows out of hand.

The "offending party" is the starter.

[Mutou Yami]

I guess all of this new rules, whatever might help, but there are a few people on here who have a habit of starting s**t/fights. I won't say names, but normally some people will "fight back", as most would fight back as it's part of the human instincts, which is to fight back. But yeah, some times when something goes right, but tends to go "wrong" when something happens.

[Papa Doc]

This is alrigh. Also, you should also add getting into other peoples lives, or being nosy to be against the rules, I serioulsy believe this creates more problems than flaming. Im just suggesting it, for those who come here a lot, I may not be friends with a lot of people here anymore, but I don't want the same thing that happened to me to happen to them, its just not cool having someone get all up in your case and b***h at you because they don't agree with your choices/lifestyle. Hope I helped.

[Party Poison]

Can't wait for that SMF upgrade; now I'll finally be able to put spoilers in my signature!

Also, some new rules are already being broken again; look at page 2 of 'mmm doges' (located in the Introductions board).


EDIT: Just forgot to say great job Abwayax. This is a great way to address some problems we've been having lately.
EDIT 2: Maybe you should put the decrees about flamewars in the rules.

[Mutou Yami]

Well, all of my forums have something called a "Spam Room", where people who have a habbit of spamming, using stupid "l33t", or any of that crap but still trying to stop post counts going up, haven't seen anything to stop it yet.

[Adrian Malacoda]

This is alrigh. Also, you should also add getting into other peoples lives, or being nosy to be against the rules, I serioulsy believe this creates more problems than flaming. Im just suggesting it, for those who come here a lot, I may not be friends with a lot of people here anymore, but I don't want the same thing that happened to me to happen to them, its just not cool having someone get all up in your case and b***h at you because they don't agree with your choices/lifestyle. Hope I helped.

I think "bitching at someone because they don't agree with your lifestyle" falls under "rude, insulting, or threatening posts/PMs" which would therefore be disallowed. If people give you grief because of how you choose to live your life, report the post/PM in question. This is meant to stop all kinds of harassment.

This was mainly meant to be a "let's get on with our lives" rule. Many of us are still stuck in arguments that we've had for years. I think it's seriously dragging down the forum. It's time to bury the hatchet, all of us.

[Mutou Yami]

Peachy and my history, I burried a long time ago, but of course when he came back, he brought it all back up when I left it for dead long ago. Move on Peachy. I'm against anything drug realted because I lost someone who meant a lot to me when I was 5 before he became dick, he died from drug over dose, and it's why I'm against anything drug related, but I'm willing to leave my personal things outside of GCL, but I don't fancy you spreading s**t again because you won't let go of the past Peachy, it's dead it's gone, move on. But yeah, doing something about "flamewars", would be a nice idea.

[tachi]

What if you didn't mean to offend somebody?
There should be something for misunderstandings, shouldn't there?

[Missing? NO!]

Great, this should hopefully stop bad behavior.

[Brocco Guy]

I feel like this should be in a different topic, but why don't we have banned? Or do we?

[Adrian Malacoda]

Because no one is currently banned. The rank exists, but no one holds it.

Edit: About misunderstandings. If you apologize and admit you made a mistake, we won't be assholes about it. I'd like to think we're reasonable staff.

[Papa Doc]

You know yami. I could tell you what I should tell you, but Ill just say this, I give up. explaining my situation to you is futile, you will just simply never ever understand. So Im sorry I ever gave you s**t, Im sorry you believe that I will die from smoking mary jane, Im sorry I actually ever tried to explaining anything to you.