I want to say something about our Forum Rules (see the link at the top).
We've been around for 18 months or so and never posted any rules. The rules you see are pretty much what we had posted in our mods-only forum to give them some guidance. We posted them for the first time for everyone to see about 2 weeks ago, because one of our posters wanted to know our official rules/guidelines.
The first rule covers spammers, basically. They're not here to join the community, make friends, and post about sports. We've occasionally had a poster come to the site to do nothing but stir up shit, had a reputation for making the exact same kind of thread everywhere else he posted, etc. To date, we've banned ONE person for this latter reason, and we gave him multiple chances to come back and try to be honorable. We've banned every spammer who's come along and posted shoe ads or viagra ads and that kind of thing.
The second rule is our most important rule, IMO. It simply states that we try to get along, even if we don't agree with one another or even dislike one another. This is simply a sports forum and is supposed to be fun. We have no issue with taunting, baiting, and that kind of thing, as long as it's not of a personal nature. Public figures are fair game; teams, players, owners, managers, writers, and so on. Other posters are not. It is a part of sports for SF Giants fans to hate the Dodgers and vice versa, we're not going to squash that kind of speech. To date, we've banned ZERO people for violating this rule.
The third rule is strongly related to rule #2. Our staff is unpaid, and they contribute a lot of time and energy toward making the site good. Their interest is S2's best interest, which is absolutely making this place fun for everyone. Nobody on our staff is to have a god complex or otherwise abuse their powers; they're here to facilitate everyone else using the software we provide for the greatest enjoyment of everyone. So we ask that you show them respect. To date, we've banned ZERO people for violating this rule.
The fourth and fifth rules are also related to rule #2. As you can see, we are about respect. We realize there are a lot of people who know one another and because of this familiarity, you may tease one another or taunt one another in a friendly way. We don't frown on this at all, as long as nobody is truly disrespected. It's something of a judgment call on our part, admittedly, but we're going to side with you, the posters over our own judgment almost all the time. To date we've banned ZERO people for violating these rules.
The sixth rule is provided so we can try and keep people from getting in trouble at work or school (or anywhere else) for simply looking at the site. Generally this means no pornography or links to porn sites that someone might click on not knowing. We have no issue with people swearing; we have a very few words in our profanity filter (just words considered hate speech). Although some may consider these words to be not work safe, we figure someone has to be right up to your screen to even see the words. We will label threads with "NOT WORK SAFE" so you can judge whether to open them on your own. We'll label videos that have similar words or otherwise content that some might find objectionable so you can decide to play them or not. Beyond that, we're not here to fight with you over things like masked cursing and the like. We're all adults for the most part and know what the words mean and likely use them ourselves. No big deal. To date, we've banned ZERO people for violating these rules. If all someone does is swear, then it may violate rule #1 (being honorable, not stirring up shit).
The seventh rule restates our no flame war policy. Specifically, you can say the content of a post is bad, but don't call the poster names. Again, to date ZERO posters banned.
The eight rule might be considered our most controversial, since it gives us all the leeway we need to deal with people who claim to be following the rules to the letter, yet are otherwise making the site not fun for everyone else. We simply cannot conceive of all the ways people may seek to annoy everyone else, so we need some sort of blanket policy to cover those situations if they arise. The kinds of things this rule covers is stalking, constantly posting off topic in multiple threads and deemed to be deliberate for the purposes of annoying everyone or a specific poster, posting many one line posts in a thread (another form of spamming) which makes it not fun for people to read those threads, editing over a staff member's edits, and that kind of thing. The enforcement of this rule is generally for our staff/mods to edit the posts or delete the offending posts. To date, we've banned ZERO posters for violating this rule.
In total, we've banned one poster and 75 spammers. That's it.
I hope this makes it clear to everyone what we're about. We're incredibly lenient, not about mods with god complexes, and trying to avoid banning people. Our philosophy is derived from a Web 2.0 concept called Radical Trust - we are placing radical trust in you, our posters.
If you have questions, this thread is open so feel free. If you prefer, PM a staff member. If you have an issue with any staff member, PM an admin. We're here to serve you.
