Regarding Private Messages
For those of you who haven't read RazorHeart215's LOVELY little goodbye thread (which had to remain closed because leaving threads aren't allowed ;)), we've had a little incident lately, in which members contacted the staff (One contacted BoB, and the other contacted me) regarding a problem they had with other users in the Private Messaging system.
First of all, I think that people are getting the wrong idea of the purpose of the staff here. We are the police--we're not mom and dad, and it's not always appropriate for us to get involved.
Now, this involved Private Messages. Notice the Private. Where there's a reasonable expectation of privacy, I feel constrained to respect that. In this case, both parties allowed the staff to see the messages in question, so warnings were issued to both parties due to their conduct.
Ultimately, though, what goes on in PMs is none of our business. I personally don't care if amenable members are swapping porn in PMs, as long as both parties are OK with it. The board has an ignore feature, and if somebody is harassing you via PM, then you can simply ignore them.
There are exceptions of course--but they're logical ones. If somebody threatens you over PM, and you have reason to believe it's serious, I'd appreciate notice, so that I can keep an eye on that person (I can't take action unless that person agrees to let me view their PMs, but I'd still like to be aware of potential problems in advance). You should also notify the police, because uttering threats is a felony in most countries. The staff will, of course, cooperate with police in such a matter. Professional courtesy, you see ;)
Another one is if staff are involved. Since users cannot ignore staffers, we must be held to a higher standard of behavior. If a moderator is needlessy rude or abusive, you *should* go over their head. As long as I'm an administrator, I will not put anyone on my ignore list, so you can come to me any time. (If I'm the problem, talk to Shlup) If all 3 admins are the problem, I suppose you'd have to go to Sean, but I haven't discussed this with him at this point, so my advice would be to keep on notifying moderators until somebody DOES resolve the issue.
If there are any questions, comments, or suggestions on anybody's part, I'd appreciate the feedback.
