A question for the ages

[Yamaneko]

Why would anyone come back?

[Shlup]

A few ridiculous people ruined it for everyone. No fuss.

Besides, you shouldn't've left in the first place!

[Rainecloud]

Over at FFRepublic, they have a sub-forum devoted to returning members. It's called the "Farplane Abyss". I think it's a pretty good idea, and it's somewhere for these members to let everyone know they're back. Of course, certain exceptions would be people like myself and Rirse, who leave on a regular basis. Whereas Rirse leaves because he's an idiot, I left twice because I couldn't afford my Internet connection, once because my cat decided to urinate on my hard drive, twice when I became bored of the Internet and a further three times when Shlup turned down my repeated requests for an all-expenses paid trip to my bed.

I think it would be nice for returning members to have this opportunity - if their reasons for returning were acceptable and honest. If they leave and return on a regular basis, they could either: I) Be banned from the returning members forum, II) Have their signature/avatar changed to something ridiculous in order to mock and humiliate them (IE - changing Rirse's avatar to a symbolic boomerang would be excellently clever stuff), or III) Ban them forever because you're sick of them.

[Shlup]

Wait. What? *dies*

I so don't want any new forums for those kinds of things.

[Rainecloud]

Fair enough. We'll just continue to use the Video Game Music/TSW Forum.

Nobody mods in there, anyway.

[Cz]

Why not simply have people add messages in their sig or profile, telling people that they're away? If anybody actually cares enough to wonder where they are, they'll simply check their profile/sig and find out.

It's better than just disappearing, but doesn't waste space like a leaving thread

Alternatively, you could ban people from leaving. But that might be rather difficult to enforce.

[eestlinc]

i say if your account got deleted and you have to reregister, then you are a newbie again.

[Mr. Graves]

^ Good call.

[escobert]

I agree with Eest

[BrittyGoesMow]

oh it doesn't matter all that much. :P

and I had to leave because my account got deleted, and... other things. ha
but I don't plan on leaving for a while.

[RSL]

Yeah, I hate to beat a dead horse (well, I've never tried it actually, so maybe I would like it. Though I can't really see myself liking it. I mean, I wouldn't like beating a live horse, so why would I like beating one that is dead? What point would it serve? And, depending on how long the horse had been dead, it might stink just a bit. So yeah, I probably do hate it.) but we really did have these types of threads flooding general chat in the past. Most of them were of the "I'm leaving for 3 days" and "I'm back after 3 days" variety, but we decided to just put a halt on it completely.

It's nothing against you Britty, and we're all estatic that you decided to return, but we have to sort of stay consistent on enforcing the rules, or the official EoFF staff supervisors will cause us all sorts of grief. It happened earlier this week and I'll tell you, I'm just all out of energy after that. I had to cancel a trip to Missouri (and I really was looking forward to it) so that I could re-evaluate what I can do to better myself as a Cid's Knight.

So, welcome back to EoFF, Britty! I hope you enjoy your stay.

[Del Murder]

What the hell is in Missouri anyway?

[Yamaneko]

What isn't in Missouri?!

[RSL]

If you haven't been to Missouri, you haven't lived.

[Del Murder]

I see. Sucks you weren't able to go, then.