Thread:Randomouscrap98/@comment-16325373-20140703145842/@comment-9531161-20140705232704

Dr. Satl, I feel like if we banned people who caused problems permanently, nearly everyone would be banned.

I know the chat isn't all bad; it has a good side too. The only solution we've had so far that sort of works is immediate deletions (without warnings) of in-wiki drama pages. If we catch them fast enough, we can get rid of them before they cause problems. However, deleting drama posts just makes the people involved angrier most of the time. In my opinion, although this technically fixes in-wiki drama, it only serves to further the problems people have with each other, and creates negative feelings towards the administrators.

Chat moderators need to be objective, level-headed, understanding, and serious. It's fun when chat moderators are silly and joke around, but when it comes time to enforce the rules, people aren't going to take you seriously. Also, chat moderators can't have different ideas of what is unacceptable behavior. When users are banned for something they've done without punishment before, it creates strong negative feelings towards the moderators, and it'll cause even more drama due to the "injustice". Even if we have a solid set of rules for the chat, rules can still be interpretted differently by different people. For instance, if we had a super strict rule along the lines of "All chat must be about PTC", who's to say whether a chat about C++ is valid? Some people might think that talking about Megaman 2 breaks the rules, but we have an MM2 port on PTC.

This is why I feel like the chat isn't a good fit for this community. People need to understand each other, accept the differences between themselves and everyone else, and learn to understand their own emotions and the usually small scope of the situation before a chat room can go smoothly. We could throw all the moderators we could muster at the chat, but it won't fix the problems people have with each other.