New Rules

Ok....
So what was the point of all this? Why did we go ruleless for 4 days and why did we stop it before a week?
Well first as to why I stopped early.
We were losing too many users, too many complaints and the intention of the experiment wasn't to kill the channel userbase.

So what was the point then?

Well there were two points really.

1. I wanted to make an obvious demonstration of how much of a mess the channel becomes when we kill all the rules. This demonstration I believe worked well. In merely a few days our userbase dropped by an average of about 50. Imagine if this system kept on for a month? And regardless of the average number of users dropping the quality of users drops when their are no rules. More people come in advertising cybersex, more girls get harrassed in message, and generally we started to draw the same type of user that is drawn to sex channels.

2. There was some question about which ops I could trust, which ops really believed in the rules and really cared about the channel and which ops merely wanted access and could not be trusted to monitor the channel. This part of the experiment was perhaps even more successful then the first. As a result the following ops will no longer be operators in this channel.

TopDog
SampleMyPeanuts
Phreakazoid
Insertable

Honestly, i'm pretty proud of most of you, with the exception of the above four and perhaps one or two others most of you did not take advantage of the past few days, and a surprising number of you protested the move to no rules. The above group is still free to join teens as long as they follow the new rules which will be posted below. If they choose not to follow these rules they will be treated as any other user.

The only perm bans that will be added is Flag and asinine, whom I will expect to see banned onsite. Yes this will be difficult, but it's worked successfully on far worse trouble makers than him and it will work again.

Now some of you may be saying it's unfair to say no rules and then punish them for breaking the rules. However, I will give a brief explanation. I think the simplest way to put it is to use an old example. When your in a store and you see a candybar do you not steal it because you believe stealing is wrong, or do u not steal it because your afraid of being caught? I'm tired of ops who don't believe in the rules and follow them only because they want to say they have 100 access in #teens. There are many people who frequent teens who do care about the rules and do care about the channel, and I'd prefer to give them a shot at ops.

So all that said the New rules for #teens are.

Rules for the Users and ops.

1. No Flooding - Flooding = 3 lines or more of repeating or text intended to be a flood. Popups are not flooding unless they exceed 5 lines.

2.. No Spamming - This includes private message and channel. THis includes spams for other networks/channels/script ads/websites. Use common sense if someone just pastes a url in channel cuase he's talking to someone and wants them to see his picture, thats not an ad.

3. C*nt and p*ssy are not to be allowed in teens. Why? These words have particularly strong sexual context. Many girls find them offensive and harrassing, seeing these words in channel immediatly causes many users to leave, this has been proven time and time again. It should also be noted that generally these words are only used by people intending to cause trouble or offend someone else in channel, nothing is to be gained by allowing them.

4. Racism/excessive religious Insults. This should be obvious, the internet is home to people of all nationalities and religious beliefs. This does not mean that racism and religion cannot be discussed in channel, however if a user intentionally uses someones religion/race as a means of harrassment it will not be permitted. Violation of this rule is perhaps the fastest way to offend and lose users and needs to be well enforced.

5. #Teens is not a sex channel. It is a chat channel. Thus cybersex and sexual activity in channel is not allowed. This is not to say that innuendo isn't allowed, it's not to say that people can't flirt, it is to say that descriptive sex acts are not to be displayed in channel. For example. (Joe lix chelsey's cheek) would be fine. (Joe puts his touge between chelsey's legs) would not. Again use common sense I think this is petty strait forward.

Rules for the Ops.

1. Kick first ban second except for instances of flooding and spamming. Warn first when appropriate.

2. Bans must be enforced. If an op bans a user and that user evades all ops online must enforce that ban until it expires. Ie: If an ops sets a ban that lasts for 2 hours and leaves after 20 minutes, the ban is to be enforced until the op either removes it or the 2 hours is up.

3. Do not idle when opped. If you know you may be gone in excess of 15 minutes please deop or voice yourself.

4. Do not deop yourself if you are watching the channel and their are less than 2 ops opped. There should always be 2 ops opped if possible to make sure the users can see that the channel is being watched.
5. Voice has become too much of a pain to deal with. From this point on NO one is to be voiced except for people in the database. This is without exception and will be enforced.

The rules in #teens have always been pretty strait forward and have always allowed far more then the usual large #teens channel on any other network. There are only a few words that are restricted and only a few actions which are restricted, these rules are for the best of the channel and have been developed over a period of three years. I think the majority of you can now see the nessecity for them if you were unsure before and if we all work together we can undo fairly easily the loss in userbase we have suffered over the past few days. To the majority of the ops who did act appropriatly and had to suffer through all this I appreciate your patience and dedication, it won't be forgotten =:)

Mark/Aaron