I'm going to have a few words about this now. Some things for mods are very easy to resolve like spammers, obvious end users and the like. I ban them with a message and they are gone. New members the same although it's rare to get someone sign up and go in with all guns blazing. Established members are a lot more difficult as they have now a known personality and get a bit of leeway. Really I should just go by the rules but they are grey themselves. I've listed part of them below with a few notes relevant to the thread I pulled yesterday.
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Forum Rules
All members are to respect the thoughts, opinions, and the right to forum use of all other members. Any personal discrepancies between members should either be dealt with outside of the site, or through site staff.
Needs to be done more. People have differing opinions and some people need to remember that. It's a forum and people will disagree, deal with it without getting personal
No End Users
These forums are for either current computer technicians, or soon to be computer technicians. We do not provide computer help to any non-technicians.
This isn't so clear cut. The second part 'soon to be technicians' is hard to define as what is everybodys idea of 'soon to be'?
Minimum Age of 16
Technibble is a community of professionals. We require our members to be at least 16 years of age.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone is 
No Spamming. This Includes:
When posting a response to a thread, it must add to the overall discussion value of the thread.
Posts which do not adhere to the boundaries of the thread posted in.
Flame Posts
If you spot a spam post, please report it by clicking the button which appears in the top right of every post. However, please do not post that you reported the thread in the actual thread as it more than doubles the amount of work the moderators have to do.
Probably not reacting to posts is the best idea here and just report it. Just because you report it doesn't mean it will be deleted, edited etc
No Advertising
You cannot post advertisements of any sort in any forum. This includes products, services or websites that you would directly or indirectly benefit from in any way.
I let this one go sometimes with long standing members as we know their overall input is good
Exceptions to this rule (may be objected to which is at the discretion of the moderators):
Signatures - If you are posting good, useful posts then you may include your own website in the signature of your message.
This is broken often but again within reason I let it go. Everyone look at your own signature and see. To me the rule is that one link to your website is ok.
Infraction System
We run on a "3 strikes and your out" system here on Technibble. If you break the rules you will be given a "strike". If you reach 3 strikes you will permanently banned from the forums.
Rarely used in fact the last time I used them I got pms about the fairness and with drew them both! Again not easy to administer.
Forum Guidelines
This forum is a place for professionals and we expect our users to act like professionals.
I don't need to say more here. The majority of members adhere to this.
Please observe correct spelling and grammar. The members here don't want to have to translate what you are saying before they can help you. Any sort of lazy SMS/Instant Messenger writing such as "becuz u sed he reli fixd it" is heavily frowned upon.
Doesn't happen often and gets on my nerves as well if used. Fortunately most of us here are of the elder type and didn't grow up with text talk so our habits are good.
Remember forum members are not police. Either share your wisdom, ask legitimate questions or please stay silent. If you have an issue that you would like to bring to a moderators attention, report it.
This is where we fall down and what started the problem thread I pulled. The OP didn't give enough information or their methods so it got a few reactions to it. What should happen is nothing should be said the poster of the thread gets no help and might realise that they need to give more information. Maybe I should lock the thread until they do, I don't know.
Remember that everyone has differing levels of business and technical knowledge. Some people are very new to the business and are here to learn more, others are very experienced have been operating 10 years. Do not flame a user for not knowing a certain topic, they are here to learn.
Give people a chance to learn
Do not ask for technical help without having done basic diagnosis first.
If you are after technical help, ask good questions by telling us what operating system are you using, what were you doing at the time when it happened and what have you done so far etc.. This will increase your chances of getting answered and having your problem fixed quicky.
Ok this should happen more for posters and often starts the reaction off.
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You can all see where the problems begin and continue just purely looking at the rules. To get this on a more positive note, how can we improve on the rules of the forum? Post your ideas. Some of the reaction is frustration I know but lets get something out of this thread and Bryce can have a peruse of it. As regards the comment that mods should do more I agree but time is of the essence for us running a business. After this i'm out of the door for the morning so editing yesterdays thread will have to wait and like most I pull never make it back to the forums.
This is how we separate the dads-garage techs from the pros.
