Welcome to Gaia! :: DO NOT QUOTE RULE-BREAKING POSTS | Forum

After a recent spate in which moderators have had to delete not just posts which are breaking the rules, but also a series of posts that quote the rule breaking posts, we have decided to institute a new rule.

To illustrate the need for this, I have just had to clean out a thread in which a user's whole post history had to be deleted, taking about 10 minutes, and then every single individual who quoted the user's posts then had to be deleted, taking about 30 minutes; I eventually decided to just trash the threads involved. THANKS GUYS.

Do NOT quote posts which break the rules.

This means that you do not quote them to say "reported", it means that you do not engage a troll in casual conversation, particularly where that conversation is off-topic, and you do not create a series of goatse posts which then have to be deleted (as if one post wasn't bad enough). Doing anything like this will result in your being in breach of this rule.

The basic story is that if someone is breaking the rules, ignore them and leave them alone. That way you "starve the troll", and you also make our lives a lot easier.

We are currently in discussions on how to handle this in terms of punishment, but it is likely that we will decide to apply the rules to the people quoting the rule breaking posts in a similar manner to the person who originally broke the rules. ie, if you don't want to get banned for what someone else has done, don't quote them. For the time being, gross breaches of this rule will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

If you have any questions, PM an ED moderator.