@mercy_: I agree that we don't get to ignore the rules. You cannot reasonably expect to not be modded if you put an f-bomb in the title of your post or you include an f-bomb in a reply to a mod or a thread that you know a mod is observing. So you cannot ignore the rule by behaving if the rule does not exist. However ignoring the rules is a straw man. It is not my position.
My position is that we are not obligated to follow the rules. We don't have to follow them just to follow them. Following the rules is simply a matter of risk vs reward now, because of the disappointing level of site performance. It is no longer a matter of respect because we have been treated extremely poorly.
If you can engineer a situation in which mods rare read your posts and as long as no one flags the post you are are free to f-bomb to your hearts content. It is not a matter of obligation or duty any longer, simply a matter of weighing the costs of getting caught vs the benefits of writing your posts the way you see fit.
There was a time in which I carefully followed every site rule that I knew about because I felt the staff made an effort to do the best they could do. The site was not perfect; it actually went down more in those days than it does now. But the site was miles better than it is now and more importantly the staff had not engineered a program that banned users for no fault of their own. (Spam is no excuse. Every large site in the world deals with spam and I've never seen a single one that deals with it this poorly.)
I didn't break the bond of mutually respectful behavior. The staff did. So now its broken. That's just the way it is.
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