An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
That's not a fair representation of it either, though. There's certainly something wrong if everyone in a thread is breaking the same rule, and only one person among them gets moderated for it (or one person gets 4 severity, and everyone else gets 0, as an example).
Yes, I agree completely; there would be something wrong if that ever were to happen. This is not the norm, and you have a right to complain if it happens, as it is absolutely unacceptable.
I would argue, however, that what has been presented in this thread is not the scenario you're describing. Moose made a "Don't do this" post which staxx's post ignored.
It doesn't have to be "enforce every rule with an iron fist" or "enforce some rules with an iron fist some of the time against some people". There is a more consistent, more fair way, which doesn't involve the word "iron fist" at all.
My reply was to Demon (whose reply was to Lanthanide) when he said it wouldn't be a problem if all of the rules were always enforced. My point was that the leniency provided is beneficial rather than detrimental, especially because context matters. We follow the spirit of the law: we won't necessarily enforce a rule just because it's there, and we won't necessarily allow something just because there isn't a specific rule against it.
Now, that being said, we are all different people with different ideologies; the staff tries to stay consistent, but it isn't always possible, and I personally appreciate your feedback when you feel one of us has made a mistake.
I feel that the staff should seriously consider implementing a policy where in these situations, instead of issuing severity and post deletions, they instead contact the person telling them what their offense is, and ask them to edit their post to adhere to the rules. I think severity should be given to people who are intending to cause harm to the site or its members; not to people who make unintentionally nonconstructive posts in Null topics, or people who are joking with other members, or people who accidentally double post (seriously?). All of these have happened recently, and received severity as a result, and I don't think that was necessary or helpful to anyone.
The original name for severity was the warning system, if I remember correctly. If you do something wrong, you get warned, and the warning is more severe if you were being malicious or intentionally violating the rules. Your idea of contacting is essentially warning the person to fix their offense, which is perfectly acceptable in some instances (we don't always have to use the severity system), but it is still a warning; the only difference is that it is not audited (which would be a bad thing for various reasons). The term "severity" is a poor description of how the system in place is supposed to work.
Moderating != handing out severity. I don't know the specific examples you mean by "all of these have happened recently," but in a lot of cases, no severity is given (common for double-posting), or the severity is revoked (and I can talk to you about a specific case you probably have in mind if you'd like about that). Repeat offenders usually get 1 severity (which is for the absolute "tiniest wrongdoing," which arguably should be used a lot of times when 0 severity is given instead) or more depending on the context.
Many of the moderators seem to be asking themselves "Can I justify this action with the rules?" rather than "Is this action necessary for the well-being of the site and its community?", when the latter question is the one that should be important.
Again, I agree. I try to take the latter approach myself.
Updating the moderation policy to take a more user-friendly approach might be a good way to not generate so much resentment among the users. If a moderator can't be bothered to contact the member with a few words on what they need to change in their post, then maybe the post isn't worth moderating in the first place.
Well, you may disagree with me on this point, but I think if a member cannot be bothered to make sure they're following the rules when they post, a PM and waiting for their response and/or action is being a bit generous for most situations. If someone makes a completely off-topic post that derails the topic, for example, a moderator's job is to correct that issue first, and then contact the person second. For cases where the post doesn't need immediate moderation, yes, there's no harm in going directly to the individual and notify them of the necessary change, and I think this should be the standard approach (especially for newer members).
I could argue that I specified why I voted other as well but I dropped that long ago. Essentially by deleting my posting and leaving my vote untouched as other you're kind of contradicting yourself. I still stand my ground that simply voting other and only posting "i voted [x]" without elaborating by saying "i voted [x] because..." still breaks the rules that you specifically quoted in the topic. So yes, if you feel it is ok to post "i voted [x]" then i agree the rules have to be amended to better portray the exceptions, but at current state i didnt do any different than multiple others and yet they were left untouched.
This is getting more into standards for topics with polls. There's a number of different forms of etiquette that aren't addressed in the rules, and maybe this topic would serve as a good discussion point for that:
1) Should it be standard that anyone answering the poll must also make a post explaining their choice?
2) Should it be standard to post if you've selected an "other" option that implicitly demands an answer of some kind? Should this be held to the same standard as #1?
3) Should members be answering polls of which they have no opinion or appropriate knowledge to answer?
My answer is that you shouldn't
have to post if you want to answer the poll. If you select "Other" and don't say what that "other" thing is, you're really leaving an incomplete answer, so I think you should provide your answer. However, I do not believe that you should be forced to explain your answer when no explanation is required for choosing the definitive options: you are simply completing your vote. As for the last question, I don't believe it to be important whether or not someone answers a poll, but it would probably be preferred by the one asking the poll to have genuine and accurate results. To pick an option without knowing your answer or doesn't reflect your true answer is being disingenuous, and selecting the "Other" option with an answer that is outside the scope of the question (in this topic's scenario, the scope of the question was which character is your favorite, and you answered with something that was not a favorite character) makes the poll inaccurate.
Not that I really care about polls (I think they're silly and pedantic, in the friendliest of terms). I have a feeling many people disagree with my answers to those questions regarding polls, and I think that's where the issue originates.