In response to the latest vote, What would you change at Crossfire, and how would you change it, I've decided to write a column to express my personal opinion. All of the following is written from my subjective point of view and does not intend to offend or represent someone else's opinion.


First of all, I have to express the fact that I don't see a normal vote as an option to receive good suggestions and feedback for Crossfire.
Many people will just vote without putting thought into what they are actually clicking, and I'm also pretty sure many will click "The staff" simply because of the fact that they cannot agree with administrative decisions. We've seen drama as a response to a bunch of simple administration done (let's just remember the tears shed towards sol and baggiez as an example) and I believe a poll is the wrong way to go since it limits you on one option. I would greatly prefer a way to contact a responsible person with an E-Mail. The effort it requires, which is simply to open your E-Mail-Program or Website and type in the adress, is already enough to lure off most trolls.

That being said, I'll elaborate about two points that I believe are important.



Cheating policy


image: cheating


While there might be cheaters that sit through their ban and then are free to play again, we have all seen that it is not the case for most - "Once a cheater, always a cheater" applies for many, but not everyone. However, to play or not to play does not lie within Crossfire's responsibilities, and I believe that every CB ban doubled is quite an okay policy to go with.
On the other hand, with the search function currently being gone, I can not make research about the latest SLAC bustlist prominence actually being banned. Overall, I have a feeling that there's people going around who are ban evading or have actually not been banned.
However, this issue seems to be solved soon, as Krosan already said that things against multiaccounting will be done. For me, this concludes the cheating policy - I can't see where I can give constructive feedback to it, after all, supposedly the issues that I have seen are in the process of being fixed.



General policies


Since to some extent most points that I wanted to make outside the cheater's policy seem to be linked, they shall be put together as General policies.
The first thing that strikes my eye while browsing the site... Where are the rules? Right now, Crossfire surely does not give me the impression of actually having rules, but there actually are, hidden at the Posting Guidelines.

The only language allowed on Crossfire is English. Postings in other languages will be removed.
Seemingly, this only applies to news, articles and colums. Somewhere I've heard about journals being allowed in other languages if you tag them with the language beforehand, but if that is an actual rule, it seems to be cryptically hidden again. Therefore, I will freely assume it does not count for journals, and this rule seems to be working fine.


If a post is libelous, hateful, or obscene (not necessarily profane), the post will be deleted, and the poster notified. Further offenses may result in banning.
I do not see this happening. Half of the posts on Crossfire are hateful now. Make the rule clearer, since I've seen enough abusive and slanderous journals and comments to know that something isn't right here.


Posts promoting the initiation of violence, or racial hatred, or bigotry, will be deleted, and the poster notified. Further offenses may result in banning.
I'm interested in how many comments Crossfire has each day that go against the Jewish, the Polish, arabic and black people. This rule seems unclear, since "LOL POLAK PLANE CRASHED" and "nuke iceland" didn't seem to be neither racial hatred nor bigotry. When does this rule start to apply?


Posts that are obvious trolls will be deleted, and the poster notified. Further offenses may result in banning.
I have nothing more to add aside the fact that this rule is being completely ignored by both administrators and users.


Excessive advertising on this community site is not allowed.
This rule works fine, haven't seen advertising anywhere yet.




So what are you implying?
  • Instead of having grey zones in your rules, draw clear lines and enforce your rules properly.
  • Hire new administrators, even if it's just for a trial phase, to broaden the timezone that the content on Crossfire is watched and administrated.
  • If your posting guidelines prohibit trolling, enforce them. If not, remove the rule.
  • Add a rule against spamming to the posting guidelines.



Thanks for reading! :)