I will apologize (something I rarely do) for 1) not understanding the way you were using the term political issue and not realizing that you were talking about my advocacy of smoking as opposed to discussing how lobbying works to change things (which is what I thought you were meaning by political issues which is how I associated the use of the phrase based in the social constructs that affect me and 2) not taking my questions to th mod forum first, I honestly had no idea this place existed (but think it is pretty brilliant actually).

Awesome post, thanks. It's unfortunate that the disconnect occurred. I'll still take a look later to see what may have been different between the 2 topics you brought up.

Please understand that the politics/regulations thing is secondary to the disrespect you showed other posters. If you should be apologizing to anyone for anything, that's what it should be. I'm not nearly as concerned about the other stuff.

I deleted the posts regarding suggestions that the casino allow smoking because my understanding is that it's a state law that bans it and therefore the casino's hands are tied. The proper forums for that sort of thing would be Politics or maybe even Poker Legislation. If that's wrong somehow, let me know.

Thanks Lattimer!

Rapini, I apologize for my use of personal attacks as well. Though I was provoked, I forgot the lesson of my glory days on the gridiron where the guy who retaliates always gets the penalty even when both parties are wrong. I shouldn't have gotten defensive and retaliated and just let you perform your role as I know you and all the mods are competent. I hope I can continue to make my thoughts known about fairness at the poker room by posting on this forum.

While I will disagree with your perspective on the smokingg issue and think their hands are no more tied on smoking than the canera regs. While I still believe a little lobbying would go a long way, I am willing to abandon the issue in that thread until I am told it is apolitical. Thanks guys.

Thanks very much for your understanding.

I don't see a problem with you using Regional Communities for discussion of that either if you'd like.

New rules and guidelines for B&M are now in place: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/27...-03-a-1431611/

It is much less restrictive, similar to how the LLSNL forum is run. I wanted to do it Tuesday so people would think it were a joke but I didn't get around to it

+1

To give some background on how we arrived at the changes... following another round of complaints about the strict rules in place and a resulting user punishment, there was lengthy discussion in the mod forum about whether it was justified or not. What resulted from this discussion was an experiment: For a period of time (which ended up being Feb through mid-March) the B&M mods would only respond to post reports; we would take no action on our own when we saw B&M rules violations (site-wide rules violations exempted). This allowed us to see what the B&M posters actually wanted as far as what's allowed/disallowed.

The people have spoken

will M&B now be combined and discontinued

I just finished reading the new Rules Sticky. Looks good to me.

Hope it works out well for everyone.

Lee

The new, combined forum will be called B&M&M&B, with subfora:

B&B : discussing artsy accommodations near casinos

M&M : discussing topics such as the superiority of the old tan color over the metallic looking blue. Also allows discussion of white artists in black culture.

B&B&M : Boring, Boring, More Boring: discussions of "is this hand dead..."

B&M: now called "Buildings and Maintenance", discussions of which casinos have the best, most secure, and closest to the card room parking lots. Also discussions of quality of bathrooms

M&B: now called "Meals and Babes". Table side dining and eye-candy quality of waitresses.

M&M&B: "Masochists, Meanies and Beasts" -- general bashing of other players, dealers, Floor, card room managers, 2+2 Mods. Posting here earns you an instant perma-ban.

More to follow...

Clever and very funny, Angus

Oh, good! I always thought these former guidelines were being interpreted in too constrictive of a fashion (though the effort was always well-intended). This should improve the forum immensely IMO.

Awesome.

I do not think this is a positive thing. However, hopefully it will turn out to not be particularly negative.

No to combined, yes to discontinued.

If you read the new guidelines, you should get the sense that the things that were really wrong with a capital W will continue to be wrong with a capital W (e.g., outing non-famous people). What's changing is we're going to rely more on the community to report to us when your fellow members make ****ty posts or disrespect other posters instead of being as proactive as we've been in the past.

So if the community is vigilant, standards will remain high.

To add to what Rapini said, here's an example:

Let's say this took place in the MD Live casino thread.
Poster 1: "They need more TVs in the room so everyone has a view. People will want to watch the Ravens games."
Poster 2: "No big deal the Ravens are gonna suck this year anyway."

Under the old system, we would've removed post 2. Now we won't. Some low/off topic posts are allowed. Now, if that ended up sparking 10 posts about how the Ravens are going to do, we're going to jump in and recommend they take the discussion somewhere more appropriate (Maryland thread in RC or the Ravens thread in SE). If someone actually complains about the discussion then we'll definitely put the brakes on it. So it's going to be up to you (the community) to help dictate how far that goes.

Or another example that a lot of the Foxwoods regs hated that action was taken: Some time ago someone on here hit the BBJ and stated as much, and a dozen or so congrats and one-off joke posts followed. Those were removed due to being low content, however now they'd be able to stay.

Those are the types of changes we feel the majority of posters in here will view as positive.

I always feel like a narc when I hit the Report Icon.

IMO, when M&B was created, the modding on B&M lightened up a good deal, and since then, the modding styles on the two forums have not actually been all that different, as far as I could judge, and so this move makes sense to me.
I think it will be positive if most of the good threads and posters from M&B migrate over to B&M; there has been some good discussion there, but it gets very little traffic compared to B&M.
OTOH, if B&M really starts to degenerate toward an (almost) unmodded cesspool, that would be very negative. But I trust this will not take place.

locked, or deleted? It would make much more sense to lock it than to delete it.

I have no preference between those two, but Mat Sklansky is probably the one to make that decision. Maybe there should be a poll in M&B to see if those users would visit the locked forum regularly.

Can't old M&B posts just be merged into B&M?

I don't think this is really a big deal. M&B is a relatively slow moving forum. I'd be happy to move the threads to B&M. For the most part, they'll fall off the first page anyway.

However, I don't mod B&M so it is up to the mods here.

As much as people thought M&B was a wild west environment, it fits the current standards of B&M. The reality is virtually all posters in M&B are good posters that aren't looking to troll or post crap. We didn't put up with it either. If there is a post that is just so awful that it couldn't possibly be accepted in B&M, let me know and I'll delete it before moving the thread.

Hopefully these changes will bring the life back to these forums. Thanks for trying to improve things.

Yikes, Angus! Wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?? Why the attitude?

This new method may work, or may not. Let's give it a chance though before getting our shorts in a knot. Shouldn't we?

Lee