So, some background on mod philosophy

note the not-a-mod account; this is chatter about philosophy, not statements of forum policy

Basically, I have seen a lot of forums work out really badly by trying to make everything nice. Everything isn't always nice. People disagree, sometimes vehemently. People get mad. And talking shit out has worked a lot better than demanding people pretend nothing's up.

I have also seen really strict and formalized rules fail atrociously. So. Atrociously. I've seen someone try to ask a mod a question about a typo-level error in a message, and end up banned, permabanned, banned from making new accounts, and even other users get warnings or bans for mentioning not knowing where that user went, as a result purely of "following every rule literally no matter what".

So basically: Personal judgment and openness to criticism or suggestions as a general baseline seems to have potential.

I hate pretty much every "warning" system I've seen. "Screw up N times and you're gone" sucks. I'd rather work with people. For instance, XF can put a user on "post moderation", where things they want to post get put in a queue and approved later. First time I tried a feature like that, we turned a user who regularly sent people obscenity-laden demands that they kill themselves by performing anatomically-improbable acts into a fairly mellow participant. As soon as they couldn't send things on impulse when they had a freakout, they almost-entirely stopped -- and the remaining messages got eaten by moderation. It worked out.

The presence of a "drama" forum does not imply that I particularly think drama is a great thing, just that I don't think it's an avoidable thing, so I'd like to keep it isolated.

YMMV.