We have been getting more and more complaints about threads started as flamebait.
Baiting is covered in the rules: "Members are expected to post in good faith. By this, we mean they are expected to engage in and contribute to discussion rather than detract from it. Examples of posting in bad faith include, but are not limited to: baiting members, going off topic outside of a natural progression, flooding the forum with threads of little or no content, and ignoring moderator requests. Members who consistently violate this principle will be at risk of being banned."
It's not always easy to determine what's baiting but one criteria is whether the OP engages in discussion of topic, or detracts, disrupts and discourages any attempt to discuss. Anyway we will start to moderate this more.
Moderation will consist of the following action: 1) Moving suspected baiting threads to Rants and adding a warning with prefixed to title. 2) The OP can then either redeem his thread by engaging in discussion; dropping it altogether; or continue detracting, disrupting and discouraging discussion, in which case it will be thrown in the Hole and the OP infracted.
Report suspected flamebait. Don't bait back.
Those who try to detract, disrupt and discourage discussion will simply be warned and, if they persist, infracted.
Posted for VIPs and Mods.