I would like to dedicate this post to bad writing, in all of its forms.

--to improper capitalization
--to egregious spelling errors
--to grammatical mishmash
--to sentence fragments, runons, and general clumsiness
--to incoherence
--to blatant Mary Sue/Gary Stuism
--to psychological oversimplication/unbelievability
--to shallowness

Really, I may be a bit of a writing snob, but...

ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!

And you can't really tell someone you won't RP with them because their writing is terrible, can you? I mean, I try to overlook some things. I can take the improper spelling if the characterization and realism is good. But sometimes, enough is enough... I feel like a bad person, but--it's true. It's just how I feel.

Haha. I agree. However, I'm currently RPing with someone who can't spell/use proper grammar, but his character is stellar and the plot is fantabulous. So I can't complain too much. I know many people who write with good grammar and spelling, but it's boring.

Call me pedantic - it's true. However, I don't agree that some of this is bad writing. I don't believe improper capitalisation, bad spelling or grammatical errors are 'bad writing'. They bother me, but not enough to rant about because I have a lot of friends who just can't get anything written down correctly.

The rest I guess I agree with, although I'm iffy on the Mary Sueism. I'm not sure if I want to even bring that into RPing anymore and would rather just take every character individually, rather than stuffing them into a generalisation.

Yeah, the 'Mary Sue' bit is really more a writing style than a character. The sense that the character's actions have to be taken as perfect, and constant description of their physical appearance. Characters themselves aren't anything, really, unless moulded by the will of the artist!

LOL that's a bit overblown...

:( I'm worried I'm making a bad impression on this board by being belligerent. But seriously, guys, I just want to get my ideas across. *sighs* Another rant-y thing, I guess... I just deleted a member who didn't read the first site rule and signed up with a nickname... who now hates the site (and apparently me) for it. I thought the email I sent about it was perfectly polite, but I guess you can't win them all.

*sighs* I hate to come across like an asshole. I do try not to.

-pets- We've had worse than you on this board. I'm pretty sure we like our members strong-willed here. As long as you always try to be polite and listen to other people (or read) you'll be fine.

I think Roswenth brought that up in a discussion about Mary Sues - that the players are the problem, not the characters. It was debated and I agreed with her. If you take Mousie's Adele for an example you will see why.

Did you email them before or after you deleted them? I always PM people once before I delete them if they sign up wrong, because nine times out of ten they either read the rule but just signed up their normal way out of habit or they forgot it, OR they registered before they read the rules. I think it's a little extreme to delete them straight away, if you did so. If they refuse to change or don't reply then you've at least given them a chance to obey.

Yeah, I may change the site policy on that. I did send an email, but it was to inform them of the deletion. I guess what I thought was:

The site is totally viewable by guests; I'd delete the account anyway given the name; and I set it up as the policy immediately to prevent spammers--I had no way of knowing the person wasn't a spammer, and I didn't want my board killed. >.< I did try to send a polite email, but yeah, probably a PM will be better in future.

Live and learn! Sometimes I forget people can be sensitive. Usually I have the emotions of a rock...

If you want spamming problems - once I had 12 accounts registered within two hours, all from the same IP. They were a lot of variations on the same name, as well as some rude account names like 'thisboardsucks'. I deleted most of the accounts because they were cluttering the board and then PMed the last one left. It turned out that the girl who had registered had been trying heaps and the board kept telling her that the name was already in use, so she tried with other names. She'd gotten frustrated and written annoyed stuff in too. So it wasn't a case of spamming at all and I kept that member because I'd PMed her before going all deletry on her arse.

What forum host do you use? I wouldn't worry too much about spamming - I've owned boards for over a year, collectively, and I've never had spam.

I have a regular IF board, but another site I'm on gets a decent amount of the stuff. You're probably right, though--I won't worry about it in the future. It's really stressful being such a new admin... everything I do seems either too strict or too lenient! Thanks for talking to me about it, it's really appreciated.