Hi everyone,
I understand that it’s frustrating when you get an apparently unjustified rudeness point. And the very fact that you care about your rudeness level is an excellent sign that you are indeed a respectful and friendly BLF member.
However, while there is always a small amount of “noise” and illegitimate hits on the Rude! button, it is surprisingly free of wide-scale abuse. For example, I have an admin page that shows me the name and rudeness score of all the users that currently have points. Here’s where it stands now (names not shown for obvious reasons):
So there are currently 4 users that got Rude! hits whose points haven’t expired yet. Of those, there is obviously one huge outlier that I already talked to via PM about the problem and will continue to watch to see if changes are made. Two other users in that list made posts that I would also consider to be genuinely rude. And another user in that list participated in a public argument, which always makes you a target for people getting offended. So the current set of Rude! button points is spot-on.
The button in question is labeled Rude!. I had to call it something. But I think people tend to forget that the post on how to use the Rude! button defines rudeness as more than just the typical grumpy, insulting, foul-mouthed post that almost everyone would consider to be rude. Specifically, this rule is often forgotten:
The main BLF Rules also reiterate the same thing very clearly:
So this is where a lot of the Rude! hits come from. Even if the post and/or user is friendly, it is against the rules and considered as rude when somebody participates in an escalating argument or responds to a rude post. So please make a concerted effort to not respond publicly to rude posts. Just drop it, give the grumpy-insulting-foul-obscene user the cold shoulder, and move on, or change the subject with kitten pictures.
Thanks a lot to the vast majority of our users here that really do care about getting along and who are usually friendly and helpful to everyone.