Earlier today I posted a thread in the staff forum about the problem this site is facing, which is basically that a large portion of our community is unpleasant to interact with.  The forums and chat are full of spam and other nonsense on a regular basis, and the filmmaking forums are pretty low on interesting or productive discussions.  We've got n00bs correcting other n00bs when they think they've violated a rule (such as bumping), and constant bickering as well.

I'm getting lots of complaints from BiM members, mostly in the 12-and-under crowd, about each other.  Often this is in chat, but basically it's people insulting each other and then ratting to me about it.  It's really not helpful or related to the filmmaking subject matter of this website at all.  So yeah, cut it out.  We're getting fairly desperate in looking for ways to cut down on the amount of nonsense taking place in the chat and forums here, so anybody who contributes to these issues from now on will be banned permanently without further warnings.

So here are some thoughts.  Inspired somewhat by a thread by Night Owl back in the old 'Refugee Camp' days.

Follow the forum rules.  Crude language, sex jokes, insults, etc. aren't allowed, so just don't do them.  Go to a site that is made for that kind of thing if it's what makes you happy.

If you do find an offensive post, don't respond to it by whining in the thread, just ignore it and use the "Report" link on the post.  Don't feed the troll.

Avoid using image macros like lolcats or other similar images as a reply to everything, or perhaps even anything.  Unless it's done sparingly and with great care, the joke stopped being funny several years ago. 

Try to think about your posts before posting them.  When we disabled the delete post feature a while back because people had been deleting threads or trying to cover up their tracks after doing something bad, we got a few complaints from people who prefer not to read their posts before.  It'd be nice if you could at least aim for correct spelling, grammar, and capitalization, though I understand some people (such as those who speak English as a second language) will struggle with this and that's understandable.

If you're not contributing to these problems, that's great, keep contributing positively to the community!