Advertisements: If you're talking about those banner ads, we don't have control over them. Ads are there to provide revenue (which keeps this site alive), so there isn't really anything we can do about them. Hosting a site like this isn't cheap. They should all be appropriate, but if you see age inappropriate banner ads, please screenshot them and send it to the admins for us to check out. Otherwise, the random Lexus ad you see on the forums is what keeps the cash coming in.
Spam: 99.9% of the spam on the forums came from bots (ie. not real people). I've implemented some experimental spam filters to weed most of them out (which is why you haven't seen it much recently) but obviously, spam is nothing more than a game of whack a mole. Once you close one door, they'll enter through the next one. We try to keep bots off, but at the end of the day, there is only so much we can do. The best we can do is cast a wide net and hope that only a few will slip through.
Fighting: To be quite honest, it is a byproduct of young users: when a ton of users on here are still in their preteens and early teens, stupid stuff does happen.
However, we would just like to say that when flame wars do break out, do NOT jump into the fray. Just report it and ignore it. One user might want to try and start a fight but the rest of you users have the responsibility to keep it contained as well. Too many times, I see fights spiral out of control because other users jump in for no good reason whatsoever. The admins/mods here are the most senior members of the forums: Almost all of us (if not all) have careers, hold full time jobs, and some of us even have families. I'm a senior software engineer at one of the world's largest companies. BStyles served his country. ipac himself is navigating through the software engineering world. We can't be here all the time to babysit everyone all the time. You guys have just as much responsibility as us to ensure that the forums are orderly. Think of it like this: just because you have a maid doesn't mean you can trash your own house.
And this goes for all users. I'm not specifically calling you out, BVERailer. I would just like everyone to know that they all have the same responsibility as us when it comes to keeping the forums orderly.
