Hmmm... interesting thread! There are points that I agree with and points that I wholeheartedly disagree with, more about that later lol
Rules and Guidelines are there for a reason, it's so that everyone knows where they stand and it gives us something to refer to if we're unsure of something.
I'm sure Sam would be very interested to know why the rules and guidelines he's posted (or being a part of) are being viewed like this.
This site has over 14,000 members, admittedly not all of those members are regular posters, but as you can see that's a heck of a lot of people to have under the 'same roof' so to speak.
Due to the size of the site it was necessary to have some guidelines (
Geek Commandments and
Competition/Challenge Rules).
If any of you have a problem or query about them then why not drop one of the moderators a quick private message?
Moving on... all of this talk about cliques, where are they? who are they? What I see isn't groups of cliques, but groups of members who are friends both on and off the site, that's part of what makes this site a community! Surely that's a good thing, not a bad thing?
We've seen threads like this in the past where people have said they feel inferior sometimes, this has mainly been down to them being new to the site, not knowing how the site works, maybe them feeling a bit self conscious and reading replies the wrong way. We've all been guilty of reading replies the wrong way and not as they were intended to be read. It's no different to the way we write our replies, we need to imagine how we'd feel if it were us reading our reply, if we read our reply before hitting the 'submit' button it very often makes us think twice... that's where using the smilies comes into play