Stepped up enforcement of rules and general behavior guidelines

Over the past few years, PAFOA has grown from absolutely nothing, to one of the largest gun forums on the Internet, even breaking out of it’s geographical focus on Pennsylvania to become a vibrant hub for firearm discussion around the state, county, and even the world in some cases. Our little corner of the web receives almost a half a million unique visitors and making thousands of posts each month.

While this growth is spectacular, and something the community should be greatly proud of, it doesn’t come without cost. With any community, as it grows, group cohesion drops. It’s simply not possible to build and maintain the same personal, trust-based relationships with 40,000 people as it is with 400 people. The result of this dynamic is something we see all over the Internet and something we’ve seen in increasing amounts on PAFOA through the last year or two: Fighting, bickering, name-calling, trolling, and other forms of anti-social behavior. Sadly, it’s much easier to tell someone to go *blank* themselves when you don’t know them and they don’t know you.

We’ve watched this dynamic develop on PAFOA for quite a while and we’ve decided that it has festered too long. After talking amongst the staff and current and past members who have discussed the subject with us, we’ve decided that it is time to make an attempt to stop it before it gets worse and goes further downhill.

The forum rules have always stated that, in addition to the specifically enumerated rules, forum Staff are free to make judgment calls on disciplinary action. We have always reserved the right to remove anyone who is more trouble than they are worth and we plan on stepping up our enforcement of this clause. To make our position on this issue more clear we have appended the existing Forum Rules.

PAFOA, while provided as a public service in the interests of promoting gun ownership in Pennsylvania, is still private property. If you act like a jerk, you will be removed.

From here on out everyone should clearly understand that PAFOA is much like a party where by default everyone is invited, but when people act like jerks, start fights, and make the party unenjoyable for everyone else who is having a good time, they will be removed and not invited back.

Before you post, ask yourself: Am I that guy or girl? If I was at a party and behaved in real life like I'm about to behave online, would I be invited back? If the answer is probably not, you should likely refrain, because if it becomes a recurring problem, action will be taken. If your contributions to the community are outweighed by all the garbage people have to put up with from you, you won’t be long for this forum anymore.

If you're unsure as to whether your behavior is appropriate, just err on the side of being polite or disagreeing respectfully and you'll likely be just fine.

We have thousands of excellent, contributing members who have no problem playing nice with others and our interest in trying to accommodate the minority of members who ruin it for the larger group has ceased. Jerks are easily replaced, and will be.

We expect this change will affect very few people, but for the ones it does, now’s the time to tone it down and become a more positive contributor to the community.

Any questions regarding this new enforcement can be emailed to forum-administrators@pafoa.org.

Thank you, and like you, we look forward to an increase in civility on the forum.