User blog comment:Drew1200/Inappropriate Chat Conversations/@comment-4082260-20140606030135/@comment-1693968-20140606121752

I understand that the word inappropriate is highly subjective. That's an issue I've had to constantly deal with, but I think I've come to a good conclusion.

First of all, to state what we believe to inappropriate, we do our best to keep it so that no one is majorly offended, without going to extreme. So that means basically no suggestive comments, but we do allow thing's like Mad marrying people. Prevent the latter situation would be extreme, and I recognize that a situation like that would hardly offend anyone. However, most everything further than that could potentially be offensive towards others, so we most likely wouldn't allow it.

Secondly, our policy gives the moderators/administrators the complete authority to interpret the policy, but it also states that they can be overruled. This means that whoever's online giving the warnings is the one who decides if it's warranted or not. Obviously, different moderators are going to have different views on what the policy says. So yes, you're correct, it will change based on who's online. However, this should be a minimal change; nothing as extreme as what happened the other day.

As I've already commented multiple times in response to other people's concerns, I'm aware that we cannot enforce the policy in private messages that we cannot see. However, if users are publicly and obviously abusing PMs, then we can enforce it. I'm not looking to ban every user who says something bad in PM, I'm just looking to make sure that it's not becoming common for everyone to send bad links to everyone in chat except the moderators. I can see that quickly happening, and I want to stop it here.

Lastly, I do not think we should encourage inappropriate topics through private messages. We don't want this wiki to be a place for that kind of discussions. If they're having it through PM, I guarantee you that it'll be a temptation to say something bad when checking public chat. I don't want that to happen. Again, I know I can't prevent it, but I can certainly discourage it.