First of all, as for changing member titles.... These titles were initially made by admins when the forum was being configured. From time to time, an admin might feel that a person has earned a different title from the one that person has. In that case, an admin can change the title to his/her liking, as long as it has a valid reason behind it. Members can't change the titles by themselves so a custom rank can be assigned for a valid reason. If a member had his/her title changed without a request or approval, he/she should think why this has happened and try to fix it rather than bitching about it. Inapropriate or mean-spirited custom titles will never be set for fun.
As for the warn meter, there isn't an ISO standard that defines spamming, so we can't define it either. In general, if a person's posts do not contribute to the discussions they are posted in, or a member is using forum threads as real time chats, that will be considered spamming. What do I mean by "using threads as real time chat"? I'll give you an example - a short notice on the page says "when you do action x, you will be prompted for a password and enter blahblah". Next, you have a forum topic of a person asking "WHY AM I ASKED A PASSWORD WHEN I CLICK ON THE LINK!??! :blink:". This is spam? Why? Because the person obviously didn't take 10 seconds of his/her time to read the notice and try to find out the solution to the problem BEFORE asking. Of course, a post like that is usually followed by "Never mind, worked it out!!!!". So, before you post something, you should make sure you've explored all possibilities and tried to do everything yourself. Remember, google is your friend, and so is the forum's search feature
Also, posts that say "YAY!!!", "
" and so on are considered spam. Why? Because a person that has made such a post obviously didn't have nothing to contribute to the discussion that was being made, but just made that post for the sake of it. This is VERY inconvenient that check new topics, say, once every few days. Imagine coming to the forum and seeing there are 370 new topics. Naturally, you probably won't bother to go through them all, and therefore perhaps miss some of the interesting discussions that were being made. The point of a forum is to sit down, think what you want to say, and then write it with clearly stating all your oppinions in one post. That's what differs it from a real-time chat, and that's why it shouldn't be used like that.
I feel stupid writing this because THERE ARE GUIDELINES in the flash movie that is pinned to the Blah Blah Blah forum. I think the members that got warned should VIEW the movie. It will define 99% of the spam that occurs on this forum. This especially goes to fawful, yamcha, punch and danny.
Also, the repercussions of getting your warn meter full will vary from case to case. Generally, with level 4 you will get 24 hours post restriction, and with level 5 a 24 hour suspension. These times will extend if the incidents re-occur.
As for threads getting closed and re-opened, hopefully the admins and moderators will come to some kind of an agreement in the future. After all, we are humans and not robots so mistakes can happen, you should learn to accept them. You won't get punished for making mistakes, I don't see why admins or moderators should.
And just a general comment about this topic.
CONSTRUCTIVE criticism will be taken into consideration, while bitching will be ignored. For those of you that don't know what constructive criticism is, here's an explanation (I feel sebatianos didn't say it clearly enough) : if you have a complaint, write it here, BUT ALSO SUGGEST A SOLUTION to the problem. If you can't suggest your vision of a solution, it means you haven't really thought about the problem.
Overall, this is one of the most liberal forums I've encountered on the internet. We allow everything that is tasteful, and we haven't banned or suspended anyone yet. However, as it is in some cases, if you give people more freedom, they will start complaining about every little detail, and try to bring about revolts if measures are taken. This is, however, counter productive as I, as well as other admins, will be forced to enforce the rules even harder if people start complaining and bitching about every little thing they don't like.
All in all, if we follow some general guidelines or proper behaviour on forums, I think we can keep a civilized and good atmosphere.