I saw a few comments about the rules on the forums here. Many of the comments were from people who haven't been here for more than a few months so the rules might seem overbearing because most of the people posting at this point haven't been here long enough to know why the rules exist.
A couple years ago, not too long after I started checking in, there were some really serious problems on SR. We had people who used a recovery program going into forums for other programs and stirring up trouble, making derogatory comments about any program that wasn't the one they had chosen. That would understandably make the regulars in the forum mad and some of them would go stir up trouble in the other forums. It wasn't just one program consistently, either. It would happen, things would quiet down for a while, then someone from a different program would start trouble. SR was becoming a place that was less about recovery than it was about the "tribe" you were in. We proved we needed the rules, so here we are. There are no thought police, just a need- borne out by experience- to keep discussions polite and in the appropriate forum. Without the rules these forums would have collapsed under their own weight and wouldn't be the valuable resource for discussion and advice I have relied on many times.
And, the mods are volunteers. So give them a shout out, they do a lot of work. Including listening to me.
