Please read

[Olly]

I have been very hesitant to address the recent drama here but have been encouraged to do so by several members.

The Rules

WFF has 13 items in our rules or terms and conditions that every member has agreed to when they signed up for WFF. 13 simple rules. Other duck hunting related forums out there easily have double. DHC has over 30 items in their rules and the Fuge also has many more rules than we do and is known for its “heavy” handed moderation.

WFF has been and will continue to be a more adult geared forum. What other forum has given you a free T&A forum? What other forum will allow you to cuss like a sailor? What other forum gives its members for totally free the experience you guys have gotten here on WFF?

With that being said even the Wild West has some laws. I did not start WFF with the intentions of creating a closed door club house where outsiders are not welcomed unless they can wade through a river of shit or be as rude and the regulars here. I did not create a forum that was meant to be 100% totally inappropriate for young hunters. I created this forum with the mindset that adults need to be treated like adults and allowed to curse and look at T&A if they wanted to. I created this forum to talk about and spread the passion of duck hunting in a common sense adult way.

We have struck a balance in these areas by having word filters that can be turned off and an entire section just for wilder things. Yet this is not good enough for some of you. The push back that the team here at WFF has been receiving over enforcing rules that have been in place since day one has been outrageous and disappointing.

I’m not sure if everyone where understands but I have NEVER made a profit from this place and never really care to. The ads bring in pennies not dollars. Every month I pay out of my own pocket to keep WFF going. Not to mention that hundreds of hours of my time I have put into WFF just to bring it alive. All the moderators here do not get paid. They take time out of their lives to try and keep WFF in that “sweet spot” that makes WFF so unique and the best duck hunting forum around.

My fault

I am not without blame for this recent drama. Had I made it more clear that the rules here actually do exists and they are not just suggestions and they will be enforced from day one then maybe we wouldn’t be here today. So I want to make this very clear. The rules we have posted on WFF will be enforced strictly. It really bums me out that I have to actually say this and for a time WFF was very self governing and you guys followed the rules to the letter without much intervention from the moderation team. Maybe we have grown enough that those days are gone? Or maybe a few regulars here have a personal beef with myself and are getting a kick out of pushing the limits but whatever the reason from today forward the rules will be enforced. No one is above the rules regardless of your post count.

I see regularly 3 major rules being broken.

1. Posting off topic or derailing threads. This is a HUGE issue here that has more of an impact than you guys as normal users understand. Strangers to WFF do not care about what you had for dinner when they open a thread about painting a duck boat. They just don’t, they aren’t a regular here and as crazy as it sounds they came here to look for duck hunting information not BS with you. The main goal of WFF is to promote the sport of duck hunting and that cannot be done with threads are not given the chance to get off the ground when being dragged off topic within 8 post. I do understand that Tapatalk makes it very easy to quickly respond to post and thus makes it easier to post off topic but you must remember that it is up to the user to follow the rules.

2. Posting adult themed content outside of the “Hawaii” forum. This one is very simple but I will outline is anyway. The line is drawn when you can clearly see a woman’s or man’s private parts. It does not matter if cloth or paint is in the way. A women in a swim suit is a lot different that a image of a woman where you can clearly make out her privates. Some of you do not understand that not everyone in the world wants to view nudity when they browse a duck hunting forum. The “Hawaii” forum was created just for this purpose, please use it. A good rule of thumb is if you ever have any doubt about if the image if okay for the general forums it should go into the Hawaii forum. Remember that minors browse WFF all the time and there is nothing I can do to stop that so we must try and keep the general areas of the forum clean of 18+ materials. This also has legal ramifications that could stop WFF from being online.

3. Disrespecting new members. I get PMs or emails all the time from members that sign up and ask me why I allow regular members to treat new members the way they do. A perfect example would be when a member who has been here a long time calls new members “dick weeds” when they haven’t broken a single rule. That was noticed and I received plenty of feedback from the lurkers here at WFF.

Closing

I know this has been a long post and I hope that some of you actually read it and understand why even the “wild west” needs to have a few rules. It really doesn’t sit well with me the idea of banning members but it’s come to the point where the rules need to be enforced for WFF to stay online.

-Olly

[Olly]

I forgot to add that if anyone has any questions about this post or why it was posted please PM me and we can discuss why this was posted today.