Having played thousands of rounds of PR, as well as thousands of hours of other games, I am acutely familiar with gaming frustrations, as many of you are. It takes a steady hand and a great deal of willpower not to unleash said frustrations on those around you in the gaming world. It takes years to develop that sense of maturity and playstyle in which you can slough off the bad, compliment the mediocre and praise the good. For those of us that have developed such a style, TG is a haven; a singular bastion of maturity in an otherwise overwhelmingly immature culture.

But what seems to be missed as of late is twofold:
1. While TG is an open community, it is expected that you play by our rules and standards. The "I didnt know" excuse only holds so much water through multiple levels of warnings.
2. Just because you're here and may have been here for a while doesnt give you a get out of jail free card.

That being said, yes, everyone has bad days. I have seen the majority of our admin staff experience what happens on a "bad day". They're human and subject to that kind of thing. As such, they also realize that each and every player on the server, whether they know you or not, is also human and subject to having a bad day. This is why they dont swing for the fences with the banhammer on each transgression. But thats not been our problem.

Lately I've also been noticing a trend. It starts with someone ribbing someone else. It then turns into general smacktalk from those who see or hear it. It then floods over onto comms and turns into immature behavior all over. I have seen it from tagged and untagged players alike. But with the recent rule changes, I have been biting my tongue about it, hoping that people would get the message and people would improve their manner. I'm saddened to see that it hasnt happened that way. This isnt the fault of the admin staff failing to crack down hard enough, they have always done and continue to do an excellent job, so dont try to pin the problem on them.

The problem lies with us, the playerbase. TG tagged members, and especially members of in house squads need to understand this completely and take it absolutely to heart. While the admins are the ones with the hammers, those of us wearing the tag are the face of TG. WE are the ones responsible for making the server look good. WE are the ones responsible for setting the example for ANYONE who chooses to play here. WE are the ones who bear the onus of teaching every player we come across the TG way. That is the bottom line. We need to keep in mind that there is a time and place for everything. If you're stressed out or frustrated and need to vent, you do it in PRIVATE. If privacy isnt available, TAKE A BREAK. If you fail to do so and display your ass for everyone to see, as someone wearing a tag, you can expect the hammer to fall hardest on you, and nobody will bear you any sympathy for it.

So keep that in mind. Wearing a tag makes you more than a representative of TG's ideals. It makes you a teacher of those ideals. Just because you dont read the forums often or you encounter those who dont/havent read them doesnt lessen your responsibility. You know what you signed on for by wearing the tag and you are expected to take that responsibility seriously. If you cant see fit to do that, I would recommend doing a bit of evaluation as to where you really stand. The tag isnt just a "badge of cool".

Another issue is reporting infractions. If you see something that you feel needs to be reported, there are SEVERAL ways of taking care of the problem.
1. in-game reporting using the !r or !reporting functions. You can do these in any of the chat systems (yes, admins can see it even if you do it in squad chat).
2. voice comms. You can report infractions to the admins that are on mumble or teamspeak. if you want to do it a bit more privately than using mumble, you can always ask an admin to talk to you privately on teamspeak and I have absolute confidence that they would be happy to oblige the request.
3. Post-reporting on the forums. Just because it happened earlier doesnt mean that the person gets away with it. Get all the details you can on the incident such as approximate time, map, player name, etc, and make a post in the 'Contact an Admin' forum. The admins take these just as seriously as any other report, and it usually helps with visibility as the admins can PM the person on the forums and make sure the point gets across.

The bottom line is that there are no excuses for acting out. As I said, the admins understand having a bad day, but that only spreads so thin before action has to be taken. The admins have several messages on the server and on the server banner in the browser explaining exactly where to find the rules and even what some of them are. We dont need to change PR. We dont need to code in new warning messages. We simply need to take it upon ourselves to clean up the server by instruction and example. Do your part and things will get better, choose not to and expect to reap the consequences of your actions.