Maybe that's a paranoid scenario, but is it really so far fetched considering the events of the past few months? chuckle no not far fetched at all... in fact a few members with personal vendettas do work hard at those types of games. fortunately we've got some nice tools available to help us track these things and generally we try to react cautiously and evenly, though we are human and are subject to bad hair days like everyone else. not sure if anyone explained what typically happens 'behind the scenes' when a site-wide change is made... first, the issue has to be an issue with enough feedback for the mods to all agree it's an issue. this gets discusssed by the mods. if a concencus is reached that action is required, we all, every one on the staff here, admins and mods work to figure out what they feel is the most reasonable solution. in this case, the majority of the moderators here felt that we needed to clarify some of the guidelines to help them make more constant decisions. with the increasing number of uploads, it was getting stressful for the staff here to make judgement call after judgement call using what they felt was a vague guideline. they got a bit tired of being chewed to pieces on what they personally felt was the right thing to do and wanted some better provisions to help them decide on future actions (we've had a huge influx of moderators to help cover the new forums, and fill in where some of the older forums had grown so, in addition this, everything was getting re-evaluated from a 'fresher' perspective anyway.) SO, after the group does their best to address something... we send poor Spike out as the 'Moderator Representative' to make the public announcement. what some people erroneously call the clandestine and 'corporate money grubbing PTB' behind the scenes here is actually the entire mod staff working together to address something they though was a problem. the 'owners' of the site really don't have any more input in these things than any of the individual mods.... unless there is a legal reason for them to override something, they generally don't. in this case, it looks like the group needs to rethink and re-evaluate based on the content of this thread... i don't think anyone on the staff here has a problem with that. and the intent is really to find something that really works for both the mods and the members to get along in peace.