Gary, the purpose of an announcement is so that there is a public statement made for all to understand, rather than making only certain users aware of their actions and why they are so privately. Everyone needs to know the sites stance on rules, not just the couple of users who are unlucky enough to ruffle a few feathers.

Fresh meat is NOT the same as the rest of the site. It is generally a users first thread on the site, first chance to meet some new people, and first chance to break the rules. However a bunch of users who have more than likely got a strong desire to show they are staff worthy have been running around fresh meat like they are the new sheriff in town telling users they are breaking the rules, throwing rules at them before they have done anything wrong, and generally doing the staffs job without any authority. We do not appreciate back seat modding in the fresh meat forum, this includes reports, telling users they have broken the rules within their first two posts, or pointing them at the rules when they have barely even said hi. The fresh meat system does point out the rules to the new users, it's their choice whether they ignore them or not. The staff have been told numerous times to take it easy on users in their fresh meat thread, it is their thread, let them have some fun. Sure if it's a thread outside of the fresh meat forum that they break the rules in please by all means let them know, we appreciate it, but why would you want to make the first ever response a user receives to be getting told off? Even if it's said in a nice way, it still puts an elitist spin on the site. We don't want to look like snobs do we?

I might sound harsh here, but take this into account. If there are 200 new threads posted in fresh meat, and you were to post in every single one of them, you have a VERY easy way to clock up a bunch of gold. Users are being rewarded for welcoming by not being told off for posts of very little substance over and over again. However as always some users are taking it upon themselves to add cookie cutter additions to every fresh meat post they make just to boost their gold or as mentioned above - show they are staff material.

Lets take some good examples shall we.

http://www.menewsha.com/forum/commun...fy-spiffy.html

The user has double posted. The first response was nice and welcoming and didn't point out the rule breakage, but hinted at it by pointing out the need to read the rules. The rest of the responses are friendly and contextual.

http://www.menewsha.com/forum/commun...w-friends.html

A great example of a nice contextual response, nice and friendly :)

Just to reiterate... Fresh meat is a place where back seat modding should be avoided. Fresh meat is a great place to earn easy gold and posts of little substance are acceptable within reason. Fresh meat threads do not necessarily follow the same rules as the rest of the site as strictly for the topic creator. Adding cookie cutter bloat to welcomes is not appreciated and is considered to be spam. Welcoming new users is awesome and greatly helps the site, plus who doesn't like easy gold?