"You can rant, but not in the chatbox please."

Recently many people, including myself, have been coming on CHB and CJ upset at our real lives. Then we log onto the cbox, and either we ourselves rant about how much our life sucks or we see somebody else complaining about theirs. This results in a complete self pity fest that eventually pisses someone off and in response they say something seemingly heartless like "Get over it!" Then that person is attacked and called all kinds of names. Quite honestly, we have enough of this. It is okay to vent, but it is NOT okay to use one's horrible life as an excuse to upset others in the chatbox. So with this thought in mind I make this suggestion:

Let them rant, but in a Rants/Complaint board. A number of RP sites have a board/subboard where people can go crazy talking about their lives and be free to curse their evil Government teacher or complain about how they're being bullied. The stuff does not have to be at all read by or responded to by anyone. That way people can vent and let out their tensions, but at the same time no one else is upset or further upsetted by someone crying over their bad grade in English or being called fat by their crush. It could be a subboard under Chat, and whenever someone tries to start ranting in the chatbox, we can point them to that board and he or she can post a thread and type out absolutely everything he or she is feeling. There's also a secondary suggestion in case the first doesn't work.

A venting thread instead of a board. It's the same thing except condensed into a thread in case staff doesn't feel like making yet another board.

Now I feel like I have to set a little ground rule or two to prevent any further conflict:

Let's not make this a place to curse out/diss another member of the forum. If there's problems with other members, we need to stop bottling crap up and instead start being able to talk to the admins. This board/thread is not in any way an excuse to rip someone else on the forum apart. We all know what happens when somebody tells someone else that he or she doesn't like him or her. Let's not multiply that by 100.

Speaking of staff, I kind of want to point out that we should have a change in the staff line up, mostly for the reasons stated by other people in various locations on the forum. I also think we shouldn't just push this aside. Otherwise we may have another unexpected issue.

I agree with Rhyme. People shouldn't come on the Chatbox if they're angry or sad, because they take it out on other people. The idea of a Ranting/Complaints Board sounds good for all of us.

I dont know how I feel about this idea, it just seems that all the rules concerning the chatbox are leading to us being able to do nothing on chatbox.

Hawk, you saw what just happened. I don't mind people venting, but when everyone is upset by it, there's something wrong. I hate to say this, but I'm tired of logging on to pity fests. I believe that I am not the only one. It would be nice if others would confirm this though.

Agree. Agree with option number 1 100%. I think this could fix a lot of things, because I'm tired of seeing people so depressed on the chatbox. They can be sad, but I'd like for them to be sad somewhere else. (PM never really works.) As long as the rules are strongly enforced.

This sounds like a great idea. :) I've seen this implemented on many sites, and it's been praised as a great addition since the beginning. I noticed that the community for the most part started behaving a lot better, and the shoutboxes/chatboxes were much more pleasant in the end. I'd like to see this idea used.