Quote Originally Posted by MacGuffin View Post
All we can do is hope that newcomers look around a bit, get involved in the community, and figure out what they want before placing a personal ad.

The site could protect the "new meat" with a "Tips, Tricks and Traps" type pages in the guidelines section and make them aware of them in welcome messages. The existing guidelines are basically additionally rules ie they are compulsory. And of course it's not just subbies that would benefit from advisory guidelines. Pouncing Doms would maybe adopt a different approach if they were given advice on how to "hook up".

Personally I think DownTownAmber touches on the cause of the problem when she says "Everyone has their own idea of what it means to be a Dominant, both onlinw and in r/l." There would seem to be two schools. Those for whom bdsm is about building relationships based on mutual respect and the others who see it like an online fantasy game (the terms, play, role, scene etc. do imply make pretend). So when DarkCruelMaster first meets sweetinnocentmaiden in the lobby or forums and says "On your knees bitch" he probably thinks he is just playing the part and is stunned when sweetinnocentmaiden replies "how dare you call me a bitch, you don't know me".

It's clear what school the Dom in this thread belongs to, but we don't know about the sub. As Ozme says "perhaps she was looking for such a response". This is the problem. How to differentiate between the realists and fantasists. Possible solutions include nick conventions, more information (perhaps a new field) in the profile to indicate if a person is looking for fantasy or reality. For personals the sticky is of course the place to make people aware of how best to hook up. For chat perhaps people should be made more aware of the fact that the Playhouse is place to be for the "on your knees bitch" type of greeting.

That's kind of a harsh label... Just goes to show you we all have different perspectives of "appropriate"
We have those and more, but you can't force people to even read them let alone read them first.
Rules? We don't need no stinkin' rules. Besides, it's totally unenforceable.