TL;DR: Don’t be a dick in the chat
Howdy Fellow RMLers, today I wanted to introduce to you something that we discussed at the previous panel meetings. RML has evolved throughout the past 2 or 3 years and that has caused some turmoil, but also has improved RML in various ways. We feel like the 32 voted in members have all contributed something and think they are good for RML, but we want to be proactive this year and speaking of that here’s what we discussed. Last madden we were strictly concerned on Madden gameplay rules(which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but we neglected to deal with some issues within our Madden chat on GroupMe. Going forward we want to implement some guidelines for in-chat behavior. Things like personal attacks and general hostility is not the “RML Way” and something that we are going to try and combat this year. Specifically we don’t want screenshots of DMs that are seen to be private conversations in the main chat and more importantly any rule complaints about gameplay must be DM’ed to panel and not in the main chat. This has caused trouble in the past and something we want to fix. Now everyone loves rivalries and we believe rivalries are healthy for a league and trash talking is fine related to Madden, but there is a certain line that should not be crossed and if that line is crossed this year we will be quick to boot from chat and further punishment could follow(suspension in Madden, boot from league if need be). RML is a family, quite a dysfunctional family at times, but it is also a very unique community and even though it is 32+ internet strangers it is pretty damn cool that everyone is comfortable sharing stories and pictures of their personal lives(babies, moving places, new jobs, etc.) and it has become a daily part of my life to check in on the chat. Essentially we want to keep the chat thriving and also be a place where you don’t have to come in and worry about getting attacked for non-madden issues. Call us pussies, but we are just trying to make a great thing going even greater. Thanks and be on the lookout for further articles for M20 gameplay rules, etc.