[poop MANIAC(fecal frenzy!!!!!!!!]

What the masses want is not what the server needs in some situations.

I think that attitude is the reason why there is so much discord between staff and players in many situations.

Rule 6, saying not to use slurs/harass others -- this is a good rule to have, for slurs/harassment is objectively bad. There is a difference between having opinions and literally degrading another human being.
That said, in dead chat, i'm open to loosening some of the rules that don't involve literally degrading other human beings - namely minor soundboarding/micspam and non-annoying voice changers.

But in live chat, especially in TTT - where voice chat is such an integral part of the game (what with KOS's being important, etc.) even minor stuff like micspam shouldn't be allowable if it interferes with the integrity of the game. At the end of the day, this is a place where people come here to play a video game to blow off steam. You can micspam/slur it up in other places with friends - and you won't need to ruin the night of those who want to play TTT.

Also the concept of a referendum - Sure, we need more community input. I'd like to see more community non-staff members on some of our committees. However, the governing body of this server isn't a democracy - this server is owned by an owner - and that owner alone makes the final call on decisions that go up to him. Sure the community can vote on what they want to do, but something that big has to go thru him. If you want to do that, you can create a thread with a poll yourself.

But slurs and harassment?
no.
there is no place for that here.
I'm not saying Dinks is a 'safe space' - nor should it be. If you have an opinion, and you share that opinion, you do so at the risk that others will disagree with the opinion. But when you are issuing statements intended to demean someone and only to demean someone, I can't support that. The owner of this server decided that slurs/harassment was not welcome here. Anyone who wants to harass/demean is welcome to continue down the server browser list.

That is a fair and valid point which would be important to bring up during an actual referendum; for the time being I say I fundamentally disagree with your vision on these interactions. I think it is important to emphasize that the players are responsible for not engaging in unwanted banter. In many situations I have observed, banter between two willing parties can be cancelled by a judicator whose job it is to control the interactions of the gamers. As I understand, many are frustrated with this concept of tone policing and feel that the rules impose an unnecessary amount of red tape to what would otherwise be the equivalent of an open stage, subject to the adulations and castigations of the crowd.

I think it is important to recognize that there is a serious disconnect between the people who play on the server regularly, and the people who administrate it. There is a lot of pent up frustration that you can even see in the staff team towards a lack of communication with our ruling class; to circumvent this problem, I believe direct community input on important topics would be a superior administrative culture, less susceptible to paralytic indifference.

Considering that this boils down to whether or not staff should moderate the noise level on the server, it’s not a good idea. There doesn’t need to be an experiment to figure out whether or not this will work as over time gmod servers created rules and staff teams to combat this issue.

I disagree, I think the community should do more self moderation by choosing engagements and selectively ignoring individuals who offer only a net loss to the soundscape of the match. However, I could be in the minority in my opinion and so a vote would determine just where that issue stands.