I haven't read the rules yet, and only the first 5 posts in
this thread, but I have two observations already:

First, I think it is great than an area for discussion of the
rules is available! That would probably have prevented a
lot of grief in some astronomy/Space discussion forums I
participated in. Which leads to my second observation...

The Fido SPACE echo was run for years by a moderator
who was widely respected. She needed to turn the very
successful echo over to a new moderator. One person
campaigned for the job. I tried to convince the long-time
moderator that the guy who was campaigning was a bad
choice. But his campaign was successful and he won the
position. He immediately installed a way-too-long list of
rules, and enforced them as though enforcing rules was
the ultimate reason for being a moderator. He regularly
chewed out new posters for posting slightly off-topic or
other mistakes that seemed to me to be entirely innocent
in many cases. He knew he was right and wouldn't listen
to backtalk. I was temporarily banned from the echo for
what I said to him in e-mail, complaing about his rules.
The echo quickly tanked. In summary, his main problem
was his personality, which is not a problem here, and his
secondary problem was too many rules.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Correction, a while later: If I recall correctly, I was
actually banned for complaining about the moderator's
application of the rules to another poster, not about
the rules themselves.

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves