My personal staff philosophy that I've smattered all over these forums is that 1) rules don't always cover everything and 2) they really don't need to.
As staff members, it's our job to curate an experience for our members. If someone is routinely disrupting the community, it is our job to handle that. Even if they're not "breaking any rules," it's important to look at what they're doing and why, and make decisions: do we want to continue allowing the strife, or do we want to take action?
When I finally restructure my rules, I will make this philosophy clear on Ramora: we will not outline everything that we disdain, but provide examples of what we have banned for and will continue to ban for. We don't have a rule, for instance, on Ramora that soliciting ERP and harassing members for it is banned. But when a person known for soliciting ERP unwanted and harassing people for a grooming plot joined our site, we did not care. We knew he would harass our members and only RP if it's the exact kink plot he wanted, and we knew our members would not like it. So we banned him.
It's not frivolous bans, I will admit, but I feel like if you're constantly vaguing about your members in a negative light on forums or in the staff chat, you should probably start communicating and using that power to influence people. If your members are coming to you saying that someone makes them uncomfortable, you're allowed to take action even if they're technically not breaking rules. I know there's a fear of being cliquey, but there are bad faith actors in RP and people who just do not get the social aspect of the hobby, and those people should be expelled.
On the other side, you have members that WILL act accordingly, who WILL be good, who WILL be joys to have around, and you should make sure the experience is suitable for them. It's okay to loosen restrictions with the caveat that everyone should act in good faith. I stopped being as strict with applications when I took over, and while some long-time members questioned if people would take advantage of that, I pointed out that those who would take advantage are not the sort of people I would allow to remain on the site for long. Thus far we've had no issues, and the freedom has been enjoyed by my members.
Ultimately we have to remember that as admins, we have the power to stop issues, and we have the power to protect those that play on the site. We shouldn't live in constant paranoia of the one bad faith member that shows up. RP is a hobby, and membership on a site is privilege. You can revoke it as necessary.
(tl;dr this is why i don't restrict powers or character ages or disabilities or backstory stuff. i'll put my foot down if i think there's something Bad going on, but most of my members don't require the babysitting.)
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