Davo said:
Excellent, the organ master!
Ok, if we're ruling the elite forum out I reckon that 2 football forums would be better. For several reasons
- The football forum gets to stay pretty much as it is and always has been, the banter, the occasional madness and all that makes it good stays.
- The new sensible football forum would allow for decent debates that could stretch out over longer periods and not drop off the frontpage by people posting more frivolous threads.
- Best of both worlds and everyone knows where they stand. Trying to clean up the current football forum by whatever method you decide is best is going to be difficult - go too far and you risk fecking up the pace and banter, don't do enough and nothing really changes.
- This would be easier for the mods - they could all but leave the football forum to itself and focus on the obvious crap that would no doubt initially find itself in the decent football forum, kicking out repeat offenders.
Pretty much as per the general and current event split. Perfect
That’s exactly what I was going to suggest, only I couldn’t as I’m only letting myself post on matchdays. (I’m currently taking advantage of the rather tenuous loophole of it being past midnight on the night before an England game).
Here are my suggestion for
criteria for threads getting demoted from the Sensible Soccer Sub-forum
1. OK, obvious wind-ups. This would mean things like Gillespie’s “observations”, or the likes of, say, “Who’s your favourite for the league – Liverpool or Chelsea?” when United were clearly still in contention.
2. Likewise, threads aimed solely at tubthumping or getting a rise out of oppo fans: “Reasons I fecking hate the bindipping shite”... “Let’s all
at Liverpool getting a draw away at Arsenal
lol:”... “Joe Cole still looks like a fecking Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime” (that’ll be me then)
3. Totally unoriginal threads.... “Greatest Ever Eleven?” for instance
4. Really stupid thread. “England should play 2-2-3-5”... “How come Keano never got picked for England?”
Criteria for booting posters out of threads in the Sensible Soccer Sub-forum
1. Abuse beyond a certain level. My suggestion would be, banterish abuse is fine, of the “No, that’s fecking bollocks you idiot...” variety. Proper nasty personal shit would get canned. Invitations to fight in Hull would be acceptable, provided headgear was guarenteed. Posts ideally would consist of more than just the line of abuse – you’d explain why you disagree.
2. Spam
3. Banging on about the poster’s post-count, what’s he doing here etc. Basically, irrelevant witless shite.
4. I don’t think a rule against stupidity or cluelessness is policeable. But ceaseless labouring of a point which everyone else knows and keeps saying is nonsense would earn an “infraction” or whatever bit of gimp fare is applicable. Claiming Liam Miller will eventually come good falls into this category.
Bilbo said:
The last time a collection of ego's lost their grip on reality on here, Red Republik was born. That was a bunch of 'elite' posters jerking off over each other, and it was shite.
That was totally different Bilbo – in fact, it was the opposite scenario. In their case, they wanted a place where they could post abuse/gibberish/spam/literally anything, including racist diatribes, without censure. In this case, we want somewhere we can have a decent relaxed discussion without too much of the above.
Bilbo said:
If the Mods on here are actually considering this, and thus proving that they learnt nothing from that episode, then you all probably deserve the backlash an 'elite' forum would create.
Who cares?
Say they gave the banning rights to a set of decent, well respected mods (and noodlehair) – say, for the sake of argument, Wibbs, Bury, and noods, rather than someone like Jason, who’s a nice bloke when it comes down to it, but has a bee in his bonnet about Liverpool due to insecurity about being an “OOT JCL” or whatever, or Geebs, who’s probably too fiery a Red to stomach the idea of censoring abuse aimed at Scousers, or Sults, who’s too nice. You might also include a non-mod... Sincher would have been an excellent candidate, but he’s just declared himself too gay to even contemplate trying.
They’d chuck out a load of annoying bellends – both United and rival. I’d be happy to go along with these decisions - if I was judged one of the bellends, I’d take it on the chin, worse things happen than being barred from a bit of the internet. In all likelihood, other bellends, who lacked the self-awareness to realise they were bellends, would spaz out... again, I fail to see why this should concern you. If we ends up losing 100 posters that Bury, Wibbs and noods agree are pointless dickheads, and gaining a far better football forum, while still retaining a football forum where you can engage in banter and abuse, then fecking bonzer.
As a point of principle, you don’t want to be running countries like this, as it’s open to abuse – but it’s only a fecking football website.
Bilbo said:
If you want to improve the quality of this place, then tighten up on who gets promoted, and ban people who WUM consistently. No warnings, just ban them. Its that simple.
We’ve tried this, there’s a Newbie forum after all. Why would banning without warning change its lack of effectiveness?
Sincher said:
This post highlights perfectly the point that noone will agree on who is sensible.
For example, some people seem to think you have to maintain perspective at all times, and never over-react when your team loses or plays badly or both... naming no names.
Others seem to think it's fine to do that, but not fine to make outlandish statements about your own team's capabilities or chances, and always to be rational when talking about opposition teams... also naming no names.
Fans get emotionally involved in football - they milk victories to a ludicrous degree, and wallow in defeats to an equally ludicrous degree. Both are legitimate reactions, but both can also be mocked or shouted down if they are ludicrous - preferably without getting personal about it.
But there are some threads that aren't like that - they are 'sit back' threads that try to analyse some points of the game. And, without being totally unfair, there are a lot of genuine fans who might be wonderful people, but who really can't contribute to those kinds of threads. Identifying them, though? Apart from a few obvious ones, no way I'd like to try.
None of that’s a problem. We wouldn’t be trying to create some sort of gimp utopia where no-one’s got wrong or facile or annoying views. Selection wouldn’t be based on whether someone was a bit of a moaner or prone to redder-than-thouness, it would be based on whether they were capable of holding conversation with a mix of reds, some of whom were temperamentally different from them, and rival fans, without being terminally tedious and retarded. Obviously defining that is controversial, that’s why you give the job to a few cnuts whose judgement you trust, and abide by their decisions. It’s not that difficult.
