Twitter Discussion Poll: Blacklist tweets from BS accounts or not?

Do you think tweets from bullshit twitter accounts such as indykaila should be blacklisted?

  • Total voters
    288
I know bullshit tweets are annoying, but I get more annoyed with the pages of off topic discussion that goes on in these threads. I know it's a twitter discussion thread, but some of these topics (for example, did beckham really want to leave United) have nothing to do with a tweet or even transfer related (not a recent transfer anyway).

Just my opinion, but they are polluting the thread more than the bushit tweets.
 
I dunno. Some of them are rather innocuous and there's not much to do during the off-season so might as well have a laugh. I think the best recourse would be users exercising some discretion and not post WUM/ patently garbage tweets. And the others should refrain from over the top discussion that needlessly drag on for pages. That said logistically speaking it's a bit too much to ask. So yeah best course of action - the BS, "ITK" and "Worldwide Breaking News" tweets should be banned. Even the likes of @malachians should be quarantined off. Dude used to be a decent source of info but now he's a douchebag taking wummery to new levels.

Modmins please assess if these can be added to the safelist too :

. @malachians (tard)
. @Bob_Cass (WUM)
 
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sullydnl said:
Some accounts should be banned but then you run into difficulty in a) deciding which are worth keeping and b) keeping everyone aware of who is on the banned list. After all, Tancredi was already banned but his tweets kept popping up.

Limiting it to journalists would seem to be the simplest way but even then some very dodgy accounts get through.
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All the journos with BBC, Telegraph are reliable. And some others like de Marzio. Actually people who use Twitter do know who the trustworthy ones are.
 
this will be as successfull as the "tweets only" thread.

If people want only serious transfer news they can go and hit F5 on the BBC website.

For everybody else transfer muppetry is a bit of fun and games...
 
Outremangeur said:
this will be as successfull as the "tweets only" thread.

If people want only serious transfer news they can go and hit F5 on the BBC website.

For everybody else transfer muppetry is a bit of fun and games...
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Maybe we need another twitter thread in the general for you indykaila lovers.
 
Should be anything goes. Its just a bit if fun. You should trust users to have the cop on to filter the good from the bad.
 
Juan't Mata said:
Should be anything goes. Its just a bit if fun. You should trust users to have the cop on to filter the good from the bad.
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Wums are banned from transfer forum, so why should this rule not apply to the twitter thread?
 
It would be good if we could have some sort of confidence rating or 'reputation' against tweets but I'm not sure if that's even possible.
 
The thread would be less active, you would have less discussions. I think these Itk claiming accounts should be blacklisted, but even they are funny as claiming to know everything. INDYKALIA yesterday asked henry winter when the writer's awards were :lol:. I think everyone is inteligent enough to deduce which accounts carry credibility and which dont. Still i would say blacklisting indykalia and agent inider should be done, but blacklisting lawtop20, pilib, other semi credible sources should not be. Ogden is on holiday,drucker doesnt tweet much either, We may as well just allow sky sports and bbc tweets only. The main point about summer with no football and a bad season is discussing rumours, i like doing it so i would prefer only those people who are necessary to be black listed.

Or you can make 2 threads

Reopen the last one call it Twitter everything goes thread- you can post tweets from anyone related to football/transfers except Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime like indy
2nd thread you keep the new one and only allow reputable journos(ogden,ducker,mitten,ladyman i am running out of options) bbc+sky and official club news only.

This way people who would only want concrete news will be satisfied in 2nd thread and muppets :drool: like me can spend the summer in thread number 1.
 
Voted to blacklist bullshitters but we need to be cautious about who all we blacklist. Think football journalists shouldnt be blacklisted regardless.
 
The who to blacklist bit is tricky. It may just be better to allow posters to police the thread by calling out rubbish tweets.
 
At the end of the day I take all tweets and journalism in general with a pinch of salt. Most transfer rumours whether including those in newspapers are generally an intricate WUM unless they have some form of quotes.

EDIT : Alternatively couldnt we start a thread maybe in the General for the "blacklisted" twitter accounts. That would allow people to discuss them but not clog up the football forums?
 
Voted yes, but meant no, but I don't suppose the vote will change it either way.

Overall, we want known BS's to be banned, some people will get good info that doesn't turn out, that isn't IndyKaila and I suppose some are worried that some half decent sources will be banned due to one or two wrong callings previously, I can't be specific but that's what I'd like to happen.
 
I think there are some fairly obvious BS tweets/accounts like AgentITK67 et al but what criteria does one apply when deciding if a tweet should be posted or not? Even the journo's we all think are closely linked to United get some stories 'wrong'. I use 'wrong' because we have not the foggiest if what they tweeted/said/reported was actually true at the time they released the info. Transfers in the real world are not like Football Manager where you simply bid until you get the player, it's much more complex than that it's dynamic situation which can flip flop all the time.
 
Voted yes to blacklist, but also cautiously. We've pretty easily identified the obvious "SuperAgentITK" types of in the past. There are people on here who are great at discovering and invalidating the sources somehow. It's more worrying that we debate about journalists who work for actual media outlets (although some of them are less than reliable, and may even be distasteful to some of us).

I'm reminded of a couple of things:
1) There was an article written by a very respectable journalist (can't remember who it was), that basically said they report what they from their sources, but that transfers are complicated, and things can change on a dime. These are sometimes intense and complicated business negotiations - which can fall apart at any moment. It would be poor form to judge some of these guys on their historical accuracy and blacklist purely on that basis.
2) Quite a few on the site can smell BS right off the bat. "Suarez to United." Honestly, we all know that will never happen.
3) Personally, I think a few things right now about our transfers. I think we do have some things pretty much wrapped up, and just because we don't see the signings on manutd.com just means the business is all but officially concluded. Van Gaal is under contract to the Dutch FA. If we start officially signing players, I'd assume that his press conferences for Holland will be disrupted. If we sign players at the WC, what is United going to do? Fly them out of their base camps in Brazil to Manchester at this point? Send down a medical team to interrupt the player's training? If we officially sign anyone while LvG is under contract, couldn't that be of use to the Dutch FA legal team if they have a horrible WC and seek to blame United and seek legal compensation from United? I'm no expert in legal matters, but it would seem United would want to shield themselves from unsettling any international FA organization during a World Cup, and also maintain good relations with those organizations for the future. So if a journo tweets "Luke Shaw is done before the WC", it may be true in all but the manutd.com announcement, we shouldn't just ban a journo from the twitter thread who said that.

Overall, I guess it's my opinion that the twitter thread should be fun. Sometimes outrageous, sometimes I'm really interested in a tweet and it truly is a precursor to actual transfer activity. Self policing and avoiding having 50+ posts arguing about an absolutely outrageous twitter post is what we should try to achieve, IMO.
 
I don't like the thought of banning them, because sometimes they're hilarious.

What about creating a "Twitter bullshit corner" type thread where we post those tweets and just laugh knowing they have zero basis in truth?
 
Tweets only thread should be censored. Twitter discussion should rely on poster discretion.
 
If it's news it's on the news sites. Nobody should see tweets as more than gossip and speculation, some more credible than others, but just gossip. So I do think there's a difference between the known BS and WUM merchants and the maybes out there. However I'd be reluctant to put more than the worst culprits (the loudest volume ones) onto a blacklist. As soon as it becomes legitimate journalists only, it's the same as every other thread.

When it comes to transfers even the clubs don't know half the time. If United couldn't tell Fabregas was playing games with them last summer, why would an ITK or occasional snippet type know which rumours are serious. If a club puts out feelers for ten players, it doesn't mean they're buying ten - it just means they want to know who's available - and it might tell you which shelf they're shopping on. Plans change, ideas change, one purchase/injury can trigger a whole chain of different outcomes. It doesn't mean anyone's lying.
 
Juan't Mata said:
Should be anything goes. Its just a bit if fun. You should trust users to have the cop on to filter the good from the bad.
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I agree. If you don't want to read stuff that might not be true (as 99% is - because to be honest, how the heck would they know what's going on every hour?) then don't look at the thread.

It's not as if it's the only source of transfer 'news'. And it wont kill anyone to wait 10 minutes for BBC to report it, will it?
Proper updates will be on proper sites.
 
Absolutely ban them.

Firstly, why would anyone want to read made up bullshit?
Secondly, when the inevitable made up bullshit obviously doesn't come true the morons of the caf then proceed to slag the club off because they haven't signed their most recent favourite player. Annoying.
 
You get people checking it out for news and you'll get others joking about and not giving a shit cause it's the 'transfer forum' and everyone that wants us to sign players is a muppet. United need to sign players and it might be different if we weren't so hopelessly useless in the transfer market of late. People take this kinda thing seriously. It IS fun (transfers and no one can deny it). Bullshit is just sadistic. So when someone checks a thread that's grown 3/4 pages from excitement after maybe a long day, they feel like a cnut at the end of it because it's garbage. They may as well have a conversation with the voice in their head saying not to bother. We're in a day and age where we can be outspent by fecking PSG, City, Chelsea...

So peoples paitence will wear thin because people want to see the club being pro active. It's not fun, some people actually support United and believe they need signings to improve the team. It's easier to say who you'll accept tweets from and add to it but the bs is torture to any United supporter knowing we can't repeat last summer while secretly thinking we might...with these gimps in charge? We might.
 
Only ban the fake agents and people that are known to have no real connections. Allow tweets from people like Tancredi or Rafael Hernandez, even if they're bullshitting most of the time, at least they're journalists with some sort of connections and have a small chance of being right.

Banning all of them ruins the muppetry of the twitter thread IMO.
 
The new thread and "crackdown" is not some big new revolution - the likes of Indy and AgentITK have been banned for a year now.
The Transfer Forum is not the general - absolutely no point in posting tweets which everyone know are 100% bullshit. Yes, journo's bullshit as well, but at least there's a bit more credibility to their bullshit what with them no doubt having some sources.

Also, don't post tweets about GTA, making me actually do some modding.
 
KM said:
I don't know why this is a poll tbh. Why'd people want to read what the likes of IndyKaila, Rafael Hernandez, Tancredi Palmeri in this transfer window?

I know that journalists often get things wrong but it's different from some blatant bullshitting.
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Hernandez isn't like others (at-least not on the last 2 transfer windows). He doesn't give inside information (he says that he hasn't much) so he only quotes things from other sources. He is very fast at doing so (especially from Soanish football) so it's a good way to do a review of all transfer rumours.
 
I think that we shouldn't ban journos, who we know are real even if they are known for BS, e.g. Tancredi. Just keep it to real people or corporate accounts that we know are real.
 
SlyFiz said:
Only ban the fake agents and people that are known to have no real connections. Allow tweets from people like Tancredi or Rafael Hernandez, even if they're bullshitting most of the time, at least they're journalists with some sort of connections and have a small chance of being right.

Banning all of them ruins the muppetry of the twitter thread IMO.
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That's about right, I'd say.
 
SlyFiz said:
Only ban the fake agents and people that are known to have no real connections. Allow tweets from people like Tancredi or Rafael Hernandez, even if they're bullshitting most of the time, at least they're journalists with some sort of connections and have a small chance of being right.

Banning all of them ruins the muppetry of the twitter thread IMO.
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This!
 
I don't mind. I like occasionally reading something I want to see...even if it is BS.

There are very few genuine sources out there anyway. People take Andy Mitten as some gospel insider but for me, he's a bit of a nobody. Often find his insights very pointless and nothing no one else hadn't already said.
 
Every time somebody posts a tweet from a dodgy source, it's inevitably followed by a handful of posts moaning about posting dodgy tweets. Ban them!
 
It's the nature of the beast. If you want to look to Twitter for you transfer news then you're going to get a lot of nonsense, and not just from the indykaila's of the world.
 
What about a BS and twitter discussion thread where anything goes. then a separate thread but just tweets from reputable sources. This thread just have no discussion, basically a locked thread with only a limited number of people allowed to post in it.
 
I've already voted no, but I wanted to make some points on this issue.

In my mind, we should all know who the unreliable Twitter users are and which ones can be trusted as credible sources of information. I understand that people get annoyed when users post tweets from Indykalia because he's clearly a wind-up merchant and it's a bit tedious. However, censorship - I use the term loosely - is the start of a slippery slope. We can already see in the new Twitter Discussion thread that someone has posted the rumour of Luke Shaw's £160k per week agreement with United. The rather predictable response is for people to start saying, "Goal.com? Bullshit! Add them to the ban list!" Where do we draw the line?

Just to prove how ridiculous this process of "banning" particular Twitter users might be, we already see @Invictus in this thread calling for a ban on Bob Cass. Seriously? You might not always like what he has to say and he might get it wrong a lot of the time, but this is an established Daily Mail journalist we're talking about, who is/was a long-standing friend of Sir Alex Ferguson.

Furthermore, anyone (and I include myself in that group) who is scouring the Twitter threads looking for transfer news during the boring summer months needs to have realistic expectations. I enjoy the Twitter thread and I like reading who we're being linked with, however unlikely the signing might be. There's no football to keep us occupied and some transfer muppetry goes some way to filling the gap. I don't go into the thread expecting solid news and serious reporting. It's Twitter, ffs.

If you want to avoid pointless speculation and guesswork from journalists who simply don't have the same kinds of contacts and connections that they might have done 10/15 years ago, then don't read the Twitter thread. It's dead easy, guys. If you want to have serious conversation on the likelihood of potential transfers, then create a player thread in the Transfer Forum. Chances are there will already be one anyway.

The banning of particular Twitter accounts is not necessary if people are sensible and stop taking things so seriously.

EDIT: Finally, another Twitter thread dedicated to bullshit is the last thing we need. Give me strength.
 
Dreaded said:
What about a BS and twitter discussion thread where anything goes. then a separate thread but just tweets from reputable sources. This thread just have no discussion, basically a locked thread with only a limited number of people allowed to post in it.
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The tweets only threads never work - people don't update them and no one reads them.
Therefore we want the active twitter thread to be as good as possible. Yes the definition of good varies from poster to poster, but most people clearly agree that they don't visit a twitter thread because of the nonsense.

There has to be just a shred of credibility in the tweet for it to be worth reading.
 
@Damien I think using Indy in the title is a bit misleading. It is obvious the kid is a fecking moron. There are people however, people like Rafa Hernandez/Tancredi/Balague etc who get a lot wrong but do add value to discussions, they need to be taken with a pinch of salt but not banned IMO.

I'd be fine with the likes of AgentTransfersTM/Indykaila/TopTransferNews/ExclusiveTransfers etc etc etc being blacklisted.
 
MkPaul said:
@Damien I think using Indy in the title is a bit misleading. It is obvious the kid is a fecking moron. There are people however, people like Rafa Hernandez/Tancredi/Balague etc who get a lot wrong but do add value to discussions, they need to be taken with a pinch of salt but not banned IMO.

I'd be fine with the likes of AgentTransfersTM/Indykaila/TopTransferNews/ExclusiveTransfers etc etc etc being blacklisted.
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I agree with this.
 
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