Should TAN ban X?

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The match thread is exactly that, debate on instantaneous reaction. Highly emotional, reactionary and subjective truths. Those match threads are both the best and worst of TAN.

The reason I am so hesitant is because I do so how it is used on TAN in a positive way including

OPTA/Match/Club Stats
Press Conference videos (Pre match and Post match)
Quotes on specific player injuries
Goals (both Liverpool and other clubs)
Historical videos
Match clips/replays of incidents (fouls, offsides)
Transfer rumours
Club news (picture player in stands, switched kits, FSG etc)
Jokes
Politics/Climate change/war threads
Quotes from journalist, for a paywalled article
Preventing posters being subject to the Echo website

That is a lot of good use cases.

I dont disagree with general views of Twitter. Southport murders, Right wing nutters etc. However that is in no way reflective of the use of Twitter on TAN. Largely because we impose our standards on any content.

If we look at why TAN exists. The reason is because the other social media platforms did not serve what we were looking for. Sense of community, depth or quality to conversation, some form of moderation to keep out the nutters/trolls, no adverts, respect for privacy ie you are not a product. Thats where all the other large social media platform falls down. Facebook, TikTok, Twitter does not matter which you use.

From my perspective what happens on TAN is we exploit those larger social media platforms. As the best content is effectively curated, by the community. Majority of the time there is no need to go their platform and they do not earn revenue. Thats why Musk effectively stopped sites like TAN embedding (forcing us to use iframes)

I get the rationale to starve the likes of Musk/Twitter. However would that happen ? Instead of people seeing the nonrevenue generating content on TAN, I suspect many of our users would instead be forced into having a twitter account to be able to see some of the content they want to see (from list above).

I am open to moving away from twitter, but that takes the community itself to move. Those that do an amazing job a curating the social media content that makes TAN a better place. I am highly resistant to kill it, to only leave a hole.

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Noble values.

But are they still valid?

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Not perfect, but I think score pretty highly.

Respect for Privacy. (10/10). Last week Arminius lost his password and didnt have access to his old email address. Privacy measures meant I had no way of fixing it. (Even I cant see private data). After making Arminius take a little test (to prove it was him) In the end I had to create new account, and had to merge the two users. It took hours to complete :rofl: . Thats how seriously we take privacy. When posters have wanted to leave we have always deleted or anonymized accounts (about 6 or so since starting).

You are not a product/no adverts (10/10). The way this site is maintained is donations from the community. Probably about 70% of the costs. I make up the remaining 30%. Various sports sites, betting sites, have offered to purchase TAN, advertise on TAN. Not for a moment has this ever been a consideration. Partly because I cant be arsed to engage, but mainly because it goes against the ethos of why we started TAN. No information has ever been or ever will be sold to anyone else, because again goes against ethos.

Trolls/Nutters (7/10). We hold ourselves to a different standard than twitter or facebook so there is not even a comparison. However here is the ban list since the site started 4 years ago

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For me that is a remarkably short list, and light moderation. Or perhaps it was just Klopp :wink: At the same time the forum generally operates within known boundaries. I think back at TIA, and the ban page was pages long. Poster may disagree (and I might not like their view), but I think that their view is often genuine. We are not perfect, but conversation is generally civilized, casual, and puting use functions like ignore. I have seen posters admit they were being a bit of a dick and apologise, I have seen other shake hands and move on. Thats pretty good.

Sense of community (8/10). A scary thought is that I have known the other mods for over a decade. Redbj, Dane and a few others nearly 20 years… The forum has metrics to determine the health. Such as number of people logged in over the last day divided by users logged in over the last month. The aim is greater then 20%. We average 80%. Thats a community highly engaged. With 565 people who post (not including those who have accounts and dont post), thats a good place to be. We are large enough so there is lots of new content. Not so large that you dont know others personalities, or lost amoung a sea of posts.

Depth to Conversation (6/10). This is where I would like to improve the most. On TIA we use to have a fantastic old poster, who would write ups about the clubs history (his name escapes me). When I was younger I use to to all the statistical analysis. Sweeting had more time to talk about our youngsters. I would love a bit more on that. Credit to RAWK they some bits here they do better than us.

I think an ideal state would probably the site being double or triple the size it is now. But generally, I am pretty happy how the community transitioned to TAN stabilized, and become a much happier healthier community.

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:flushed::flushed::flushed:

Did not realise Paulrojo was suspended

In any case I am thankful for the forum, that it’s a free forum for me to interact with fellow fans. Only forum I have some form of active engagement in.

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Your art is half the reason I support this site :wink:

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What!? Half? My art alone can be the reason for the existence of this forum.

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TAN is not perfect, but I actually use it to a high degree to inform myself about various issues. The value of having US residents talking about the upcoming elections has a high degree of interest for me. Likewise, @Iftikhar informing us about what goes on in Bangladesh, @legalalien commenting on events in Japan, @gasband informing us about the benefits of Singapour’s enlightened dictatorship… :wink:

Our community is small, but from all over the world, and we have the opportunity to be in direct contact and to discuss every possible topic we wish to talk about. That is priceless, whatever our respective opinions, because we are faced with alterity. That’s something where I feel that traditional media tend to let us down these days.

To come back to the topic at hand, I don’t think that twitter/x is necessarily needed for the above, but it’s true that as long as we have people willing to curate its content, and to present us with the best coming out of it, then it’s absolutely ok. And that way, we aren’t forced to go and click on the links, which is an added plus, as @ISMF pointed out.

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That’s @Broomy, isn’t it? He made the switch to TAN initially, and started some great features here too, but then we lost him. That’s a pity indeed.

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Is it that long?
Jesus I feel older just reading that.
Must be about 15 years since @Redbj and @aussielad dodged buying their round in Fulham.

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I’m pretty sure I used to see that @Redbj had been a member of TIA since… 2003?

Since then the likes of Harvey Elliott, Conor Bradley, James McConnell, Kaide Gordon, Bobby Clark, and Ben Doak have been born. I think I started on TIA just before Trey Nyoni was born…

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@ISMF
There was a poster on TIA called Albert Stubbins who had seious knowledge on the history of the club. Bit like Broomy

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That Broomy lad… The biggest Amadán Mór you’d ever meet… :wink: A waffler, nothing but a waffler…

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@Hope.in.your.heart @ISMF I did not know summoning spells worked on this forum.

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I still remember the first post I made in TIA. I had access to professional scouting software and did a long article of tactical analysis of a match with lots of statistics (long before it was fashionable and stats freely available to the public).

I was ahead of my time :wink: and Dane was the first person to respond to my post (after 12 hours of opening a thread)

No words, just a single gif

You bastard ! :rofl:

In the old days my avatar was stato ((From old football comedy show)
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And thirst for numbers/match stats (positional analysis etc) grew and grew. As it aligned with how Rafa saw the game. I was even writing for the fanzine.

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Even shorter when you realize at least two of those accounts are the same person :joy:

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The forerunner to @Sweeting

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You’re still around, what a joy! :+1: I hope you’re doing well?

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Correct.

I do some objectively world-class work in the match threads, but often, because people are so preoccupied by the action, they miss my content and don’t give me the reactions I deserve.

It’s quite the pickle I find myself in.

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Id rather stick pins in my eyes repeatedly for 90 minutes than expose myself to reading “in match,” threads in real time

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So after all that it’s not been banned what a shame.