this is not a publicly run forum. the mods will decide and act on how they want the forum to look and run, in an extreme example, if they decided they wanted a forum which solely talked about canadian geese , they could, and they could enforce it…itd be up to the individual to decide whether they wanted to remain here
also, i think we need to acknowledge its not just three people complaining, its actually a bit of a ground swell which is why i imagine they are REACTING (thats an important word here, they have tried to let it run its course naturally) to the 4/5 odd posters who are doing this all over the site
for clarity, i just want to say in the earlier stages i had a bit of a laugh at the COG age banter and Korma ‘fight’…
It is actually hard because once there are rules, and rules have to be enforced, then there will no exceptions. No ‘i think this joke is ok for a month but beyond, it’s an out’. That means rules have to be specific and mods will act accordingly to rules and no exceptions, no excuses, no individual preference.
Right now, it’s up to mods interpretation on when and how to enforce the rules and I think it works well unless like I said, we want a no nonsense forum, I think members do have to live and let live in a public forum consisting of different kinds of people.
thats not to say rules should not be followed, but rules dont need to be enforced without exception if a moderator wants to turn a blind eye
and its here with your point where we have the problem with modern debate…everyone, EVERYONE, on this forum knows EXACTLY what forced the mods hand here and even if they think its funny, must be aware that for the majority it probably isnt (self awareness)…we dont need EVERY little off topic comment to be moderated…just the shit that goes way way too far(as decided by the moderating team)… over dramatising the situation and talk of ‘enforcing rules’ and ‘no exceptions’ is just being hyperbolic about a pretty straightforward situation.
Reminds me about a long time ago, met a man who said that he had a group of friends he was regularly going out with.
Few years pass by, and when he realized they were now spending more time talking about past nights out than enjoying the current ones, he knew it was time to move on.
Again I understand what you are saying. But then you are talking about a moderating team filled with different people of different tolerance level, different way of doing things. They are not an AI algorithm where they decide to interfere only in certain situations and let go in certain situations, they do have to use their own interpretations when and what is ok and different mods I am sure have their own ideas what are those. And that means members have to accept that what is ok to some, is not to some, what is humorous to some, is not. We are not talking obvious infringments but we are here talking about sense of humour, is it really easy to moderate what is funny and what is not?
Thats my point and obviously will not have homogenous agreement just like I don’t exactly agree with your opinion on this and I always follow my own advice, I move on to other things. I enjoy this forum, with or without the unnecessary off topic posts.
ADD: And i do see members responding positively by and large when the mods put in a warning so that is still effective.
Exactly.
They could instead spend countless hand wringing hours reading expert opinions on who we should buy, how much they should be paid and what length of contract they should get, only to find out they were baseless tabloid rumours
At least they would be reading about rumours. In a rumours thread.
With the odd piece of information or bit of humour.
Not repeated in jokes that we all read a couple of years ago and now wade through in most threads.
I don’t take Internet forums too seriously. I kinda take Liverpool and my support seriously. That got me in bother for conspiracy thinking on TIA. I got a rap on my knuckles for serious debate, fair enough I was robust in my arguments…now the main topic of discussion is feeble humour.
I think there’s a few important things to note here.
The first is that we want discussion, and understand totally that any discussion on a subject will wander a little here and there and that’s absolutely fine. We love humour; as has been pointed out above there are a number of posters who often post jokes about something being discussed - and speaking personally I love their input, because it’s not just the same shit day after day, thread after thread.
Context will be important, and rather than a wave of mass deletions I envisage it more as spotting when a thread is veering too far off-topic and nipping it in the bud with a request to get back on track as a first response.
In an ideal world we’d get to the point of people just being better at self-policing the stuff they post, whether it’s something that actually adds value to the discussion and/or the forum as a whole.
Ultimately it’s about making the forum somewhere that’s enjoyable for as many posters as possible, and as welcoming to newcomers as possible - I know from experience that any online community that doesn’t have a stream of new people, even a little one, is living on borrowed time.
As for gasband’s comment about moderation styles and personal prejudices of the mods, raising the curtain a little bit I would say that most decisions are discussed by the mod team and a consensus is reached before something is enacted, which is perhaps why the outside perception may sometimes be that these things often happen slowly.
So in conclusion I would say that people shouldn’t panic that the entire culture of the forum is about to change, we just want to help make sure that everyone here, old and new, has a good experience of the community, and any efforts of members to help keep things on track and not throw toys out of prams every time we’re forced to step in will be appreciated.
Is one possible solution to try and use the chat function?
I know we tried it for in-match discussions, and it didn’t really work out. But for summer sillyness and boredom, it might be a way around clogging up threads?
I can see that the forum might be better without my German bank holiday jokes.
The world and world culture as a whole? Maybe, but really we’ll never know.
For the record I wouldn’t have deleted that post as I thought it fell under the heading of being informative, so you definitely fell on your sword for that one!
It informed me anyhow it does seem to be better this week on a whole and only a large number of posts when something actually happened like the German leaks then the English leaks today.
Agreed. Things have definitely improved since this change was made. It’s been a joy to read through threads without the usual stream of off-topic “in jokes”.
If, as it appears, a few of the usual culprits have decided to walk away from the forum entirely rather than just follow the rules, then frankly, it’s no great loss. The discussion’s all the better for it.
