Would you change anything about how the forum is run?

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this should really be the FC handbook tbh
 
Thelonious said:
X9lIU.gif

this should really be the FC handbook tbh
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Good stuff, but if you guys' true intent is for as many people to enjoy your forum as possible, this laissez faire approach will not work.

As long as other Spurs boards ban posters, and this one doesn't, posters banned from those boards will be allowed to find a home here. As long as they are allowed to find a home here, the problems they created elsewhere will occur here, people will complain about them as you've seen frequently lately, and some valued posters will leave as has already happened. You could ban these current causes of problems, as well as those of us who call them out for it, but the problems will not go away with this current batch of people. They will happen again and again as long as those perpetually negative posters can persist here and are free of permanent consequence.

If you genuinely don't care and don't mind seeing people come and go as a result of it, that's entirely your call and frankly I wouldn't even blame you gents for it, but don't be surprised to see people complaining of the problems as long as posters persist who contribute nothing but inflammatory comments despite a multitude of warnings.

This forum has provided a net for these posters via default of no consequence while other boards dedicated to the same topic do have consequence. Whether you choose to ignore it or not, it is inevitable given the nature of this system created. Sure, it's the internet who cares yada yada, but if you want your forum to be the best it can be, it cannot be this standoffish. It cannot be the last island for the deliberately spiteful.
 
cahspur said:
I also think this may be a good idea. Seeing as some people choose to be particularly vindictive or create vendettas, simply separate the problems. Those same people may also try to sling personal insults towards their "enemy," but hey at least the threads aren't cluttered up.

I think the best plan though is to create extraneous circumstances for permanent bans. Some of these would include:

- Extreme vindictive intent. When a poster has picked out another poster(s), and is attacking that poster on a daily basis with the purpose of causing conflict, it is just well over the top and directly harmful to the forum.

- Causes of daily conflict. If specific identities are often the cause of conflict, they are a direct harm to the integrity of a forum, which is intended to exist for fair and equal exchange of thought. When there is a poster constantly inducing conflict, other posters will refrain from expressing their honest feelings and thoughts. It is my impression that the very purpose of the "no-ban" motive is to promote this honest exchange, but posters violate this trust in good will and are constantly seeking to disagree with people in rude and condescending manners, it serves absolutely no purpose.

- Repeated usages of hate speech. This is a football forum, and football is one of the most humanitarian existences in our world. IMO if anyone makes repeated comments to specifically insult anyone's race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, etc with no obvious light-hearted joke embedded; they should go. Note I didn't include nationality, as the lines between "joking" and actual "insults" would just be far too blurry on a football forum to make rules around them. Will always be light-hearted banter on an EPL club fan forum between Yanks and Brits, so would just be far too muddied.

- No indication of change despite multiple sin-binnings. If people are repeatedly "binned" for similar offenses, why does it persist? Why do we assume they'll ever learn? If they are repeated sources of problems, and don't change despite "punishment," what's the point of continuing to provide them the opportunity to harm the forum?


TLDR: Anyway, I feel if such extraneous circumstances were to be implemented, this place would be far better. The problem with the "ignore" and "sin-bin" functions in conjunction is that far too often particularly inflammatory people are ignored by many who would be turned off by negative actions of those people, and are therefore unavailable to assist in fair and just "self-policing" of the forum. It isn't as if you've removed people from a jury who have been harmed by a defendant, what you've removed from the courtroom is the victims. And if the victims are removed from a case, you cannot expect to have a fair and equal trial.

In our case here, if you have removed the people who are turned off by an individual who is free of permanent consequences and only subject to the will of those remaining in a "self-policed state," it is only inevitable that such an individual would have yet expanded freedom to continue doing the very acts that turned those people off in the first place. As such, these people who are shown to be incessant in causing problems despite multiple attempts to "teach them" through sin-binning, are only allowed to continue causing problems for the whole since they have shown no sign of "learning."
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tldr; tldr
 
cahspur said:
Good stuff, but if you guys' true intent is for as many people to enjoy your forum as possible, this laissez faire approach will not work.

As long as other Spurs boards ban posters, and this one doesn't, posters banned from those boards will be allowed to find a home here. As long as they are allowed to find a home here, the problems they created elsewhere will occur here, people will complain about them as you've seen frequently lately, and some valued posters will leave as has already happened. You could ban these current causes of problems, as well as those of us who call them out for it, but the problems will not go away with this current batch of people. They will happen again and again as long as those perpetually negative posters can persist here and are free of permanent consequence.

If you genuinely don't care and don't mind seeing people come and go as a result of it, that's entirely your call and frankly I wouldn't even blame you gents for it, but don't be surprised to see people complaining of the problems as long as posters persist who contribute nothing but inflammatory comments despite a multitude of warnings.

This forum has provided a net for these posters via default of no consequence while other boards dedicated to the same topic do have consequence. Whether you choose to ignore it or not, it is inevitable given the nature of this system created. Sure, it's the internet who cares yada yada, but if you want your forum to be the best it can be, it cannot be this standoffish. It cannot be the last island for the deliberately spiteful.
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I just ignore the posters who are determined for an argument. If everyone else did the same, there would be no arguments...
 
A thread called "The Ring". Anyone who wants a verbal tear-up can go there to have it. Anyone who gets off on
reading that stuff can go there to read it. Plus The Ring has a duel meaning!
 
zin said:
Give us the option to stop specific users from tagging or quoting us.
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Up to them if they want to do that, can't effect how the forum works for someone else. Put them on ignore and I don't think you get notifications.
 
Yorkshire_Spurs said:
I just ignore the posters who are determined for an argument. If everyone else did the same, there would be no arguments...
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See this is the point I'm trying to make. Such a notion, as with the political states proposed by Hobbes and Locke that were intended to resolve disputes civilly among the people, is dependent on the belief that a certain level of common decency exists among all who arrive here. Whether the mods like it or not or whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, they have effectively allowed this place to become a "penal colony" for some of the worst posters in the internet Spurs community due to the fact other boards can and do ban, and this one does not. They have good intentions with the "no ban" policy, but because of the nature of the system created, it cannot work as is.

It just simply doesn't line up. You cannot create a place where any and all can exist including people proven to be directly harmful to forums elsewhere, declare it entirely-self policing, and wonder why it has problems. Would be the same as the leaders being entirely laissez faire in Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries after the British government dumped all the convicts on them, and then they and the people wondered why the rates of theft suddenly increased.

Look dudes, you can think me a whine, a bitch, whatever; but I guarantee you these issues will not go away with the current format. There are deliberately vindictive people that have been allowed to exist here, people who come to a forum with absolutely no intent to listen to the ideas and opinions of others but with the clear intent to cause conflict and problems for others enjoying the board. They have been punished many times now, both here and elsewhere, and have shown absolutely no indication of changing. They are a harm to the purpose of a forum, the exchange of fair and balanced discussion, and if you founders of this place truly want it to thrive, you cannot allow this to persist. It will not be solved by hoping everyone who has a conflict will simply place each other on ignore, as not everyone has that certain required level of common decency to permit it.

I'll drop it as at this point it's exceeded the appearance of trying to make a point and now looks rather a rant, but I do like this place a lot and hope to see others enjoy it. It sucks seeing good posters leave as a result of all this, as well as seeing people complain daily. You can place me and a specific other individual on forced ignore today, but it will not fix your problem tomorrow.
 
cahspur said:
See this is the point I'm trying to make. Such a notion, as with the political states proposed by Hobbes and Locke that was intended to resolve disputes civilly among the people, is dependent on the belief that a certain level of common decency exists among all who arrive here. Whether the mods like it or not or whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, they have effectively allowed this place to become a "penal colony" for some of the worst posters in the internet Spurs community due to the fact other boards can and do ban, and this one does not. They have good intentions with the "no ban" policy, but because of the nature of the system created, it cannot work as is.

It just simply doesn't line up. You cannot create a place where any and all can exist including people proven to be directly harmful to forums elsewhere, declare it entirely-self policing, and wonder why it has problems. Would be the same as the leaders being entirely laissez faire in Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries after the British government dumped all the convicts on them, and then they and the people wondered why the rates of theft suddenly increased.

Look dudes, you can think me a whine, a bitch, whatever; but I guarantee you these issues will not go away with the current format. There are deliberately vindictive people that have been allowed to exist here, people who come to a forum with absolutely no intent to listen to the ideas and opinions of others but with the clear intent to cause conflict and problems for others enjoying the board. They have been punished many times now, both here and elsewhere, and have shown absolutely no indication of changing. They are a harm to the purpose of a forum, the exchange of fair and balanced discussion, and if you founders of this place truly want it to thrive, you cannot allow this to persist. It will not be solved by hoping everyone who has a conflict will simply place each other on ignore, as not everyone has that certain required level of common decency to permit it.

I'll drop it as at this point it's exceeded the appearance of trying to make a point and now looks rather a rant, but I do like this place a lot and hope to see others enjoy it. It sucks seeing good posters leave as a result of all this, as well as seeing people complain daily. You can place me and a specific other individual on forced ignore today, but it will not fix your problem tomorrow.
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Deep.
 
Mose said:
TFC should have a button for "flag post as handbags" so then people like me can choose an option to ignore all handbags.
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I kind of like this… sort of like how on reddit/slashdot comments below a certain threshold will be hidden unless one explicitly wants to see them. "please hide all comments with +5 handbagginess." Alas, who knows if xenforo has that kind of plug-in.

If we're talking Hobbes and Locke, then we might as well bring in Agamben and rule certain members of the community stripped to bare life. But I don't think that's particularly useful. For some reason (low posting volume, maybe), I've not attracted a lot of antagonism from the chief shit-stirrers over the past year+, and when I do engage with them, I always set an internal limit to how far I'll go with them (5 responses), usually with radically attenuated post lengths (last post will be < 7 words, say). And then I walk away.

Or if someone attempts a joke at my expense, I, to borrow a phrase, shake it off.

I don't know. When I was younger (by which I mean, 16), I would be much more invested stopping the bullies. And abstractly I still am. But the stakes are so damn low here…

…yet not only do threads get derailed, but positive input gets suppressed when I see that a page is nothing but two or four posters, I skip it, which is too bad, because maybe something actually interesting is being said in one of the posts. Recently on the transfer thread, for example, I skipped everything until I saw an embedded tweet, figuring that might actually be "transfer news" and not just chasing each others' tails. And I skip the player-specific threads nearly entirely these days.
 
cahspur said:
You cannot create a place where any and all can exist
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Bingo. No matter what you try and do, you'll always get problems. Banning people isn't an issue-free solution. Then you open up a whole discussion of "well X was banned and Y just did this. Why aren't they banned?". It's a slippery slope and not one we have time for anyway... but that's just my opinion.

I think you're expecting a bit much of a forum. People argue on the the internet. Sammy & Gibbs both post a lot about Spurs and they argue a bit as well. Do they deserve to be permanently banned for that? Even if they posted 70% Spurs and 30% shite, I still don't think that's worthy of banning for good.
 
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