GIMH

It takes two seconds to lock a thread - but how long after it's gone bad 'til one of us gets there? What kind of appalling nonsense could have happened in the interim? It's not a risk that we're willing to take. You make some worthwhile points, and I'll see to it that it's talked about, but don't hold high hopes for it. Experience dictates otherwise.

Part 2 - But there shouldn't be explicit threads like that, for the reasons I explained. I mean your idea sounds wonderful in theory, if we could all discuss these kind of things sensibly in public with everyone respecting everyone's views and all that.

But when the topic is so personal and so subjective, and especially with the conspiracy/bias argument, then the chances of it blowing up and turning really quite nasty really quite fast are stratospherically high. There is no way we can let a thread with those attributes remain open. Prevention > cure etc.

Finally, I'm painfully aware of perception ~= reality. But the best - well, in many circumstances, the only - thing we can do is simply to make sure that perception is not reality and that we are in fact moderating in an unbiased manner as best we can. That is what we have been trying our utmost to do.

We know that we could improve on our communication with members, and we're working on that too.

I am comedically stupid. I posted my response on my own wall >_>

Anyway...

Deleted the double, btw.

Part 1 - well, yeah, actually, I would, over a longish period. And a lot of people would agree with me. He has been without doubt the worst offender in that regard, in the consistency, aggressiveness and, well, remorselessness of it all. I'm not going to discuss other posters here, for blatantly obvious reasons, but no one gets a blank cheque.

~ no name dropping, please

And that is the sole and complete requisite for a thread closure. As I told Bun when he tried to make a thread like this, "don't make threads like this in the open about stuff like this (ie. mod decisions etc.) - they don't lead to anywhere nice." - same applies. It just doesn't end well.

If you do go, it'll be a sad loss for the forum and I'll be rather unhappy about it myself, but it's your decision.

Finally, I'm aware that our moderation could improve - the horrible posting that has gone on in the last three months is proof of that. I'll probably need to take the lion's share of the blame for that as the most active mod around the match threads where it's been the worst, but them's the breaks.

I can assure you, however, that we're doing our best.

It's also worth noting that in context, none of those posts could be justified as useful or necessary, and only degraded the atmosphere of this place. They're just samples of the aggressive, inflammatory style of posting which helps no one.

Next, on the conspiracy issue, I can tell you that both from a team and a personal perspective, I really don't see any evidence whatsoever that we give Indian/Asian posters a leg up. And you know that I've thought this from well before my moderation days. Some of their posting has been poor, yes. And it's been dealt with the same way as everyone else.

Now, on the thread closure. The thread wasn't closed because we can't take criticism - why would it still be visible otherwise? - it was closed because, as with all threads like this, trying to air these grievances (especially with the whole conspiracy argument which surely some are going to take offence to) in the open will not lead to any positive outcome.

Thing is, Furball has openly and unashamedly been constantly posting really quite badly for a long time now. He has been on the precipice, points-wise, for a very long time too. This wasn't a decision we just suddenly made yesterday, you know. This was a decision we've been going over for quite a while - we're talking weeks here. We're not doing this lightly and there's no way in hell it's going to be overturned.

Now, on the examples, which I presume you've seen, those are exactly that - examples. We haven't taken this decision upon the back of one post. It's the trend that is annoying us. Just the constant jibes, accusations of baiting, trolling, unwanted aggression etc just came to the point where it became simply impossible not to justify a reasonably lengthy ban on the basis that he needs a long hard think about his posting style and that everyone else could do with a break from that nonsense for a while too.

I'm kind of obviously not going to go through everything in detail here but I've edited the ban announcement slightly - should throw a bit more light on the rationale.

Nope, I'm going to sleep. Good night.

I'm not talking about the rest of the site, I'm talking about the forum. And we have never tried to aim the forum at any demographic by altering moderation policy.

I don't have a problem with being criticised, especially if it is constructive. But to me, that looks like it's predominantly about the moderator decision we made the last couple of days around GF, since you list every one of the posts we sent to him as examples of posts we didn't find acceptable.

It just seems to me personally that you are getting to caught up in this idea that we are trying to somehow attract a 'new market' to the forum, and that somehow this is causing a conscious change in moderation. We have never had any kind of discussion in that direction.

Lol, fair cop.

Yes, I have read you post We have said repeatedly not to discuss mod decisions this way.

some* of our favourite posters can never accept a single criticism of their team. so boron

mate, someone of our favourite posters won't hear a single critical word of their players.fmd

??

Yeah why not. Can't see us being seperated by more than few points again

Honestly? I have no idea any more. There's been so much dire posting in the last month that it's all kind of melded together into one giant mishmash of poo.

you get steaming drunk and post that on everyones wall?

WAC z

Ahh fair enough. Thought it might have been a response to me saying India might improve enough to avoid the whitewash.