The atmosphere in Cricket Chat - Suggestions & Discussion

[Pothas]

Terrific contribution, this. I have convictions for offences 2, 4 and 6 in the past, but all your points are well made. I particularly agree with your points 1 and 5 and without naming names these tendencies can ruin my enjoyment of reading what otherwise excellent posters have to say.

CC has been at a pretty low ebb recently. I tend to agree with the thought that there's just not a lot of great cricket out there. Hence the dreadful low of the Sachin v ___________ threads. Perhaps some of the old hands should think up some new and interesting topics for threads to pull us out of it.

Think everyone is guilty of 2 to be honest, and I actually have little problem with it most of the time but as GIMH mentioned it has become the same old topics repeatedly brought up which is the problem.

Agree completely with your second point. The Player v Player threads are ones that I normally just keep out of and hardly (if ever) contribute to, the problem is that recently they have been some of the only threads around.

 

[Shri]

Take out the player vs player threads to a different sub-forum and CC will become less active. Chance for a lot of good posts to crop up but the frequency of said good posts ad posts in general will come down. I could live with that. The tour threads will become very active though and player comparisons will just begin to happen in tour threads. More work for mods if they decide to move every post to the P vs P subbie.

 

[GIMH]

Think everyone is guilty of 2 to be honest, and I actually have little problem with it most of the time but as GIMH mentioned it has become the same old topics repeatedly brought up which is the problem.

Agree completely with your second point. The Player v Player threads are ones that I normally just keep out of and hardly (if ever) contribute to, the problem is that recently they have been some of the only threads around.

Yeah, I think a thread evolving is fine but at the moment it seems to never be for the better. So I'd probably, at this point, prefer all threads staying on topic (personally speaking) than what we currently see.

 

[four_or_six]

Yeah, I think a thread evolving is fine but at the moment it seems to never be for the better. So I'd probably, at this point, prefer all threads staying on topic (personally speaking) than what we currently see.

Oh, I've just done 2 myself without realising it. It's so easy!

 

[SJS]

Interesting thread this one. Having been at the site since day 1 but these days an irregular poster (although I do visit the forum almost daily to read) I have been loath to comment on what has been happening as I'm not sure how it would be received (I understand that many of the heavy posters these days would have no idea who I am and dismiss posts out of hand).

Firstly I think it was inevitable that the forum would become a bit more of a hot bed once Sachin made the double hundred. These sorts of milestones and historic achievements tend to make the passionate fans all the more one eyed and the detractors somewhat more bitter about the player/situations - therefore what has always been a healthy agreed-to-disagree type scenario gets stretched, people become more passionate one way or the other and the happy medium becomes pretty blurred. One of the flipsides of having a passionate and knowledgeable posting group is that due to the passion of the poster for the game and their ability to back up their points of view with knowledge this wedge will get amplified when particularly topical and potentially emotive situations occur in our game.

There has been a concern for me though. Any new poster is treated with a certain amount of fear that they are some sort of multi or flamethrower or the like. This is completely unfair. Someone may have a similar opinion to current or past posters but it does not make them automatically linked to this person be either a past or present member. It is inevitable in a forum of this size that opinions will have been heard before in other ways - it's more a representation of the size of the pool rather than a re-incarnation of the past. Each new member deserves to be treated on face value and listened to equally unless it is absurdly obvious that they are here to cause trouble.

I also think there has been a bit of an inconsistency in the moderating which has allowed situations to fester more than required. If a newer or less spoken member attacks another or suggests something negative about a poster they tend to be governed far harsher than a regular poster who is blatantly insulting and abusing another member. I don't want to name names, but I can think of a fairly obvious case over the last week where a poster has got away with effectively blue murder in what they have said and how they have carried on in a certain situation. Most posters would not have been treated so leniently.

Sometimes just because someone has a large number of posts next to their name it does not mean that they are a particularly good poster. In fact quite often the opposite. There are some who feel it is their right to comment on every little situation, welcome every member, moderate every thread but in turn abuse other posters and cry foul when they are caught up on this. This is an example of where all posters need to be hit with the same stick with the moderators - otherwise the joint turns into a big boys club, and any potentially outstanding new posters who come along will elect not to get involved as there is no real way into discussion - effectively every thread would end up being about the same thing between the same members calling eachother the same petty names. We can all agree this is not what we want.

Moderating needs to be as consistent as possible and if a regular member steps out of line they need to be dealt with regardless of how bigger part they feel they play in the site. I know this may at times strain established friendships but you can't have one set of rules for the established and another for the non-established. There needs to be a clear line where people can have no doubt as to where it is and if they have overstepped it. People get into a comfort zone and stretch the rules - such is humanity - but there needs to be an affirming of what happens with the rules for all.

Moderating, I found, was as much about studying a trend of an individuals posts than a single post itself.

Also, however, we need to bare in mind that there is a strong melting pot of a number of cultures on this site. What is seen as humorous and clever in one culture can be seen as downright insulting in another. I know I am hesitant to get involved in humurous banter with posters other than the ones I know well as quite simply I just don't know how a sense of humour will be received by someone who is not of as like minded nature to myself.

Finally, posters probably need to think a bit more before starting new threads. It doesn't taske must research to figure if a point has already been covered and can be brought up again in the appropriate thread rather than clogging up CC with another similar thread to the one before. Also, if people have a half baked idea or suggestion or think that people need to know what they are thinking or want to do, there are probably better places to bring it up. Things like this leave people open to ridicule, and in turn this person becomes defensive and then aggressive. Think before you post, I suppose, is my message.

Essentially, though, in a large pool of a number of intellegent and well spoken personalities frustration will at times boil over. Sometimes, maybe that clever comment can be kept to the individual rather than posted for all to see just to save a bit of trouble.

Hope my post makes some sort of sense and is somewhat helpful...

Bravo !! Well said.

 

[SJS]

I have a query. Why do mods have to carry their 'designations' around?

Why do we need people to know who the moderators are and only listen to an advise to pipe down because it comes from someone 'in uniform'? It should be possible for the mods to be designated without the members knowing who they are. Then anyone of the senior members (they could be staff members or those so advised by the CW management) including the designated mods can intervene and ask people politely to cool down. This will reduce the need to nominate more mods to. These 'senior members' (for want of a better term) could then report an offender(s) if they continue the problem and the mods can take action as deemed fit.

It will also cut out the kind of complaint one has heard here about high handedness of mods, inconsistent moderating etc.

By the way, I am really happy at the post by Andre since it takes up the cudgels on behalf of newbies. New comers are the life line of any forum PLUS whether we do it here or not, an 'old boys club' is never a desirable thing to actually happen or be perceived to exist.

 

[Uppercut]

From the Richards vs Tendulakr ODIs thread.

JBH001 pretty much sums up what exactly is the issue with such comparison threads. I agree with him.

I simply thought it was interesting that opinions on Tendulkar are so strongly correlated with nationality. Zinzan agreed, everyone else disagreed, and it caused way, way more controversy than either of us expected. I still don't really get the extent of the opposition, but I was ignoring someone who posted on it quite a lot, so maybe by the time I got there it had already gotten much messier than I realised.

You know, if you think I'm needling or trolling, do say so. I'm rather too abrasive at times, but it's not because I'm trying to get to someone, I'm just expressing an opinion bluntly. I can only imagine the mess that would erupt if there were ever a large number of Bangladeshi fans around here...

 

[Zinzan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by JBH001 View Post
On the derailed thread topic, I dont know what zinzan (and uppercut) were hoping to achieve by mentioning voting patterns and bias and the like. Even if the observation is just what they say it is, merely an observation, it seems a rather redundant point to make. So I dont know what its all about. Too much poking sticks, intentional or otherwise, at Indian voters and Indian members on CW - been happening generally a bit too much of late too, IMO.

From the Richards vs Tendulakr ODIs thread.

JBH001 pretty much sums up what exactly is the issue with such comparison threads. I agree with him.

Since you've got out of your way to mention names (when no one as did) by cross referencing a post from another thread in an cowardly attempt to somehow smear Uppers & myself....I'm going to defend my discussion about the poll because it's a classic example of the hypocrisy, double-standards, over-sensitivity & the no-go zones I referred to earlier.


Early on in Tendulkar v Richards thread, two posters had made comments alluding to the closeness of the poll making mention of the fact it was 20 all (or something), which to me implied they somehow felt it suggested some sort of significance (or why else would they mention it). So in response to that I said it'd be utterly irrelevant to read too much into that figure (indicating such closeness) without analyzing where the votes came actually came from.I said this because on the face of it I noticed no West Indian fans had voted, yet a high number of Indians fans had. To me this was a perfectly fair question to ask....I was then challenged from every angle on this theory so I tried (& did successfully) prove the point that overwhelmingly more India voted for Tendulkar than others. I then went on to say on about 5 occasions that I wasn't implying the pattern was exclusively about Indian fan & would apply to any other fanbase if the situation was mirrored.

This whole thing was blown totally out of proportion as anyone can see the question was a perfectly reasonable one. Yes it was dragged on far too long, because people kept challenging me on it, so of course I'm going to keep responding. I challenge anyone to go back to that thread & check the evolution of the said discussion & am sure an fair-minded member will see it was perfectly valid debate. Of course then everyone starts getting stupid by constantly mentioned things like "I'm Indian so I might as well not bother voting": etc etc blowing it completely out of proportion.

 

[BoyBrumby]

How about restriction on who can create a new thread..... some of the newbie's create most useless threads..... remember some guy created 5 or 6 threads and that was his post count as well.
Maybe some sort of qualifying period like number of posts or maybe how long they have been part of the forum.

I think this is an idea that has merit. I know it's been discussed before when we were getting a lot of spam threads (if memory serves it was rejected because some posters join to post specific queries), but an alternative would be for those posters who have less than (say) 200 posts to have to have all threads they start approved by moderators before they appear on the site?

Would mean legitimate newbies get their Qs A'd and those who're making threads that are similar to those already extant are declined. Help with spam too, obv.

 

[Furball]

Thats a left handed compliment if ever there was one HB

Post reported as being offensive to lefties.

 

[Richard]

Must say TBH that I think a fair bit of this question being asked is an overreaction.

CC has always gone through lulls and highs, peaks and troughs, phases where it's full of utter crap and phases where most of the recent threads are top-quality. This will pass, same way all the previous crap phases have done (and TBH I don't think the current crap phase is as bad as some we've had previously). There's no point thrashing around for the magic bullet. There is never a stage in anyone's anything where there's no scope for improvement, so it should always just be a case of always aiming for that IMO.

As for the subforum question, very much against it myself. I wouldn't mind, as I've said, subforums for threads related to "games" or suchlike (be it "the latest draft" or whatever) but I don't like the idea that a subforum for certain types of cricket-chat-related discussions should exist. A temporary subforum is not the worst idea (ie, no-one can actually create threads there but anyone can post on a thread once moved in there, on a temporary basis) but really, I don't think it's neccessary - the idea basically seems to be that most people don't need to bother checking it because all the stuff in there is crap - well, there's a very, very easy way to do that - don't bother opening threads you know have descended into crap. I do that all the time, and always have done.

Also very much against the idea of off-topic-post, how-dare-you, must-delete. The only time I think posts can legitimately be classified as off-topic is when they're not cricket-related. Yes, there are some stupid not-related-exactly-to-title-topic posts, and there are as many stupid on-topic posts as well. I think such a rule would only lead to utterly needless over-zealous moderation, because it's completely impossible to find a happy medium at which to draw the line.

 

[Sir Alex]

I simply thought it was interesting that opinions on Tendulkar are so strongly correlated with nationality. Zinzan agreed, everyone else disagreed, and it caused way, way more controversy than either of us expected. I still don't really get the extent of the opposition, but I was ignoring someone who posted on it quite a lot, so maybe by the time I got there it had already gotten much messier than I realised.

You know, if you think I'm needling or trolling, do say so. I'm rather too abrasive at times, but it's not because I'm trying to get to someone, I'm just expressing an opinion bluntly. I can only imagine the mess that would erupt if there were ever a large number of Bangladeshi fans around here...

I have absolutely no issues with you Uppercut. I was quoting JBH because he pointed out an example "why" a thread went to bits. You have made yourself clear why you were "unwittingly" a part of it, and I admit I too was initially atleast (after a certain point I withdrew myself from it). Anyway I think we realise it was not the exact way the thread should have gone. No I don't consider you as a troll or I won't be replying to you. Cheerios.

 

[slowfinger]

Well, mangos really sums up what people actually think of the threads these days.
Stuff like drafts and what-not are really good and atract alot of people whereas_v_ just ends up in crap like "well, _ got 23.23 wickets at 56.45 against _ and that was on a slow wicket where no-one could play on the legside because of _. We need to consider that _ got _ wickets at _ with a substantial rise in the production of _ with _. I am trying to say that _ is much better on _ wickets because _ happened and he is _ on this and he got _ on that and blah blah blah"
If there was some decent threads where you could just discuss that seperately and enjoy talking about how good that bowler looks with a mango on his _ then we actually get what he says.
The end.

 

[GIMH]

Must say TBH that I think a fair bit of this question being asked is an overreaction.

CC has always gone through lulls and highs, peaks and troughs, phases where it's full of utter crap and phases where most of the recent threads are top-quality. This will pass, same way all the previous crap phases have done (and TBH I don't think the current crap phase is as bad as some we've had previously). There's no point thrashing around for the magic bullet. There is never a stage in anyone's anything where there's no scope for improvement, so it should always just be a case of always aiming for that IMO.

As for the subforum question, very much against it myself. I wouldn't mind, as I've said, subforums for threads related to "games" or suchlike (be it "the latest draft" or whatever) but I don't like the idea that a subforum for certain types of cricket-chat-related discussions should exist. A temporary subforum is not the worst idea (ie, no-one can actually create threads there but anyone can post on a thread once moved in there, on a temporary basis) but really, I don't think it's neccessary - the idea basically seems to be that most people don't need to bother checking it because all the stuff in there is crap - well, there's a very, very easy way to do that - don't bother opening threads you know have descended into crap. I do that all the time, and always have done.

Also very much against the idea of off-topic-post, how-dare-you, must-delete. The only time I think posts can legitimately be classified as off-topic is when they're not cricket-related. Yes, there are some stupid not-related-exactly-to-title-topic posts, and there are as many stupid on-topic posts as well. I think such a rule would only lead to utterly needless over-zealous moderation, because it's completely impossible to find a happy medium at which to draw the line.

Well Richard, you seem to be in a minority as most people are quite upset at the state of CC currently - so I thnk you're a bit wide of the mark it the overreaction accusation, I'd say.

As for the off-topic thing; as the person who brought it to the table, I agree that it is a rule I find to be over-zealous at that other forum. But there is no justifiable reason why I should open a thread about a random batsman only to see it descending into a Ponting VX discussion or whatever. That needs to be stamped out ASAP, and as I said I'd rather there was nothing off-topic in a thread allowed than a whole heap of irrelevant crap.

 

[Uppercut]

Hmm, I rather like the way threads evolve into new discussions. I don't think the forum would suit an ultra-organised approach where all discussion of every topic must take place in a predetermined thread.

 

[GIMH]

Yeah, fair, suspect I'm in the minority. Just that a newcomer would probably be a bit baffled as to why a thread entitled 'Which cricketer has the hottest WAG?' was full of posts about who was better out of Ponting and Tendulkar.

 

[Richard]

Well Richard, you seem to be in a minority as most people are quite upset at the state of CC currently - so I thnk you're a bit wide of the mark it the overreaction accusation, I'd say.

People were upset at other stages as well, and rightly so. But there was no magic-bullet or alchemist's formula solution then, same way there's none now. We avoided the danger of doing long-term damage by trying something that's not possible on those previous occasions, and we'll hopefully avoid doing so again now.

What I consider an overreaction is "we must do something, CC is at an all-time low!", not "CC is pretty crap currently". I'd advise "wait until it gets better, it always does - but not in a 'for good' capacity".

As for the off-topic thing; as the person who brought it to the table, I agree that it is a rule I find to be over-zealous at that other forum. But there is no justifiable reason why I should open a thread about a random batsman only to see it descending into a Ponting VX discussion or whatever. That needs to be stamped out ASAP, and as I said I'd rather there was nothing off-topic in a thread allowed than a whole heap of irrelevant crap.

I've said it before - nothing, I mean no amount of off-title-topic posts stops you, or anyone else, making responses to anything cricket-related that you want to make.

I'd just rather irrelevant crap (like "Ponting scores 40 when he goes to the wicket at 13:27 whereas Sehwag only scores 76 when he goes to the wicket at 16:11 which is clearly an easier time because <insert list of batsmen> have shown this") was kept-out of CC altogether TBH - but sadly, there's really no way of achieving that. Except, of course, from banning posters who are given to such things. Something personally I'd not be averse to (and BTW I should add I'd not be averse to it because those who engage in such debating tend to be poor-quality sorts, not because that in itself is a poor character trait), but I don't think it's an approach favoured by many, else several posters would be long-gone. And no, not me included - I've never remotely descended to that level, so anyone who tries to group me with such a group is wrong, plain-and-simple.

 

[Uppercut]

That's an awfully negative example though. Standard X vs. Y threads become really interesting discussions sometimes too.

edit: @ Corrin

 

[Richard]

Yeah, fair, suspect I'm in the minority. Just that a newcomer would probably be a bit baffled as to why a thread entitled 'Which cricketer has the hottest WAG?' was full of posts about who was better out of Ponting and Tendulkar.

If so, they'll soon learn if they stick around. There are many things about just about anywhere which would baffle a newcomer to it - that's the nature of being new to a place.

And BTW, WAG isn't something which can be singular, WAGs is a plural-only noun. If a singular is required, it's WOG, which for obvious reasons is unlikely; thus, W\G is the only solution.

 

[four_or_six]

It's the line between them being a bit of fun and meandering around a bit, and going totally off topic onto the same-old things, that is presumably difficult to define.