Review of operation and rules of forum - your opinions wanted!

dfx-

SectionF wrote: »

Football is a tough, tense and contentious sport. That's why a lot of people enjoy it. We're not GAA. We don't all sit together at games wearing sombreros, and, generally, our passion dictates that we can be quite rude to each other.

I think it would be regrettable if over-zealous moderation succeeded in producing a virtual version of sanitized football stadia, with no atmosphere and everyone doing a Mexican wave. That's why I would strongly oppose the suggestion made here by a mod that the rules be abandoned or made more flexible. This is a charter to make up the law. Rather, the rules should be clear and strictly enforced, but only after being designed to allow for as much freedom of expression as is possible.

(I agree of course that there definitely should be limits: there is no need for foul and abusive language when you are typing as opposed to letting off steam on a terrace, and people should be required to ensure that their links are legal and decent.)

While the 'Soccer' mods are to be admired and thanked for their efforts, I have said here and elsewhere that they are inclined to take their stripes too seriously and show too much enjoyment in their work. They also can be arbitrary in their decision-making and snippy when called on it.

KevIRL wrote: »

There is an over-reliance on rules here, I can understand why the rules are needed and my point is not disputing the rules, but more that smartish, troublemaker types can get away with a lot, by sticking within the 'rules' even though every man and his dog reading the forum can see they are trolling/baiting to get their kicks.

All exceptional points and sticking points for me.

therecklessone

Bubs101 wrote: »

Esteban was a top class troll and the forum misses him. If you crack down on subtle trolling your going to lose the likes of Jackdaw as well which is not a good thing

I'll make this clear now, there will be no relaxation on the rules about trolling this forum. If anything, we'll be making those rules stricter.

We may have problems in applying the current rules to deal with trolling, but we will never encourage people to engage in it.

therecklessone

dfx- wrote: »

All exceptional points and sticking points for me.

All sort of contradictory when put together though.

If we follow through on KevIRL's suggestion then we crack down on people who are posting strictly within the rules, but who we decide are doing so to rile up others. That means we have to curtail freedom of expression, and apply a judgement call as to when a person is expressing a genuine opinion, and when they are on a wind up.

That means a subjective call by the moderators, are you really comfortable with us making that call?

In general, is everybody comfortable with us making that call?

KevIRL

therecklessone wrote: »

All sort of contradictory when put together though.

If we follow through on KevIRL's suggestion then we crack down on people who are posting strictly within the rules, but who we decide are doing so to rile up others. That means we have to curtail freedom of expression, and apply a judgement call as to when a person is expressing a genuine opinion, and when they are on a wind up.

That means a subjective call by the moderators, are you really comfortable with us making that call?

In general, is everybody comfortable with us making that call?

I would be comfortable alright. I think the only ones that wouldnt be comfortable are the actual trolls themselves.

I think though that to prevent yourselves from going a bit postal on it ye should have some guidelines for yourselves around making the call (they dont need to be shared with us) - something like, it must be a unanimous or heavy majority decision, shoud only be for persistant trolls who ignore you guys asking them to stop etc.

I honestly think that if one or 2 were stopped it would send a strong message. Whereas at the moment the message seems to be you can do what you like as long as its within the 'rules' even though it clearly isnt within the 'spirit' of the forum.

therecklessone

Xavi6 wrote: »

Both sides are perfectly capable of antagonising each other so if it takes straight up bans etc to sort it then fine, so be it.

Nail hit squarely on the head there.

If I may borrow a soundbite from Des, perception is 90% the reality. The perception I have is that when the interminable LOI vs foreign football debate rears it's ugly head, there are more respondents on the foreign football side. "No **** Sherlock" you're probably thinking, that's going to happen when there are more people watching foreign football. On the other hand, there are more regular respondents on the LOI side. One of the problems we are going to have is that if a single poster on the PL side says something uncomplimentary about the LOI, but they don't have a history of commenting on it, then it's hard to judge their intent. Do we really want to punish opinion (no matter how uninformed it may be)?

Trolling is about more than abuse, indeed the best trolls don't need to be abusive to rile up their intended targets. That's what makes it difficult to deal with them. If people want freedom of expression then fine, but it's freedom of expression for all, not just one side of a divide. That means if you want to repeat the same thing over and over again, in the knowledge that it is likely to wind up the other side, then you need to expect the same back at you. That means if you repeat the "real football" mantra (and blame the LOI for the slogan when called on it), or refer to "barstoolers" then you should expect counters like "the LOI is sh1te" or "wind swept fields".

On the "LOI is sh1te" thing, at face value that is a legitimate opinion, the same as "Emile Heskey is sh1te", or "Glenn Whelan is sh1te", or "Gomes is sh1te", or "the Connaught is a kip". When it becomes more than a legitimate opinion is when the intent is not to pass on a judgement but to have a dig at the league and wind up LOI supporters. As I've said earlier today, allowing us make that call will involve us curtailing the freedom of posters in the interests of the forum as a whole. If we are to go down that route, then we have to act on the other side of the divide as well, so we have to respond to repeated references to "barstoolers", or people questioning the authenticity of another person's support of a football club, or references to real football*.

To counter the charge that we don't pay any attention to the league, I usually read the Shels and Rovers threads, the match weekend threads plus any specific thread I see popping up. Not quite as extensive as Xavi, but more than I read of the PL threads these days.

*before somebody counters with "well it's the league's slogan" then I'll say in the right place it's not a problem, so in a LOI match thread, or the general LOI superthread, or the recent documentary thread it's fine. On the other hand, in a thread about for example Irish connections at foreign clubs it's not.

At this stage I have interfered enough in the conduct of this thread, when it should be user-driven. I apologise for that, and bow out for the moment. If anyone wants my input I will be reading the thread as it is updated, so ask for me to reply to your post and I'll try to do that. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions to date.

Handsome Bob

therecklessone wrote: »

All sort of contradictory when put together though.

If we follow through on KevIRL's suggestion then we crack down on people who are posting strictly within the rules, but who we decide are doing so to rile up others. That means we have to curtail freedom of expression, and apply a judgement call as to when a person is expressing a genuine opinion, and when they are on a wind up.

That means a subjective call by the moderators, are you really comfortable with us making that call?

In general, is everybody comfortable with us making that call?

I would also be comfortable with the mods making that call. Tone for me is everything in dealing with trolls, once you can spot the tone seperating the genuine opinions from the wind ups should be easy.

Dcully

Only problem i see is a mod giving a warning for refering to Alex Ferguson as "whisley nose" yes i got a warning over it .
I mean thats BS tbh,far too overly fussy.

Eire-Dearg

Dcully wrote: »

Only problem i see is a mod giving a warning for refering to Alex Ferguson as "whisley nose" yes i got a warning over it .
I mean thats BS tbh,far too overly fussy.

Tbh getting warned over saying "Whiskey nose" is a tad excessive, while i understand "manure" and "liver****e" and whatever else you can come with is classified as a warning, some so lighthearted as whiskey nose is like you said overly fussy. and stupid, in my opinion, why bother use them?

Dcully

Eire-Dearg wrote: »

Tbh getting warned over saying "Whiskey nose" is a tad excessive, while i understand "manure" and "liver****e" and whatever else you can come with is classified as a warning, some so lighthearted as whiskey nose is like you said overly fussy. and stupid, in my opinion, why bother use them?

Furthermore when i questioned the mod over it i got banned for what seemed the "how dare you question my modding" syndrome.
Bizarely enough 10 mins later i was unbanned,must of copped on to himself by then.

bohsman

therecklessone wrote: »

All sort of contradictory when put together though.

If we follow through on KevIRL's suggestion then we crack down on people who are posting strictly within the rules, but who we decide are doing so to rile up others. That means we have to curtail freedom of expression, and apply a judgement call as to when a person is expressing a genuine opinion, and when they are on a wind up.

That means a subjective call by the moderators, are you really comfortable with us making that call?

In general, is everybody comfortable with us making that call?

Would be far happier with that than with just having the mods blindly applying the rules, other than the destruction of the OTT thread its been ok here recently, TRO, LL and Xavi have done good jobs since coming in.

Royale with Cheese

Not gonna read through all 11 pages so this has probably been said before...

But can we get rid of the Go Ahead Eagles forum? The season's over and it didn't work anyway.

Eire-Dearg

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Not gonna read through all 11 pages so this has probably been said before...

But can we get rid of the Go Ahead Eagles forum? The season's over and it didn't work anyway.

Can I ask why there is one in the first place?

Edit: Never mind, I've just read the Biki page for it

LuckyLloyd

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Not gonna read through all 11 pages so this has probably been said before...

But can we get rid of the Go Ahead Eagles forum? The season's over and it didn't work anyway.

Forgot about that. Yes, that can be nuked. Cheers for the reminder.

KevIRL

Stickifying this was a bad idea imo. No one really pays attention to the stickies. I say this cause I just trawled through the first 4 pages of the forum looking for this thread before realising it might be stickied. Its been a pretty hot topic and should keep itself near the top of the front page of the forum anyway

therecklessone

KevIRL wrote: »

Stickifying this was a bad idea imo. No one really pays attention to the stickies. I say this cause I just trawled through the first 4 pages of the forum looking for this thread before realising it might be stickied. Its been a pretty hot topic and should keep itself near the top of the front page of the forum anyway

I'll pop in just to explain this.

The thread was the very last thread on page 1 of the forum when I made it a sticky. If it had dropped off the first page there's even less chance of people contributing, other than those who've already seen it and want to return to it, like yourself.

You have the option of searching for something you know about. You have the option of checking your user cp (if you subscribe to threads automatically) for the thread. You could use the search function to look back through your own posts.

New contributors don't know about it, so how can they search?

I'd like to increase the thread's exposure, with all due respect relying on users to bump the thread is haphazard at best. You went looking for it today, but your post was to comment on my decision to sticky the thread...would you have commented otherwise? And if not, wouldn't the thread be on page 2 and effectively hidden?

KevIRL

therecklessone wrote: »

I'll pop in just to explain this.

The thread was the very last thread on page 1 of the forum when I made it a sticky. If it had dropped off the first page there's even less chance of people contributing, other than those who've already seen it and want to return to it, like yourself.

You have the option of searching for something you know about. You have the option of checking your user cp (if you subscribe to threads automatically) for the thread. You could use the search function to look back through your own posts.

New contributors don't know about it, so how can they search?

I'd like to increase the thread's exposure, with all due respect relying on users to bump the thread is haphazard at best. You went looking for it today, but your post was to comment on my decision to sticky the thread...would you have commented otherwise? And if not, wouldn't the thread be on page 2 and effectively hidden?

Fair enough. Just a suggestion, I got the feeling that it had been forgotten bout somewhat, and the fact that there hadnt been a post since yesterday afternoon coupled with my search for the read, prompted my thought.

Nevermind, I've been moving across timezones, so its easy for me to forget that you lot are probly only just waking up over the last hour or so

SectionF

therecklessone wrote: »

*before somebody counters with "well it's the league's slogan" then I'll say in the right place it's not a problem, so in a LOI match thread, or the general LOI superthread, or the recent documentary thread it's fine. On the other hand, in a thread about for example Irish connections at foreign clubs it's not.

Think you're being too narrow there. Irish connections at foreign clubs are a perfectly legitimate target and subject for debate if those clubs are shamelessly pumping their Paddy connections: viz. Celtic openly saying they hired Irish players to attract Irish fans, or Sunderland simply suckering everyone, aided and abetted by the Irish media. Or anything to do with the Keane mass hysteria. Challenging that kind of guff is not trolling.

BTW, does that gratuitous Connaught reference count as subtle trolling? I'm sure that Spurs game was a big let-down all right. Long memories! :pac:

herbieflowers

Permanent bans for the spouting of juvenile Liverpool-ManU-who's-willy-is-larger rubbish that crops up all the time.

I have no idea how one would impose paramters as what counts as juvenile, but sometimes good discussion gets spoiled by inane "well Gerrard dived for that penalty against Hull" type rubbish.

I appreciate as well that mods do their best to curb it, it really irritates me. A Kids Section perhaps? :pac:

Handsome Bob

herbieflowers wrote: »

Permanent bans for the spouting of juvenile Liverpool-ManU-who's-willy-is-larger rubbish that crops up all the time.

I have no idea how one would impose paramters as what counts as juvenile, but sometimes good discussion gets spoiled by inane "well Gerrard dived for that penalty against Hull" type rubbish.

I appreciate as well that mods do their best to curb it, it really irritates me. A Kids Section perhaps? :pac:

Or maybe a time-out corner.:D That should be an embarassing enough situation for trolls to cop on.

Daemos

LZ5by5 wrote: »

Or maybe a time-out corner.:D That should be an embarassing enough situation for trolls to cop on.

They'd probably see it as some sort of street-cred :rolleyes:

NabyLadistheman

Glad to see monitoring trolling is going to be a priority. Match-day threads have been successful I think as the heat of the moment is vented there and not carried into the main club threads - The only main cincern is the about of supporters of clubs not involved in leaving their 2cents. Basically antagonising everyone in that thread. Im not gonna go into individuals but last years Spurs v Liverppol thread was a classic example. It was an absolute free for all. Im not sure what bans etc. came from that but it wouldn't hurt to show everyone using the sf what punishments their will be for such actions

kida

in a title run in there is interest from other teams not involved

_blank_

Er...what?

Are you saying that fans of teams not involved can't post in the different match day threads?

Are you serious?

Xavi6

torresistheman wrote: »

Glad to see monitoring trolling is going to be a priority. Match-day threads have been successful I think as the heat of the moment is vented there and not carried into the main club threads - The only main cincern is the about of supporters of clubs not involved in leaving their 2cents. Basically antagonising everyone in that thread. Im not gonna go into individuals but last years Spurs v Liverppol thread was a classic example. It was an absolute free for all. Im not sure what bans etc. came from that but it wouldn't hurt to show everyone using the sf what punishments their will be for such actions

Can't wait for next season's City/Pompey game when I get to go 1 on 1 with FrattonFred

:rolleyes:

Handsome Bob

torresistheman wrote: »

Glad to see monitoring trolling is going to be a priority. Match-day threads have been successful I think as the heat of the moment is vented there and not carried into the main club threads - The only main cincern is the about of supporters of clubs not involved in leaving their 2cents. Basically antagonising everyone in that thread. Im not gonna go into individuals but last years Spurs v Liverppol thread was a classic example. It was an absolute free for all. Im not sure what bans etc. came from that but it wouldn't hurt to show everyone using the sf what punishments their will be for such actions

Great example, I don't think there has been a time on here where I was as pissed as I was in the aftermath of that match. Infuriating stuff and it's exactly the kind of trolling that needs to be stamped out.

NabyLadistheman

Des wrote: »

Er...what?

Are you saying that fans of teams not involved can't post in the different match day threads?

Are you serious?

Er..no thats not what Im saying at all. Im saying that in alot of cases you had certain fans of clubs frequenting match-day threads with the sole goal of antagonising everyone in there. This happened whether United or Liverpool or whoever else were playing. Im not going mentioning individual names. I don't be online at weekends but often read through the whole match-day thread on a Monday and some of the stuff in there that was not actioned upon was incredible

5starpool

I presume it refers to threads where Liverpool/Utd lose and certain Utd/Liverpool fans contributions to the thread consist of something like "Haha ye lost, delighted for ye losers, you'll win nothing this year" and saying outrageously wrong things that are not childish like the other example but jsut so wrong they can only be there to provoke a backlash from fans already upset.

This was the case in the one time I got banned from here when I used an advanced, albeit ill advised form of stfu to someone who was so far the wrong side of plausible it is no wonder that things get inflamed. Differing opinions are fine, but ones that cannot be anything other than trolling in a match thread where emotions are already high are the cause of most bannings from here I would guess.

_blank_

5starpool wrote: »

I presume it refers to threads where Liverpool/Utd lose and certain Utd/Liverpool fans contributions to the thread consist of something like "Haha ye lost, delighted for ye losers, you'll win nothing this year" and saying outrageously wrong things that are not childish like the other example but jsut so wrong they can only be there to provoke a backlash from fans already upset.

This was the case in the one time I got banned from here when I used an advanced, albeit ill advised form of stfu to someone who was so far the wrong side of plausible it is no wonder that things get inflamed. Differing opinions are fine, but ones that cannot be anything other than trolling in a match thread where emotions are already high are the cause of most bannings from here I would guess.

It's ok when mods do it though

The answer you should get here is that you should practice self control, and not rise to the bait.

Even though, sometimes, it's hard to do that.

Especially if the baiter has ban powers.

NabyLadistheman

Des wrote: »

It's ok when mods do it though

Even though, sometimes, it's hard to do that.

Especially if the baiter has ban powers.

Well said. I have encountered such a situation myself. Hard to moderate that

5starpool

Des wrote: »

It's ok when mods do it though

The answer you should get here is that you should practice self control, and not rise to the bait.

Even though, sometimes, it's hard to do that.

Especially if the baiter has ban powers.

It is easier said than done, as you mention. I doubt anyone goes in with intentions of allowing themselves to get riled, but it happens to the best of us at times.

As for the mods issue, there have been elements of that I guess, although by no means the worst proponents of it. Stock responses of "tough, it's an opinion, deal with it" don't make things any better tbh.

I obviously see this one way, but that is generally because I don't really look in many Utd (or other teams) match threads or superthreads, but there are no doubt people that engage in this type of stuff that I am not aware of that are as much a problem as the ones I am thinking of.

_blank_

Of course, the flip side of the coin is that if someone can't deal with a bit of slagging from rival fans after their team loses, then they have no place being a football fan.

GuanYin

Des wrote: »

Of course, the flip side of the coin is that if someone can't deal with a bit of slagging from rival fans after their team loses, then they have no place being a football fan.

I think it depends who is doing it though.

I wonder is the old system of "intent" a better apporach. If the mod deems that someone is intending to insult/annoy/abuse/rile then they take action, rather than having a stricter set of rules.

The issue is, you guys need to trust us to make the call.

Xavi6

Des wrote: »

Of course, the flip side of the coin is that if someone can't deal with a bit of slagging from rival fans after their team loses, then they have no place being a football fan.

Personally I think this is just as big an issue as trolling. There are so many sensitive people posting in here and as soon as something negative mentioned about their club they go firing accusations of trolling about the place.

It's football, it's the internet, grow a pair and take a bit of slagging. Not everybody thinks the same, especially in a forum where there are so many leagues/clubs represented.

_blank_

But the intent of a post like this

"Muhahahah, I'm glad TEAMX lost today, lulz, can't believe they got beaten by a team in 14th poistion."

IS to rile. Of course it is. I do it all the time

As I said.

If someone can't take that level of slagging, then they probably shouldn't have access to football, via any medium.

_blank_

Xavi6 wrote: »

Personally I think this is just as big an issue as trolling.

What is?

Xavi6 wrote: »

There are so many over-sensitive people posting in here and as soon as something negative mentioned about their club they go firing accusations of trolling about the place.

fyp.

Xavi6 wrote: »

It's football, it's the internet, grow a pair and take a bit of slagging. Not everybody thinks the same, especially in a forum where there are so many leagues/clubs represented.

Best point in this thread so far.

Xavi6

Des wrote: »

What is?

The over sensitive people.

The accusations of trolling to people who actually aren't trolling cause just as many problems as trolling itself......if that makes sense.

_blank_

Ah yeah, I get you now.

GuanYin

Des wrote: »

But the intent of a post like this

"Muhahahah, I'm glad TEAMX lost today, lulz, can't believe they got beaten by a team in 14th poistion."

IS to rile. Of course it is. I do it all the time

As I said.

If someone can't take that level of slagging, then they probably shouldn't have access to football, via any medium.

Oh, I know.

I'm kinda thinking people should just toughen up

However, if you have a rather public and well known issue with a user and he/she started posting specifically at you, I would think that intent is past riling and maybe worthy of action.

Regarding people reporting every little think and not being capable of dealing with some banter. We could always infract for OTT complaints

_blank_

GuanYin wrote: »

Oh, I know.

I'm kinda thinking people should just toughen up

They should

GuanYin wrote: »

However, if you have a rather public and well known issue with a user and he/she started posting specifically at you, I would think that intent is past riling and maybe worthy of action.

I don't know if you are referring to a specific incident or not.

GuanYin wrote: »

Regarding people reporting every little think and not being capable of dealing with some banter. We could always infract for OTT complaints

We have thought police now.

/logs out

GuanYin

Des wrote: »

We have thought police now.

/logs out

That was supposed to be "thing" not "think" and the smiley should indicate that I wasn't 100% serious.

Draupnir

guanyin wrote:

I wonder is the old system of "intent" a better apporach. If the mod deems that someone is intending to insult/annoy/abuse/rile then they take action, rather than having a stricter set of rules.

If the group of mods could be trusted to carry out a system like this rather than have really hard and fast rules then yes this is the better system.

I can't see how a rules system can ever be put together that could successfully control the traffic in the soccer forum without opening the door for "well you banned XXX for it, so you have to ban YYYY" or "ZZZZ didn't get infracted for this similar behaviour thing, so why am I?" type scenarios.

A system which is based on the mods feelings for the tone of the comments, coupled with good internal discussion of contentious issues amongst mods and most importantly, users behaving like adults, should be capable of working a lot better than some set of predefined rules that paints every one of us into a corner at some stage.

I also appreciate that I could be suggesting a system that would see me banned very quickly for some of my postings over the last few years.

_blank_

The thing is though.

It is impossible to make a correct judgement on "tone" in the written word.

What if I post something, and a mod makes a call on it, saying "I think you are doing it on purpose, trying to rile people". I could counter that with "No I wasn't".

Where do we stand then?

Some mods I trust to make that call, other's I don't.

GuanYin

The only issue is that there is an inherent bias both for and against the more established users on the forum.

Personally, I preferred when we modded this way, the strict rules were a miscalculation imo (mostly my miscalculation) and the intent was really to reduce any chance of a perceived bias in modding (it was a common complaint).

But again, I think before we take this route, we need you guys to tell us you want and trust us to do it.

@Des, it's impossible to be right 100% of the time but again, we're here to make judgement calls, we keep each other in check and we have a good knowledge of the posters in the forum. The real outcome would be us keeping the forum at the right tone.. not too strict, not too wild... the baby bear's "just right" forum.

It's a heap more work for us, the system was problematic in some ways before (we did this before our last major rule change) but in my view it was better.

_blank_

GuanYin wrote: »

The only issue is that there is an inherent bias both for and against the more established users on the forum.

Personally, I preferred when we modded this way, the strict rules were a miscalculation imo (mostly my miscalculation) and the intent was really to reduce any chance of a perceived bias in modding (it was a common complaint).

But again, I think before we take this route, we need you guys to tell us you want and trust us to do it.

You see, here's the thing.

Without a Manchester United-minded moderator, you are going to get accusations of biased moderating.

I don't think the stricter rules were a miscalculation. Perhaps where they were applies was though.

Daemos

Des wrote: »

The thing is though.

It is impossible to make a correct judgement on "tone" in the written word.

My thoughts exactly. The Soccer Forum is probably much harder to moderate than adverts.ie (sly spamming there ) for that very reason. We rarely have a case where interpretation is important: you are either breaking the rules or you are not. It's not so here. A comment could insult one member, while another could take it as light-hearted.

Perhaps a system that could be introduced is that a user is infracted for trolling if the comment is:

a) Seen by a mod and interpreted as trolling
b) Reported, and the mod agrees that it is reported
c) If a comment is reported a certain amount of times for trolling (5, for example) the user is infracted even if the mod does not see it as trolling, as long as it could be interpreted that way

Draupnir

Des wrote: »

The thing is though.

It is impossible to make a correct judgement on "tone" in the written word.

What if I post something, and a mod makes a call on it, saying "I think you are doing it on purpose, trying to rile people". I could counter that with "No I wasn't".

Where do we stand then?

Some mods I trust to make that call, other's I don't.

Agreed, you've got a lot of experience in the area so I trust your opinion on it, but surely it must be a case of knowing a user and basically accepting "No I wasn't" once or twice at most before you can accurately say they are ripping the p*ss.

I mean, the decision doesn't even have to be an immediate one, a PM to the user letting them know you have doubts about the post and will be keeping it in mind going forward unless they want to validate it or even remove it doesn't seem completely unreasonable behaviour for someone who is in charge.

I'm in agreement that it won't be easy but I think it could work a lot better than very rigid rules which basically make the job of a moderator harder from what I can see rather than making the job easier.

_blank_

Draupnir wrote: »

you've got a lot of experience in the area

I have as much experience as you in moderating the Soccer Forum

_blank_

GuanYin wrote: »

That was supposed to be "thing" not "think" and the smiley should indicate that I wasn't 100% serious.

See what I mean about misinterpretation of tone.

That comment was clearly a joke.

Draupnir

Des wrote: »

I have as much experience as you in moderating the Soccer Forum

I meant moderating on Boards.ie in general Des. Now, I feel that you are trolling me and call for you to be infracted. In fact, banned as I am personally offended.

I guess an opinion/common sense system could be harder to work than it appears on the face of it!

5starpool

The problem with the "toughen up and grow a pair" approach is that even if you not get annoyed by it, but post something like "you are so far wrong it's funny" and they come up with another stupid point that is as bad, but presented in a controversial way as well. The only valid reply is something like "you, sir, are an idiot", but of course this will achieve the objective of the over the top trolling and get that person banned while they are not.

I don't count something like "Yes, delighted ye lost" as trolling. That is banter, and while harldy constructive, I doubt that riles anyone too much.

It is the stuff that people cannot reply to without getting more rubbish posted to further troll that is so hard to deal with.

Banning someone for losing their cool and calling someone a twat in these situations does not help unless the cause of it is dealt with at all. Unfortunately though this is all subjective and will not (despite best efforts) be consistent, but that is a trade off that has to be made I think.

The people who inflame with silly over the top comments, rather than those that debate a different view or even just laugh at another teams misfortune (schadenfreude ftw), are the ones that cause most of the hassle in here. Coming up with a strategy to do that is the most important thing that needs to change.

As regards everything else, mostly it goes absolutely fine imo. Discretion is available as a mod tool, and should be used. It is impossible to get a set of mods that all follow the exact same procedure and apply things in the exact same manner, so trying to have a hard and fast set of rules isn't the way around it.

There will be times when the situation is different when it may appear similar, and calling someone an idiot who is blatantly talking through their hole should be less of an offense than calling someone an idiot for engaging in debate. I'm not saying no punishment but a sliding scale could be used such as below with expansions. I don't know if you discuss punishments after they have been handed out as a matter of course (the ones without appeal and so on) but assuming you have a thread where you post new offenses for keeping track of peoples tallies, people could suggest downgrading/upgrading/revoking and a vote taken if necessary, and I do trust that those in charge here will do so in a balanced way especially if behind the scenes discussions can make a difference into those offenses deemed minor and not so minor.

1 pt for provoked offenses + 3 days if needed, or maybe a warning only
2 pts for non provoked offenses, or trying to provoke + 1 week
4 pts for previous red card ones
12 points - Out for a few months

You may well do something like the above, but my main point is that maybe another point value needs to be introduced for the truly minor points that still need to be addressed though. I have seen some yellow cards handed out that to my mind seemed very trivial and not worthy of censure (although I do bear in mind that I cannot see deleted posts unless reported).

On the other topic that Dub13 mentioned earlier in the thread about subforums. I think that his suggestion of a subforum for team and match threads is one that will work and will make the place much easier to navigate. This could also cover topics like "Will Liverpool win the league this season" and so on, while more general football topics will still keep the main forum ticking over. Sticky nothing in the team forum apart from charter and so on, and get rid of that Go Ahead Eagles forum to make room for this one imo.

Probably tl/dr, but that is my 2c.