Policies on abusing sportspeople in Sports forums

Permabear

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dudara

I know this sounds like the normal clichéd response, but have you discussed this with the Mods or Sports CMods?

Permabear

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dudara

I’ll ask the Sports CMods to look at this

Permabear

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Beasty

I'm happy for the Sports CMods to chip in as they see fit, but as a former Sports CMod, I wanted to provide a bit of background to why certain forums adopt this approach

In Soccer you have United/Liverpool. In Rugby you have Leinster/Munster. In GAA you have every county against ever other county

The point is these sports typically have "tribal" followings, and insulting/abusing players/pundits/commentators will often result in "retaliation" and escalation of issues

Some sports forums get along nicely without this sort of tribalism (Cycling and Cricket being ones I am particularly familiar with).

When it comes to "sports" such as Darts and Snooker, you don't often get the same sort of tribalism. Indeed you end up with negative comments aimed at players who can typically come across as arrogant. The point is that often other posters don't get would up by such comments. It's not against the general "no abuse" rule at site level, as that's aimed at abuse towards other users

I'm not sure this is one where one rule fits the whole category. If people can't have a dig at Chris Froome or Kevin Pietersen we will get accusations of bias/censorship. Someone having a dig at Wayne Rooney or Paul Pogba may create tension with a large number of posters. I for one would not like such a rule to be applied to forums that frankly don't need it. Similarly would the fact that this type of rule exists in other categories (eg some of the Entertainment forums), mean it should be extended to the whole site? Again I think not.

None of this means that consideration should not be given to such a rule in the Darts forum, but as dudara has already suggested it's something that should be picked up with the local mods directly (having said that, Phil Taylor's retiring after this championship, and he is perhaps 90% of the "issue" within the Darts forum!)

Permabear

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Steve

I would agree with Beasty there.

Some forums need a rule because of mass trolling, most don't and it can be dealt with case by case.

I prefer to let the local mods make a call on that. If when they need help then the cat mods can provide that.

Keep reporting, I (along with the other cmods) look at them all, and if it seems like there is a lot of unrest then we will certainly act.

Permabear

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