GIMH
Norwood's on Fire
Okay I've been posting here nearly five years and in that time there have been heaps of 'the forum is going downhill' type posts going on. So you know what, maybe I'm just being cliched, but lately, I just don't enjoy this place anywhere near as much as I used to. It's not because I spend too much time on here, because I've been on less of late.
The quality of discussion in CC of late has hit an all-time low. There was a thread that you will all remember which was designed to improve the standard of discussion and atmosphere within Cricket Chat, our flagship forum. There were lots of great suggestions made, although the thread did inevitably descend into international squabbling. The things that came from this seemed to be the appointment of GingerFurball (more on that later) and 'stricter' moderation.
The stricter moderation has turned into a bit of a farce though. We often hear about the importance of consistency in spite of the fact that no such thing is atcually applied. Plenty of people felt my recent ban was deserved and plenty didn't, meh, I broke the rules but after having received no real warnings like, ever, it was quite laughable that I was banned for about five or six aggressive posts when it took 9 months for Sir Alex to be banned for constantly bringing the forum down.
The fact that he hasn't been perma'd yet is one of the worst things about this forum at the minute, in particular in CC. Last year there was a bit of a stir when sledger got handed a perma for duplicate accounts, even though they were , in fact, not him. Sir Alex is a multi. We can talk about evidence til the cows come home, every man and his dog knows he is Precambrian, this alone should see him shelved for good. But even if, for whatever reason, he doesn't get banned (and if he's not being banned for that then let's bring back Cricket_Fanatic and Spanish_Vicente who were entertaining multis) for that, his consistent trolling should see him shelved. He's no better than a sideshowtim or wdfu_ben91 who have both been binned. You get rid of him, CW improves, a bit.
Then it comes to the quality of discussion, obviously we've seen a lot of multis trying to face the same issue lately, but there does seem to be less good cricket discussion going on. Outside of the tour threads I only check the rest through morbid curiosity as people continue to push the same tired agendas. There are some absolute gold posters in CC, but I believe a few of them talk a lot of their cricket elsewhere these days. It is our responsibility as posters to kepe the quality of discussion high, but it does seem pointless when you have that feeling that any thread you start will wind up with some ugly discussion going on. And hey, people often blame Richard when CC is all flamed up but he's hardly been here in months now. Not saying that he does or doesn't contribute to the negativity within there, but he certainly can't be the sole cause.
And then we come to the moderation in general. The World Cup was the all-time nadir of moderation in this forum for me, some of you will probably hark to the autumn of 06 well I guess it was similar. Only one of the mods seemed to actually understand how important the tournament was to some of us English posters, unfortunately he seemed to revel in baiting the English posters. The moderation showed a complete lack of proactivity, posts were labelled as 'pathetic' by people who obviously don't actually have a clue. Too often we hide behind rules and use them as excuses. Surely mods should be capable of showing empathy rather than applying rules rigidly. There was no attempt to stop Sir Alex and Pratters' dross after the Germany trouncing, and as sledger said, it would appear that calling a spade a spade is an offence round here. Forget about who technically broke the rules, if the mods had been proactive then they would have stepped in long before any of that mess occurred. I made this point a couple of weeks ago and it was ignored so I'll make it again. four years ago James stepped in when he knew it was about to go off, put a massive warning up to the whole forum and everyone backed off. I posted a link to it in a discussion with SS the night before the Germany game and hey, I'm not one to tell the mods what to do but with a bit of foresight they might have acted similarly. But no, let's shut the door after the horse has bolted. I don't wanna whinge about my ban, it was three days ,I lived hey, but it was one of the most pointless things ever.
It wasn't just that night, throughout the WC we had to put up with nonsense posting that mods had no idea how to deal with. Every third post was someone popping up to say 'blablabla football is **** I'm not trolling though honest' and this was just allowed to go on, when someone finally lost it with this their post was deleted (because if you can't see it then obviously it didn't happen). You know what, I know some posters got upset about European snobbery throughout the tournament, and fair enough too in some cases. There are some awesome footy posters from outside of Europe, alas it appears none of our active moderation team actually understand the culture of football and this showed with the moderation. I'd love to see what happened if someone posts in the next Cricket World Cup in the way Sir Alex, pratters, GingerFurball, hell even the likes of SS, did should India go out. Let me tell you there will be threads locked and blanket permas.
So as for GingerFurball, well he's a good poster on the most part, especially in Cricket Chat, and I quite liked the guy a few months ago, but my word he's the worst mod we've ever had. He baits posters, he is happy to label people 'thick', even though we have all been told in the past that abusing banned members is still not allowed. How many threads have we seen closed by him only for them to be quietly reopened a few hours later?
And of course, he did label me a 'sack of ****' a day before I was banned for pretty much saying that sort of thing a few times. He promptly edited it, but he still said it and should have been sacked there and then. And when i quoted it in my sig, lo and behold, I was asked to remove it, under the guise of the fact that it included his surname.
Yes, a lot of my frustrations do stem through the way I've seen things with my own eyes lately. Yes, I felt my ban was inconsistent, and yes I might not have felt the WC modding was so bad if I wasn't English, but hey, that's kinda my point on that one. Everyone would agree with me on CC lately surely.
And no, this isn't a reaction from sledger's ham thread being removed, even though I don't see why it couldn't have just been moved to the TF or something.
Sorry for the long and boring rant, just had to get this **** off my chest because I'm kinda fed up here at the minute, I'm doing absolutely nothing today because I want to chill, days like this in the past I've sat off having a laugh on CW, but there isn't much of a laugh to be had round here right now.
Please don't lock or delete this.
The quality of discussion in CC of late has hit an all-time low. There was a thread that you will all remember which was designed to improve the standard of discussion and atmosphere within Cricket Chat, our flagship forum. There were lots of great suggestions made, although the thread did inevitably descend into international squabbling. The things that came from this seemed to be the appointment of GingerFurball (more on that later) and 'stricter' moderation.
The stricter moderation has turned into a bit of a farce though. We often hear about the importance of consistency in spite of the fact that no such thing is atcually applied. Plenty of people felt my recent ban was deserved and plenty didn't, meh, I broke the rules but after having received no real warnings like, ever, it was quite laughable that I was banned for about five or six aggressive posts when it took 9 months for Sir Alex to be banned for constantly bringing the forum down.
The fact that he hasn't been perma'd yet is one of the worst things about this forum at the minute, in particular in CC. Last year there was a bit of a stir when sledger got handed a perma for duplicate accounts, even though they were , in fact, not him. Sir Alex is a multi. We can talk about evidence til the cows come home, every man and his dog knows he is Precambrian, this alone should see him shelved for good. But even if, for whatever reason, he doesn't get banned (and if he's not being banned for that then let's bring back Cricket_Fanatic and Spanish_Vicente who were entertaining multis) for that, his consistent trolling should see him shelved. He's no better than a sideshowtim or wdfu_ben91 who have both been binned. You get rid of him, CW improves, a bit.
Then it comes to the quality of discussion, obviously we've seen a lot of multis trying to face the same issue lately, but there does seem to be less good cricket discussion going on. Outside of the tour threads I only check the rest through morbid curiosity as people continue to push the same tired agendas. There are some absolute gold posters in CC, but I believe a few of them talk a lot of their cricket elsewhere these days. It is our responsibility as posters to kepe the quality of discussion high, but it does seem pointless when you have that feeling that any thread you start will wind up with some ugly discussion going on. And hey, people often blame Richard when CC is all flamed up but he's hardly been here in months now. Not saying that he does or doesn't contribute to the negativity within there, but he certainly can't be the sole cause.
And then we come to the moderation in general. The World Cup was the all-time nadir of moderation in this forum for me, some of you will probably hark to the autumn of 06 well I guess it was similar. Only one of the mods seemed to actually understand how important the tournament was to some of us English posters, unfortunately he seemed to revel in baiting the English posters. The moderation showed a complete lack of proactivity, posts were labelled as 'pathetic' by people who obviously don't actually have a clue. Too often we hide behind rules and use them as excuses. Surely mods should be capable of showing empathy rather than applying rules rigidly. There was no attempt to stop Sir Alex and Pratters' dross after the Germany trouncing, and as sledger said, it would appear that calling a spade a spade is an offence round here. Forget about who technically broke the rules, if the mods had been proactive then they would have stepped in long before any of that mess occurred. I made this point a couple of weeks ago and it was ignored so I'll make it again. four years ago James stepped in when he knew it was about to go off, put a massive warning up to the whole forum and everyone backed off. I posted a link to it in a discussion with SS the night before the Germany game and hey, I'm not one to tell the mods what to do but with a bit of foresight they might have acted similarly. But no, let's shut the door after the horse has bolted. I don't wanna whinge about my ban, it was three days ,I lived hey, but it was one of the most pointless things ever.
It wasn't just that night, throughout the WC we had to put up with nonsense posting that mods had no idea how to deal with. Every third post was someone popping up to say 'blablabla football is **** I'm not trolling though honest' and this was just allowed to go on, when someone finally lost it with this their post was deleted (because if you can't see it then obviously it didn't happen). You know what, I know some posters got upset about European snobbery throughout the tournament, and fair enough too in some cases. There are some awesome footy posters from outside of Europe, alas it appears none of our active moderation team actually understand the culture of football and this showed with the moderation. I'd love to see what happened if someone posts in the next Cricket World Cup in the way Sir Alex, pratters, GingerFurball, hell even the likes of SS, did should India go out. Let me tell you there will be threads locked and blanket permas.
So as for GingerFurball, well he's a good poster on the most part, especially in Cricket Chat, and I quite liked the guy a few months ago, but my word he's the worst mod we've ever had. He baits posters, he is happy to label people 'thick', even though we have all been told in the past that abusing banned members is still not allowed. How many threads have we seen closed by him only for them to be quietly reopened a few hours later?
And of course, he did label me a 'sack of ****' a day before I was banned for pretty much saying that sort of thing a few times. He promptly edited it, but he still said it and should have been sacked there and then. And when i quoted it in my sig, lo and behold, I was asked to remove it, under the guise of the fact that it included his surname.
Yes, a lot of my frustrations do stem through the way I've seen things with my own eyes lately. Yes, I felt my ban was inconsistent, and yes I might not have felt the WC modding was so bad if I wasn't English, but hey, that's kinda my point on that one. Everyone would agree with me on CC lately surely.
And no, this isn't a reaction from sledger's ham thread being removed, even though I don't see why it couldn't have just been moved to the TF or something.
Sorry for the long and boring rant, just had to get this **** off my chest because I'm kinda fed up here at the minute, I'm doing absolutely nothing today because I want to chill, days like this in the past I've sat off having a laugh on CW, but there isn't much of a laugh to be had round here right now.
Please don't lock or delete this.
