Hey there! Did you know you can ignore people?

[uncfan888]

1 minute ago, Jeremy Igo said:

It is out of hand I agree. But I honestly can't deal with all of it right now throughout the day every day. Maybe time to add mods and give them ban ability for personal attacks. 

I won't let you down

[Mr. Scot]

Just now, Jeremy Igo said:

It is out of hand I agree. But I honestly can't deal with all of it right now throughout the day every day. Maybe time to add mods and give them ban ability for personal attacks. 

I'd agree.

And aren't a couple of the current mods in far away time zones?

[Ja Rhule]

1 minute ago, Jeremy Igo said:

It is out of hand I agree. But I honestly can't deal with all of it right now throughout the day every day. Maybe time to add mods and give them ban ability for personal attacks. 

Bring back the days of Kurb, Panthro, Jesse and ginger giant.  This place was clean.  Long time members would get a warning first and new joiners straight vacation.

[Squirrel]

6 minutes ago, Jeremy Igo said:

It is out of hand I agree. But I honestly can't deal with all of it right now throughout the day every day. Maybe time to add mods and give them ban ability for personal attacks. 

Bring me back I will get this place cleaned up real quick. 

[1of10Charnatives]

26 minutes ago, Montsta said:

Just a heads up from a moderators perspective. We did warnings and 24 hour bans and then 48 hour bans to a lot of people in the off-season leading up to this year. The people that join and in 24 hours are clearly trolls have gotten banned for life. Believe it or not, those people are not the problem. 

The problem is that we have a lot of posters with solid history that beef with other posters because of perceived slights, and they no longer look at the content of each other’s posts, it goes straight to talking poo. And each one of them would swear on a stack of bibles that the other is the problem. Some people here are so god damn self righteous that they can’t even acknowledge their role in getting this board to its current state. It really is a microcosm of today’s political culture. Talking about different points of view has gone the way of the dodo. It’s cliques and other bullshit. It’s the equivalent of “These kids today are lazy” and “ok boomer”. 

I have tried, but some people on here have almost turned into caricatures, almost intentionally going off the deep end. So if people want me to start heavy handed banning people they don’t agree with, they just need to remember the next time they call someone on here retarded or something and get the perma ban themselves. 

But what will that do? Everyone will start threads flaming me because they think I sided with someone and am out to get them. Honestly Jeremy’s suggestion to simply ignore the people with whom you don’t get along is simple and time-tested throughout history (here come the oh should have Poland just ignored Hitler hur durh replies, please it’s not that serious) but even JI is immediately mocked and told its his job to keep people civil to one another.

Appreciate your insight here and giving a mods perspective. I know there’s always a balancing act that comes with that territory and it’s not an easy thing. FWIW, I wouldn’t consider 24 or 48 hour bans of longtime members who are mostly adults with plenty of rl responsibilities sufficient to alter behavior. I say that as someone who has posted to and moderated forums for years. It is too easy for someone to take that as a brief break, come back and do the same thing again.

If someone has been active over a long period of time, a week is more likely to actually make them feel the pain of not being able to post because it’s habit. Unless you’re a true posting junkie, two days doesn’t hit you with habit withdrawal. Most often a week does. Just my two cents.

[Mr. Scot]

58 minutes ago, 1of10Charnatives said:

Jeremy while I appreciate where you're coming from, and I already have 2 people on ignore, so I believe in this approach, it is incomplete and insufficient to solve all problems. Only mature individuals and non trolls will avail themselves of this device, those who are here as much to stir up discord and revel in it as their primary motivation will not use it, and there are enough of them on opposing sides of a particular issue that they simply continue to derail threads and make new ones ad naseum going around in circles over the same pointless qb debate.

There are reams of peer reviewed sociological research that highly suggest that the internet is inherently a more conflict oriented medium because the subtle negative social feedback mechanisms that limit us from hurling insults and calling each other names irl don't exist here or are ineffective. Pooing somebodies post doesn't stop them from saying what they want to say til they're blue in the face, even if it's non productive nonsense and they've said it 100 times before.

Pj Orourke famously once wrote 

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

Given what we know to be true about behavior on the internet, you can, if you choose, say that I am providing a place for people to discuss the panthers and that's it. If you're going to do so, what purpose does having mods even serve? If teenage boys are left alone with whiskey and car keys, they will indeed bear some responsibility for any predictably negative outcomes, but no one wouldn't reasonably also hold relevant adults responsible for allowing the conditions to exist in the first place. Your present policies and hands off approach are leading to a lot of whiskey and car key threads and nonsense, and if you get criticism for allowing that to persist when it is predictable and not in the communities overall best interest, then imo that criticism is entirely fair. It's still your board and you can do as you please, just please consider that human nature is what it is, and if your intention is to provide a predictable cesspool and blame the inmates entirely and just wash your hands of it, then by all means continue with the present course. However a lot of us would appreciate it if you would acknowledge that the board really doesn't need yet another Kyle vs Cam thread and moderate accordingly.

Are you going to choose to be the adult who takes responsibility for his board, or the one who leaves the whiskey and car keys out where the kids can get to both?

To summarize, internet anonymity makes people a--holes.

I'd add that when it's escalating to the point where people are attacking and even threatening each other, it's waaaayyy out of hand.

[jfra78]

33 minutes ago, Harbingers said:

Perhaps certain trigger words/phrases like boomer or “cam sucks”. Should be autocorrected to “I Love You”.

I can't wait for the day I type Boomer Esiason and it changes to I love you Esiason

[kungfoodude]

6 minutes ago, Jeremy Igo said:

Yeah, might be time to axe the tinderbox and ban talk of politics. 

People are just less civil in general because of the quagmire of horrifying behavior that the modern political discourse has become. Keeping a forum which allows that kind of awfulness was bound to have spill over into every other message board. The ease of access will allow them to attack and snipe at each other across the entire site.

The bulk of us want to talk sports and have a respite from the daily nonsense that we are already subject to from a viciously polarized society. Sports smack talk and arguing can be fun(and frustrating) but the political/religious talk has extremists that are so virulent it casts a negative pall over this entire community and it builds mortal enemies. 

IMO, the Tinderbox is a virus that has infected this entire site. I very much have considered leaving this place because the constant political bickering, trolling and personal attacking that has become a regular part of this forum. I don't have a good answer to replace the traffic generated by that sewer, I really don't. If I have any that present themselves in the future, I would happily offer them up. Perhaps you can come to us as a community and ask for suggestions of other forums we would like to have. Places where we can share similar interests without the unholy flood of negativity. 

[Mr. Scot]

1 minute ago, 1of10Charnatives said:

Appreciate your insight here and giving a mods perspective. I know there’s always a balancing act that comes with that territory and it’s not an easy thing. FWIW, I wouldn’t consider 24 or 48 hour bans of longtime members who are mostly adults with plenty of rl responsibilities sufficient to alter behavior. I say that as someone who has posted to and moderated forums for years. It is too easy for someone to take that as a brief break, come back and do the same thing again.

If someone has been active over a long period of time, a week is more likely to actually make them feel the pain of not being able to post because it’s habit. Unless you’re a true posting junkie, two days doesn’t hit you with habit withdrawal. Most often a week does. Just my two cents.

They used to have an escalating system, kind of a "three strikes and you're out" thing. Not sure what happened to that.

The other thing I've suggested before is if people get banned, rather than give them a certain amount of time, just tell them they have to pay 5 to 10 dollars to get restored. You could also vary that based on the severity of the offense.

People pay attention when it hits their wallet, even in small amounts.

[jfra78]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

To summarize, internet anonymity makes people a--holes.

I'd add that when it's escalating to the point where people are attacking and even threatening each other, it's waaaayyy out of hand.

That ecu guy showing someone's house in the games forum was creepy AF.  I hope he gets psychological help

[Squirrel]

Just now, Mr. Scot said:

They used to have an escalating system, kind of a "three strikes and you're out" thing. Not sure what happened to that.

The other thing I've suggested before is if people get banned, rather than give them a certain amount of time, just tell them they have to pay 5 to 10 dollars to get restored. You could also vary that based on the severity of the offense.

People pay attention when it hits their wallet, even in small amounts.

Alt accounts is the problem. you can ban one account another pops up. Ban ip address they get another one. 

[Mr. Scot]

3 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

Alt accounts is the problem. you can ban one account another pops up. Ban ip address they get another one. 

I get that. There might be tech solutions out there for things like that.

Part of the problem now is the easy ability to create throwaway email addresses. I know in some cases, you used to have to have something verifiable to join some forums. Maybe explore something like that.

What happened to being able to read for free but having to pay for the ability to post?

[kungfoodude]

2 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

Alt accounts is the problem. you can ban one account another pops up. Ban ip address they get another one. 

There isn't one problem, there are many. I do think IP address banning would get rid of some of the trolls. But, the more dedicated and clever trolls will skirt that. It's a game of whack-a-mole that you just hope they tire of first.

[jfra78]

7 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

There isn't one problem, there are many. I do think IP address banning would get rid of some of the trolls. But, the more dedicated and clever trolls will skirt that. It's a game of whack-a-mole that you just hope they tire of first.

So many people have VPNs now it would be hard to ban IPs