A Discussion of the Rules (July 14th 2008)

Hobart wrote: »

It's more a question of how it works. Talking about a players form would, in most cases, require some reference to a game. Talking about the teams formation past present or future, would lead to discussion and reference to a game. Talking about a result and how it's leaves us in the league, would require reference to a game. Talking about the CL group, would require reference to games. When is a game deemed not to have started?

For example, if I talk about Liverpool's need to sign a striker and bed him him because of the tough start to the season, am I talking about the matches? If a poster retorts that in his opinion games against spurs, west brom and middlesborough are not that tough, are we talking about matches? And if we are not, when does that discussion begin?

Well my reading, although I'm open to correction, is that we can't post running commentary on an on-going game. That's what I'm in favour of. I agree, if we were banned from referencing past games and players' performances it'd be a little overkill....can anyone clarify this?

First off, nearly everything in here was suggested by the users, either in the forums threads or the discussion of rules threads. This hasn't been just made up by the mods.

Look lads, every single rule that ever existed has gray areas. Get over it. The point is a general one.

For the discussion of matches, you should post in match threads.
For general transfer talk, mostly pre-season, you should post in the general threads.
For specific issues, like say, should Carrick be dropped, you can start a new thread?

The main complaint in the entire thread about why there should be sub-forums is that currently the superthreads have become so big that they are to an extent, very difficult to read.
The superthreads have evolved in a way that they were not intended to do. They were meant to mean we would not have 'Eto, Ronaldinho and Henry are all linked to City' threads constantly. They however became more and more common, but with them has lots of difficulties. Aside from the fact that within about 10 minutes of a match, you can easily have 5 pages of posts!!!

Locating everything in one thread is just silly, and theres no real compelling reason for it
The soccer forum is one of the most busy forums on boards, but its all discussion located within one thread.

And with that, it has problems, primarily the bitching that is constant, and I mean constant, between fans who post in the thread and people who feel like other fans shouldn't post in 'their' thread.

Or the problems with the same topics getting brought up again and again, and again and again. And when they do, the thread gets completely derailed for significant periods. On issues such as how much money Rafa has spent, etc.

And its not at all surprising. People feel now if they started a thread, Rafa is poor in the transfer market, I guarantee you 10 people would post bitching about it going into the superthread. If you posted it in the superthread, then people in the superthread would bitch about an issue clogging up the main thread and the person being a troll.

At the same time, we locate discussion about matches in a multitude of places. If United are playing Villa, you normally have 3 discussions going on about the match, one in the United thread, one in the Liverpool thread, one in the general thread. Then if somebody from the United thread sees something said in the Villa thread that they disagree with, the other person calls them a troll for posting in the Villa thread, and you just have this constant bitching.

People were told to stop calling people trolls, stop telling people to leave threads, but that wasn't working, because there is still this mindset.

All this is bad for discussion, and most of it is at the roots of the complaints people have over the superthreads.

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So the new structure gets around a lot of these issues.

A thread for each match/group of matches. Liverpool vs. whoever is pretty much going to be a thread every single week. In there you can discuss the tactics for the game, etc. I'd imagine there will be a United thread every week aswell, maybe a Arsenal/Villa one too?

Everything else can then go into the general thread.

A thread for big long transfer sagas, especially between two big teams, ala Villa and Liverpool. People in the Liverpool thread are bored to death of talking about Barry, yet new people come constantly and then the thread gets de-railed for a couple of pages.
This would solve that problem. Which ones go to a big thread? We'll see. I'd say the is summer Ronaldo to Madrid and Barry to Liverpool would be dead certs. Can't really see too many other examples, maybe Flamini staying or going earlier in the season.

A thread for specific issues. How much money has Rafa spent? Should Carrick be dropped? Can Spurs challenge for 4th? This will take a lot of the sidetrack discussion from the superthread, stuff that people are so resentful about. If you've read this forum for a while, you don't want to have the debate about money. Everything that has been said has been said. If people want to debate it again, let them, but take it out of the superthread.

All this leaves the superthreads. They serve the general purpose: to discuss the transfer targets of a team and where it is going. It means we don't have a billlion summer transfer threads every summer. It keeps a flow and builds up a core of posters. It means if you have a general comment, ala, you think that Young has been playing well lately, you can pop that in. It's a general thread to cover everything.

All the points brought up are basically saying, but there are greys areas, and a superthread does solve that, because well it covers everything. But that problem is a secondary problem! The other problems are much more important. Yes you are obviously going to talk about a match in a general chat about how somebody is doing or something, that's not the problem and to be honest, those objections seem ludicrously pedantic.

The point about the admins one has been confused. The admins suggestion is not the reason we are making the structural changes. We are making them for all the reasons above. The admins point is that the superthreads are bad on the server. How? I've no ****ing idea, and neither do you. It's just something the admins mentioned to us. As such, we're going to lock the superthreads when they reach a certain size so that they don't get too big. That's the admin point, and its secondary to the big discussion.

The thing is I think now that its been changed to incidents nothing much will change, match disucssion in match threads, major transfers get a thread of their own everything else that isn't major stays in the Super Threads

PHB wrote: »

Look lads, every single rule that ever existed has gray areas. Get over it. The point is a general one.

I agree. I don't think it is anybodies intention (certainly not mine) to try and pick holes in the new structure. However, if new rules are going to be enforced, they need to be clear. Making them up as you go along will only lead to the thing that you are trying to avoid. For example, at the top of the new superthreads there is a rule, rule number 1 in fact, that clearly states 1. NO MATCH DISCUSSIONS
- Match threads will be created for matches/match weeks where required.
- Match discussion will be deleted. It would seem that this is not the case. Can I suggest, and I have have read the "new charter" that this new rule is explained fully at the top of the new thread(s) and corrected in ored to avoid confusion.

For the discussion of matches, you should post in match threads.

Again, and not picking holes in what you say, what (generally not exactly) do you mean by this? Is it the match coming up this weekend, next week, CL games? If I refer to a game coming up in 6 weeks, is that post likely to be moved to the "game" thread from the super thread when the game is upon us?

For general transfer talk, mostly pre-season, you should post in the general threads.

That seems pretty clear.

For specific issues, like say, should Carrick be dropped, you can start a new thread?

Again, pretty clear. It would also appear to me that a "general discussion" would also allow for the "carrick should be dropped" kinda comments and this rule may lead to a lot of duplication, but lets see how it pans out.

The main complaint in the entire thread about why there should be sub-forums is that currently the superthreads have become so big that they are to an extent, very difficult to read.

I don't really agree with this, and this is a personal perspective. From a super thread perspective (and there are normally only 3) a simple flick to (for example) 2 days ago would normally allow me to refresh on what the users are saying about their particular team. What I would find time consuming and distracting is, for example, to have to look at :

1) A superthread
2) 1 or 2 Prem Match thread(s)
3) A Transfer thread
4) An "incident" thread
5) A CL game thread

and all on 1 team, in order to get a feel for where the posters think there team is at in any one week. Multiply that by Manu, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal and you get quite a lot of threads. But, again, that's just my perspective.

The superthreads have evolved in a way that they were not intended to do. They were meant to mean we would not have 'Eto, Ronaldinho and Henry are all linked to City' threads constantly. They however became more and more common, but with them has lots of difficulties. Aside from the fact that within about 10 minutes of a match, you can easily have 5 pages of posts!!!

I understand that the mods are trying to weed out the perceived distractive nature of superthreads, do you not think that 2-3-4 threads on the go at any one time on a team is even more distractive?

Locating everything in one thread is just silly, and theres no real compelling reason for it

But, it's not done that way, is it? We already have transfer threads. Every week we get "Prem Game" threads. When the big 4 are up against one another, we always get a (e.g.) Manu V Arse, thread.

And with that, it has problems, primarily the bitching that is constant, and I mean constant, between fans who post in the thread and people who feel like other fans shouldn't post in 'their' thread.

I, for one, don't see how this is going to address this issue. Do the mods think that the size of a thread is directly proportional to the amount of trolling that goes on in it? It doesn't make sense tbh.

Or the problems with the same topics getting brought up again and again, and again and again. And when they do, the thread gets completely derailed for significant periods. On issues such as how much money Rafa has spent, etc.

I agree. A simple move would be a lot less work, as the forum stand, than trying to police new rules.

And its not at all surprising. People feel now if they started a thread, Rafa is poor in the transfer market, I guarantee you 10 people would post bitching about it going into the superthread. If you posted it in the superthread, then people in the superthread would bitch about an issue clogging up the main thread and the person being a troll.

So my understanding of the new rules is that if people do as you have said above, you will warn and move or delete the posts?

At the same time, we locate discussion about matches in a multitude of places. If United are playing Villa, you normally have 3 discussions going on about the match, one in the United thread, one in the Liverpool thread, one in the general thread. Then if somebody from the United thread sees something said in the Villa thread that they disagree with, the other person calls them a troll for posting in the Villa thread, and you just have this constant bitching.

Again, if your motive for this action is to cut out the bitching, it will not work. Can you not see that all you are doing is moving that "bitching" from one area to another.

People were told to stop calling people trolls, stop telling people to leave threads, but that wasn't working, because there is still this mindset.

Well then ban or warn these people.

All this is bad for discussion, and most of it is at the roots of the complaints people have over the superthreads.

I have to say, and I'm not one for frequenting the reported posts forum, but I see no "huge" volumes on specific incidents in relation to the superthreads on the reported posts forum.

---

So the new structure gets around a lot of these issues.

A thread for each match/group of matches. Liverpool vs. whoever is pretty much going to be a thread every single week. In there you can discuss the tactics for the game, etc. I'd imagine there will be a United thread every week aswell, maybe a Arsenal/Villa one too?

Believe me, you will get a multitude of "start a new thread" type posts or reported posts in regard to people talking about games, transfers, incidents in different threads with the implentation of this.

Everything else can then go into the general thread.

Fair enough.

A thread for big long transfer sagas, especially between two big teams, ala Villa and Liverpool. People in the Liverpool thread are bored to death of talking about Barry, yet new people come constantly and then the thread gets de-railed for a couple of pages.
This would solve that problem. Which ones go to a big thread? We'll see. I'd say the is summer Ronaldo to Madrid and Barry to Liverpool would be dead certs. Can't really see too many other examples, maybe Flamini staying or going earlier in the season.

Where does a transfer become a saga? I noticed that there was no thread dealing with the ronaldo to madrid thing, and yet there is for Barry. How long before the Berb to Manu transfer becomes a saga? What happens then?

A thread for specific issues. How much money has Rafa spent? Should Carrick be dropped? Can Spurs challenge for 4th? This will take a lot of the sidetrack discussion from the superthread, stuff that people are so resentful about. If you've read this forum for a while, you don't want to have the debate about money. Everything that has been said has been said. If people want to debate it again, let them, but take it out of the superthread.

Again, that seems fair enough, but I don't really feel that one swallow makes a bj. A bad performance by Carrick in one game will get the most militant of anti-carrick onto his band wagon, are we going to have one of these after every game?

All this leaves the superthreads. They serve the general purpose: to discuss the transfer targets of a team and where it is going.

Again, too general. Barry is/was a transfer target. At what point did he cease to be? At what point did his transfer become a saga?

It means we don't have a billlion summer transfer threads every summer. It keeps a flow and builds up a core of posters. It means if you have a general comment, ala, you think that Young has been playing well lately, you can pop that in. It's a general thread to cover everything.

All the points brought up are basically saying, but there are greys areas, and a superthread does solve that, because well it covers everything. But that problem is a secondary problem! The other problems are much more important. Yes you are obviously going to talk about a match in a general chat about how somebody is doing or something, that's not the problem and to be honest, those objections seem ludicrously pedantic.

Again, your comment might seem fair from your perspective, but then again you would have discussed these with your fellow mods, and so they would be clear in your head as to what you are trying to achieve. If what you are saying and what other mods have said is contradictory, and questioning that is a form of pedantism , well then I apologise.

The point about the admins one has been confused. The admins suggestion is not the reason we are making the structural changes. We are making them for all the reasons above. The admins point is that the superthreads are bad on the server. How? I've no ****ing idea, and neither do you.

Actually, I do, but I'm just being pedantic there, as a qualified DBA of some 13+ years experience

IrishMike wrote: »

Good idea to a point, what if the designated mod is away for a weekend or something?

Then they post a simple message saying so and a regular mod knows to keep an eye.

IrishMike wrote: »

Anyway if this happens i vote Des as the mod of the Sunderland forum

+1

One thing I am confused about ,

Who can start these match threads ?

Is it only Mods who can start these or can users????

Because if it only mods , users will be left waiting untill a mod gets around to it , this weekend is a good example .. No thread yet on the charity shield. I know it would not be the most interesting or biggest thread of the year but it is a good example of what may happen in the future, When we have to wait till late to start call possible lines ups tactics etc.

Cheers

Not being able to discuss matches in the super threads is stupid. That is surely the main point of those threads.

I have to say that I was quite surprised that this post this morning was moved from the Arsenal discussion thread to the match day thread. I wouldn't have posted it if I knew it would be moved.

Thats not what I took PSI to mean and he ammended the rule after our discussion, he said discussion of general match stuff like I think we need to make a sub etc etc is fine in the teams super threads, its just incidents that cause hassle that aren't allowed to be discussed in the super threads to stop fans going into threads just to wind up the other teams fans.

Are you now changing this again????

Villain wrote: »

Thats not what I took PSI to mean and he ammended the rule after our discussion, he said discussion of general match stuff like I think we need to make a sub etc etc is fine in the teams super threads, its just incidents that cause hassle that aren't allowed to be discussed in the super threads to stop fans going into threads just to wind up the other teams fans.

Are you now changing this again????

I think you've read too much into the change from discussion to incident.
The discussion was removed, afaik, because we're not saying that if you are talking about Alonso in general and mention his game last week we're going to move the post.
Incident is more specific, because it refers to any incident in the match. That would include, basically anything that happens, like a kick of the ball

PSI/Guan Yin is a she.

ok?

Villain wrote: »

Thats not what I understood it be, have a look back and read the posts between me and PSI, no match discussion at all is just silly, so many people said it and PSI agreed so changed it to only incidents to stop people trolling and winding fans up but not stop discussion altogether. I'm 90% certain thats what She meant?

Where? I think you're reading too much into an example she gave.
Before that exact example was this post

Sometimes the area will be hazy, I suggest (<insert deity> help me) you guys use common sense. Noone is going to get banned for making a mistake, worst case scenario we clear things up at the time and we learn as we go along and a post gets moved. Oh noes!!!! . Match scores, and discussion of match incidents in match threads, player form is a club thing.

Player form was the issue in changing from discussion to incident.

Do the soccer mods not have enough work to do already without having to go deleting these 'discussion' posts from super threads?

Xavi6 wrote: »

Do the soccer mods not have enough work to do already without having to go deleting these 'discussion' posts from super threads?

Absolutely. But this change is designed to stop the other work. There's always going to be a bit of work in changing the system, once people adjust, then this won't be an issue.

Yes excatly so saying "Gabby is not at it today, we should get Harewood on" in the Villa thread is fine but "That should have been a peno blatent" push isn't allowed your saying only discussion of player form from PAST matches is allowed???

No, that's not the point. You're missing it completely. Tell me where anyone said that, at all? That was one example, but in the post above it, the general point was made.

we shouldn't be stopping people from discussing topics we should be encouraging more discussion

Nobodies stopping anyone, just making it go in one place. It's just like moving any other off-topic post.
Nobody likes change, but this should hopefully not only make the discussion easier to follow [one of the big complaints we got were the matches ruining super thread general discussions], stop as much fighting [due to eliminating the general crap about stop posting in my thread], and stop having multiple discussions in 3 places [as happens whenever 2 superthreads teams play [one in the Utd thread, one in the Liverpool thread, one in the general thread]

Stupid rule the no match discussion in superthreads, I would like to discuss the game with my fellow pool fans seperately,
Overcomplicating everything, every single thing.

This is the very point. When this happens, people post in the Liverpool thread about the match in the liverpool thread, people think the Liverpool thread is only for Liverpool fans, and people call each other trolls, flames, and much more.
As has been had out in the feedback thread, if you want to discuss football with only your own set of fans, boards.ie soccer forum isn't going to work too well for ya.

Yep its totally OTT and I thought it have been relaxed but PHB seems to say otherwise

mayordenis wrote: »

but it's ON topic. . . .

It's not on topic, read the first post of every superthread.

Can we not have a general match thread for discussion of ALL matches but also allow discussions of matches in the superthreads ?

This stinks of over modding when theres no need. I mean, its ridiculous. Are yea really going to go through each super thread with a fine comb and move all comments about matches to a different thread ?