censorship

Honestly, I'm not a fan of having religious stuff thrown at me either, but Wayne makes one thread once a month or so. He is not mean or does really break any rules. LIke MFitz said, ignore the topics you aren't interested in.

How does that comic go?
Sorry Honey, I cant come to bed right now, someone is wrong on the internet?
Wayne cant save everyone, and either can anyone of us.

 

One thing I will say that MSW does that I think is cool is they take any thread that is turing into a poo flinging match and put it in a section called caught inside, that way people can continue to comment if they like but it is off the main page. Kind of funny that they seem to have more freedom of speech than an American forum and we here in the US pride our selves on freedom of speech, or so I've heard. I am on a few other forums (guitar, tennis and golf ones) and am a mod on one of them, I agree that members should not threaten one another due to liability issues if one goes and harms or kills another but insulting people as an infraction seems a little like a grade school classroom rule. I mean "telling on someone" for insulting you is what my 8 year old does in his second grade classroom. How does the saying go: Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

 

Well, I should say, we had a period of time when things were going smooth, when the moderator I assigned to look over things was looking over things. Not sure who to trust to moderate properly and not be unfairly biased. The job of a moderator, isn't to engage in topics, but to simply do the moderating. When people have authority, sometimes they abuse it.

 

well said
I have no problem arguing over stupid conspiracy theory every once in a while, but there has been nothing interesting in months

 

Well, one route is to make this forum about SURFING. Anything, not related at all to SURFING is prohibited. That removes all the excess junk that people want to get carried away with. This is, intended to be a surf discussion forum.

 

I have zero problem with the admin steps taken over the last couple days. Its about time. the majority content of this forum over the past 6plus months has been just a huge pile of stinky donkey crap.

 

I think that's going a bit too far, but I understand why you would need to do that.
I do enjoy having off topic discussions with other surfers, but it's just gotten ridiculous lately. Every single thing that everyone types seems to have to be a joke.
It's ok to say stupid sh!t and have arguments, but when it's just obnoxious not funny crap all day every day it is not enjoyable.

 

I'd prefer not to have to do this duty, because, like I said I try to spend my time on developing and working on the rest of the site. But, your right, its absolutely necessary to run a good forum that has boundaries.

If someone wants this task, pm me(SI_MOD), and i'll look over you history to see if your someone I think I can trust to keep things in check.

Thank you,

 

I give it a month

I was old member who posted all the time, gave advice and learned a lot. Stopped posting because of all the childish BS and 'hate.' Still checked the site out but recently less and less. This is not longer a surfing forum it's a childish ball breaking hate forum. Surfing is about tradition, etiquette, and respect. All of that has been lost on this site. Rcarter and his cronies were a contributing factor. I give this site a month tops unless all the bs stops, and it's brought back to surfing.

 

How many threads are we gonna have talking about the hate? You look at the overseas board and maybe five topics per day are posted on. We have five new threads per hour here and six of them are about how the boards is trash now and how the hate has to go. This place is a women's talk show when everyone opens up their mouth saying the same different things.

You know what's worse than the hate threads? The threads talking about the hate threads. I don't even read much on here lately even though some stuff is still useful or funny and it's easy to sniff out by light scanning and reading thread titles.

Heck, few people like real surfing threads more than me and I started one yesterday about the SoCal swell and only Doug got stoked. You want to solve the problem? Ignore the BS til it goes away or at least lessens and just acknowledge and post to the legit threads. Real simple guys.

 

Something that is done in other forums I frequent is that Mods have their own handles for posting and a MOD handle for moderating. That way you don't know who the MOD is and people can't gang up on him/her, the MOD can still participate in proper threads under his regular handle, and a post from a MOD handle is an official post whereas one from his regular handle is just an opinion. That keeps people from abusing their authority, in a way.

Another thing is that you will probably need 24 hour vigilance because the flare ups happen at all times of day (eg. I went to sleep at 10 the other night and when I got up the next morning at 6am and checked the forecast the whole msw thing had exploded). Having said that, you'll probably need someone in the am, someone in the pm and someone midday looking through all the posts (Well, I don't really know the volume of posts, but I do know that I read through posts for about an hour a day and don't usually get through them all).

In any case, the idea of stricter moderation is a good one. The ad-hominem attacks were getting out of hand (not to mention vulgar) - but it will be a fine line because you don't want to purge all humor from these pages as it does make it entertaining at times. In the end, even with more mods, you will still have to make judgment calls yourself as to how the rules are interpreted.

 

the problem with your suggested solution is that threads get hijacked on this site so fast that you don't know what your reading anymore. and its usually done by the same people who most likely have several screen names each. so the only way to start making an impact quickly is to let the abusers identify themselves (by what they are posting) and get banned (if need be) systematically and fairly based on the rules and guidelines of the site.

 

^^^ Or like I said earlier you can do like 99% of all other forums do and have sections on the front page that way anyone who wants to talk only surf can go to the surf only section and others can go to the religion one, and others to the trash talk and to the wetsuit and so on and so on. Go check out Strat Talk froum for guitars, there are 15 or so sections, one about the guitars, one about amps, one about effects, one about recording, etc, etc. Here you select the particular forum you want it in but they all show up in chronological order on the front page and youhave to look below the title to see what section they are from, if they were already filed in those sections people who get offended easily by vulgarity, childish behavior and drug threads can stay away from that section. It's kind of like a car wreck, you don't want to look but your head just turns. Not to mention a number of the folks who claim they want the site to change, perpetuate the arguing by commenting and insulting others and now they say they want change and to be Mods!?!?

Oh and the mods should not be allowed to post any opinions on non surf related threads or at the very least like someone else said the mods should have a different mod screen name so as not to appear biased. Example is the mods post in the Bad Teachers thread, if he warns/bans someone for "arguing or insulting" a member and the mod has a different opinion how are we to know if his own personal feelings did not play in to the decision? Micah you have always been really good at this as I have really only ever seen you post on equipment, wave or other non controversial threads.

 

I agree Rcarter. I mean retracR. Either way. No one is ever really banned. I do agree here with Rcarter, improve the forum, like otheR forums, so you can read and post about a certain topic without reading all the BS. And if you're into BS then have a trash talking forum for those who enjoy. Nuff said back to surfing, glad your still with us Rcarter, hopeFully from all this Swell will be improved and still around in a month!

 

Working on making improvements... Trying... Hang with us folks.

 

Just a suggestion: Put a stop to banned members coming back with a new screen name(s).

Example: Rcater is obviously still here with 2 new profiles. retracR and YouRuniedtheSI

Allowing this only demonstrates an utter lack of any real control and nothing will ever change.

 

No I cannot save everyone but Jesus can. Micah I just like some truth and I say I will not use vulgarity. I get tired of reading it and I just post.

Thanks for understanding sort of,

Wayne

 

Wow even when someone compliments your MSW forum you come with negativity! For the record I have no idea who YouRuniedtheSI is and congrats on cracking my tuff code with the screen name! Anyone notice how all this started when the MSW crew came here? I know we were in the "wrong" for planning a fun "assault" on their forum but in all honesty I feel like MSW admin/operator must have talked some smack to Micah about SI and how it compared to MSW, I mean yes some of the arguing and hate have gotten a little out of hand but like I said many other forums just put this in another section so those who do not wish to see it don't have too. So long free an open communication, so long awesome phrases like THUNDERC#NT, so long Swellie awards, hello dystopian 1984 like world.

 

With all due respect read my posts. This is not at all Rcarter. My first post back was saying the swell was ruined in part by Rcarter and his cronies. Just above I brought attention to fact that Rcarter is still posting as retracR. I used to post and haven't in a LONG time because of all the childish answers and responses. A shame for guys and gals who are on here to contribute, and not blast and hijack every thread. The 'You' in YouRuinedtheSI is referring the Rcarter and cronie like posts. Rcarter is obviously passionate about surfing, let's all get back to surfing.

 

There was no smack talking...
The pile of crap just go to big, and its time to clean things up.
Thats all.