Binning, Banning, Ignoring

  • The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

@ Tucker Tucker asks a provocative question:
Out of interest, how many sin bins can someone have before an outright ban?
I hadn't really considered this before, but it strikes me that banning on this site is/should be used as a different kind of tool than sin binning and ignoring. There are obviously no real rules, which is why I open up my reading to discussion from others:

Ignore: Ignore users who always say the same things, who are obnoxious, etc.

Sin Bin: Use for otherwise respected, useful members of the community who simply need a bit of a breather from the site. An anonymous, mob-enforced meltdown, as it were. This is how I imagine the sin bin has been used in the case of, say @ and @ . Sometimes things get a little out of control and the community decides someone needs to calm down / sober up / whatever.

Ban: This should be used primarily used to get rid of users who will never, ever contribute to the community. This includes obvious spammers and trolls from other clubs, etc. Someone like Xose, or the myriad goons who have their minders type in their passwords so they can flap away on threads after we suffer a defeat. If I had to guess, TFC bans only users who will literally never make an effort to engage in useful conversation. In other words, Spurs supporters shouldn't ever get banned from here.

So if a poster is Spurs and is persistently obnoxious, it strikes me that the proper course of action is to ignore. Let the person starve on his or her lack of attention.

Yet is that the appropriate response to someone who is acting homophobic / racist / antisocial in some way? Maybe not, especially since it's defined on denial. "La la la, the world is full of people saying homophobic things, but I have my little comfortable garden."

Sin binning isn't right either, since then the user returns triumphant, having proven by virtue of exile that the community is filled with silent nannies who, while afraid to hear "the truth" or something like that, answer to the call coming from Mount Politically Correct. Sin binning, I imagine, only emboldens the antisocial behaviour.

And banning seems to be, as noted above, only for obvious trolls / non-Spurs.

Back when racism was a bannable offense and not, instead, funny, as @ maria might say, it would have been clear what to do with a Spurs supporter who posts racist/homophobic stuff: ban. Now, I'm not so sure.
 
uEhGgMS.jpg
 
If this is one of the first posts I saw when I arrived here, maybe I wouldn't have stuck around for long.

Well considering the community has now dealt with his bigotry by a collective (yet anonymous) agreement that he should be sin binned I think it shows that the majority find his sentiments abhorrent.

@ Éperons Éperons raises some good points about ignoring/binning/banning. I try not to use the ignore function though as it can fuck up the continuity of threads, you find people who are seemingly talking to themselves, or whole threads disappear. Other than that, his definition of when to bin and when to ban seems pretty sound. Though I think really there comes a point when someone has been binned so many times that it's clear they are only here to troll and cause arguments. @ for example, comes back and behaves himself for a while and appears to contribute, but it's never long before he's starting trolling threads like this one:

http://www.thefightingcock.co.uk/forum/threads/the-yanks.7038/

In which he openly admits that he was actually trying to start a "row"

Was just trying to spark a row.

@ Mr Always Right Mr Always Right only ever seems to comment in his threads, which are invariably designed to troll the site. As I've said before there's nothing worse than a Spurs fan who wants to troll other spurs fans. This has nothing to do with his opinions, or whether I agree with them, but everything to do with his attitude.

The likes of Xose, and the goon trolls (can't remember their names) are easy to deal with.
 
Well considering the community has now dealt with his bigotry by a collective (yet anonymous) agreement that he should be sin binned I think it shows that the majority find his sentiments abhorrent.

Agreed.

It is still there though. And he will be back. I don't want to see anybody get benned, that's not my purpose at all. However, as it stands that comment is an indelible stain on this forum.
 
I think a lot or some of this may be cultural. Where are you all from and what ages are you?

Mr always right I'm guessing is working class, from north London or close, and in his late 40s. Cut from different cloth perhaps.

It's very difficult to truly assess a character or a sentiment from posts on a message board.

Anyway, don't start taking all this too serious.

This board is a fun open place. We come in all shapes and sizes.
 
Agreed.

It is still there though. And he will be back. I don't want to see anybody get benned, that's not my purpose at all. However, as it stands that comment is an indelible stain on this forum.


An indelible stain?

Crumbs. You are a sensitive flower.
 
Mr always right I'm guessing is working class, from north London or close, and in his late 40s. Cut from different cloth perhaps.

Of course everyone is different and everyone has a different sense of humour, the problem is, that he get's his laughs out of winding everyone else up and trolling them.
 
Of course everyone is different and everyone has a different sense of humour, the problem is, that he get's his laughs out of winding everyone else up and trolling them.
In the thread he starts. Hardly a troll.

He starts threads with his own particular style. You know what you're gonna get. ignore him if he annoys you. Or just read and move on. Chuckle at the old fart

His last thread looked like a witch hunt to me. It was like that scene in Shrek. As does the original post in this thread.

Naming of individual posters @eperons. It's not cricket. Ands its indelible. It's outrageous I tell you.

:avbshock:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The sin bin can be abused so I don't think it would always be fair for people to be banned for X number of binnings because those binnings may be people ganging up against someone, whereas others get away scott free.

Personally I think there should be a very light set of rules that cover things like racism, bigotry, overt sexism and so on, but nothing really more than that. It would be down to the TFC boys to decide whether or not to ever use it to ban someone. I think sometimes it's important to know context of what someone posts before getting up in arms. For instance, if someone said "I have a nice pair of pink trousers" and someone posted a gif calling them gay that's clearly something said lightheartedly in jest, á la pub banter, rather than if someone launches a vicious multi-post tirade against homosexuals.

I think it's also worth considering just how much people want to change the place. The TFC lads said from the start that they didn't want it to be moderated up to the eyeballs like the other forums out there. That means that there will be all different types of people here. Sure, people like @ may not fit in with the sweetness and harmony that was the TFC forum echo chamber here before he and others joined, but are people like him actually doing anything wrong? I'm not convinced they are. Trolling/rowing/insulting is not actually against the rules here and some peoples' idea of banter and shooting the shit differs from others. The TFC forum has always been something that augments and changes with it's residents, just like a workplace, social spot or school does. The TFC lads seem pretty clear that they aren't going to change the freedoms on the site and the forum was never meant to be a "lets all join hands and agree" place. So the way I see it people accept that and either put up with it, putting people they dislike on ignore if necessary, or post elsewhere. In fact most of the people that go on about trolling here also have accounts at the other place, so it's not as if the vast majority can't get away from it when they fancy a breather from the more fiery environment.
 
I think it's also worth considering just how much people want to change the place. The TFC lads said from the start that they didn't want it to be moderated up to the eyeballs like the other forums out there.
I don't know if this is pointed at me, but I don't want my OP to be an encouragement for putting in some kind of hard mod rules or anything like that. It's more a reflection on how policing seems to happen on this site and what possible outcomes there might be for certain kind of behaviour.

For example, Tucker's question that prompted the post made me think that I don't think that a series of sin bins should yield a banning (at least, I haven't been convinced that it's a good idea), which is why I brought it up here. I also am not convinced that sin binning is particularly useful a tool (outside of how I described it above).

So I don't know… usually, if I see something I personally consider offensive enough to warrant remark (and it's outside of Off-Topic, which gives me the sense of being Spurschan), then I neg rep it and tell the user my issue with the post. The other user is within his or her rights to react as they wish, but I'm also not going to get in a flame war over it. Haters gonna hate, and all that. If others beat me to the punch with the critique, they'll get rep from me. That strikes me as enough—there's no ganging up, etc., behind closed doors.
 
The sin bin can be abused so I don't think it would always be fair for people to be banned for X number of binnings because those binnings may be people ganging up against someone, whereas others get away scott free.

Personally I think there should be a very light set of rules that cover things like racism, bigotry, overt sexism and so on, but nothing really more than that. It would be down to the TFC boys to decide whether or not to ever use it to ban someone. I think sometimes it's important to know context of what someone posts before getting up in arms. For instance, if someone said "I have a nice pair of pink trousers" and someone posted a gif calling them gay that's clearly something said lightheartedly in jest, á la pub banter, rather than if someone launches a vicious multi-post tirade against homosexuals.

I think it's also worth considering just how much people want to change the place. The TFC lads said from the start that they didn't want it to be moderated up to the eyeballs like the other forums out there. That means that there will be all different types of people here. Sure, people like @ may not fit in with the sweetness and harmony that was the TFC forum echo chamber here before he and others joined, but are people like him actually doing anything wrong? I'm not convinced they are. Trolling/rowing/insulting is not actually against the rules here and some peoples' idea of banter and shooting the shit differs from others. The TFC forum has always been something that augments and changes with it's residents, just like a workplace, social spot or school does. The TFC lads seem pretty clear that they aren't going to change the freedoms on the site and the forum was never meant to be a "lets all join hands and agree" place. So the way I see it people accept that and either put up with it, putting people they dislike on ignore if necessary, or post elsewhere. In fact most of the people that go on about trolling here also have accounts at the other place, so it's not as if the vast majority can't get away from it when they fancy a breather from the more fiery environment.
If I had the time and inclination,and wasn't half cut and on an iPhone I'd type that.

If.
 
this should help....

lfc-discriminatory-behaviour.jpg


someone needs ta photoshop the TFC symbol at the top and we'll distribute these out

we wouldn't wanna upset the gays as they get in enough shit by themselves
 
Back
Top Bottom