These forums has been a mess since forever. So even though I havent had the urge to visit this forum lately, I'm 99% sure its way better now than it was eg 3 month ago.

  to the poor souls that took the responsibility to mod these boards.

Gavinio:

I would like to add to this thread that the people who asked us to take on this role are happy with the way we have performed our duties so far according to contact we had with them yesterday.  They have been checking on the forums regularly and are pleased with the way that we have been dealing with things on the whole. 

Keep up the good work

I would like to add to this thread that the people who asked us to take on this role are happy with the way we have performed our duties so far according to contact we had with them yesterday.  They have been checking on the forums regularly and are pleased with the way that we have been dealing with things on the whole. 

The Forum is 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times better thanks to the MODS

So you can go say your silly swear words somewhere else.

Thank God for our active Mods!!

I hope that as moderators we don’t come across as heavy handed or too quick to keep reminding members of the rules. We do liaise between ourselves, listen to members comments, and we get guidance from the club before we make decisions.

To those that would prefer less input from the Moderators, I’d ask you to please consider the bigger picture, and the context in which we are doing this:

Members were frustrated when the club seemed unwilling to invest in the forum. This has changed, and the club now has the forum on its agenda. The club have made some improvements and hopefully will approve plans for further investment.

The forum gets huge visitor numbers – not just logged in members - but every day tens of thousands of people around the world view the forum pages and form an impression of Manchester United and its fans.

United want no text speak, but plain English, because a high proportion of visitors are people for whom English is not their first language.

United do not want swearing because they do not want people who find swearing offensive to be put off joining the forum, and it’s not as if it’s impossible to write without the fingers typing in swear words.

If we want the club to invest money in the forum, the members have to play their part too. The club are not going to spend money investing in the forum if the end result is just going to present the club and its fans in a bad light to tens of thousands of visitors every day. There are plenty of unofficial forums, but this is the official forum of Manchester United so it needs to have some standards.

The club therefore asks members to understand why the rules are there, and to support them in this.

Is this too much to ask?

Gavinio:

Himann:

I agree with incognito about the filter though. Some of those words seem completely fine so I dont know why they are filtered out. There may be a reason we are not aware of though.

We spent a few hours going through the swear filter before the weekend (and believe me it was quite an extensive list with phrases I've never heard and I'm a man of the world!) and making some suggestions as to which words we believe could come off of it and gave reasons why.  At the end of the day though it is not our decision, it is United's. Keep your fingers crossed though.

 

Gavino.. please understand that my origonal post was not in anyway intended to undermine the mods.

The reason I made the post was because I was noticing more and more  anti-mod posts so I thought I would try and create a post that will deals with all the issues and stop ramdom posts saying this that and the other about mods. it was becoming an almost daily event whereby someone had a mod complaint. I hope that you and your fellow mods accept the post in the spirit I intened it be so that perhaps it can be put to bed once and for all. Thank you

Gavinio:

When you signed up to be part of these forums you agreed that you would follow and abide by the Forum Terms. 

I have been around enough forums to know exactly what the response to this is going to be.  Basically they will say "Well I know I agreed to the rules, it is just stupid that you actually enforce them and make me or anyone else accountable for following the rules we agreed to."   

jackdice:

I do not dispute a word of the above..... but Rules are meant to be followed in spirit. Throwing the rule book is always not the best way to moderate. After all this is still an internet forum, not a public school and posters here are people, so swearing and short-typing can just be expected and perfectly normal human behaviour. As long as someone does not exceed the limit Mods must be flexible. Too strict disciplining takes the life & fun out of these forums.

Normally when we see a post that has broken the forums we do go in and ask them not to swear, use text lanaguage etc and say it is against the Forum Terms without quoting them word and piece.  It is only if we then have to tell the user constantly that we then quote the forum terms word for word.  It is posted in this thread as a response to those asking why we have been editing posts to remove offensive language.  It is not us that set these terms, it is United themselves.

You say that we need to be flexible.  As I said earlier we have been more than flexible in how we have dealt with things.  The way the forum was moderated before a lot of users would have been banned without being a chance to change their ways.  If that is not us being flexible then I do not know what is?  It is only when a user constantly ignores our requests that we then have to take further action. 

What amuses me is that people say they didn't want moderators to crack down on swearing, just move threads or merge them and vice-versa.  You cannot pick and choose what aspects of the forum you want to have improved.  Our moderation duties covers all areas.  Yes, we would love to be taking part in debates more, but when our time is limited on the forums we have to concentrate on moderating first.  In time it is to be hoped this will shift and we can take part more in debates because first and foremost we are still United fans.  We understood when we became moderators that we were putting ourselves in the firing line and that not everything we did would be popular.  However, our brief is to help these forums improve and run more smoothly.  In doing that we have to be strict to show members that ourselves and those above us are serious in seeing these forums improved in standard.

Whether you agree or not we have to follow United's guidelines because they are the owners of this board.  They have the final say over what is acceptable to them and what is not.  However, if users really don't want a visible moderation presence on the forums then we can step aside quite happily and let the forums go back to what they were a few short weeks ago.  As has been pointed out, we do not receive a single penny or any form of benefit from United for doing this.  We give our own free time to help out on here.  I am sure that we (the moderators) would all agree that we could spend that time with our families instead of being on here.

Gavinio:

I will lay this out in clear, simple English, so that those of you that are having difficulty understanding this will understand:

When you signed up to be part of these forums you agreed that you would follow and abide by the Forum Terms.  These terms, which you can read for yourself by clicking on the FAQ button or via the link at the top of the forum say in part:

You agree not to do or participate in any of the following on the Messageboard:
·         Swear or use language which is obscene, threatening, sexual, sexist, libellous, defamatory, or invasive of another person's privacy;

·         Use asterisks or any other symbols to hide or imply any swear word

·         Use any language other than English, or use any form of abbreviated text;

 

As moderators, which we are not paid for this and do in our spare time, we are expected to help to enforce these terms.  Where people break these terms we often go in an edit the post and ask them not to do it again because they are breaking the forum terms.  If, after this, the user does not change their behaviour then we will take further action.  The last thing we want to do is to put forward a user for banning, which is what would have automatically happened under the old system.  However, if after being given a reasonable chance to change their posting style to fit in with the forum terms a user stil ignores our requests we will recommend that user be banned.  We have tried to use our common sense over this, but if people are not appreciative of this then we can quite easily go back to the old system and automatically put forward people for banning straight away.  It would make our life easier as we would not have to spend time editing posts and typing out messages to users asking them to change their ways.  That choice is up to you.

If you do not want to follow the Forum Terms then please feel free to leave and go to another forum where you can swear and abuse others or type in abbreviated (SMS/street slang) English to your hearts content.  Manchester United's forum is open to users of all ages and as such there are ways of behaving that need to be adhered to. It is also open to users from around the world for whom English is not their first language, therefore typing your words in full makes it easier for those guys (and gals) to read the posts clearly.  There is no character limit on here so shortening words is not necessary. 

I do not dispute a word of the above..... but Rules are meant to be followed in spirit. Throwing the rule book is always not the best way to moderate. After all this is still an internet forum, not a public school and posters here are people, so swearing and short-typing can just be expected and perfectly normal human behaviour. As long as someone does not exceed the limit Mods must be flexible. Too strict disciplining takes the life & fun out of these forums.

This is not to blame you...just take this as constructive critism. After all I really beleive that your willingness to take additional responsibilities in your free time has made this better for all of us than before. All we are suggesting are ways to make this still better....

 Haha, good ole edit button.

I did?  Where?

There's no pleasing some people.

From the info sticky.

Talking on the forum:

Due to the nature of the forum we have many posters from countries where English isn't thier first language. 

Because of this please do not use leetspeak ( 7|-|@7  |\/|3@|\|5  7@|_|<1|\|9  |_1|<3  7|-|15 ) because those who don't speak perfect English may not be able to read this and it causes trouble for others. Short hand is also frowed apon for the same reason.

If you are dyslexic (like myself) don't fret, mistakes are made and can be corrected.

As for the Mods, keep up the good work.

 well, in that case, i think it's time to change the forum rules and leave moderators alone... abbreviations are too common both in the streets and on the internet and to be banned or have your post deleted because you didn't follow "no abbreviations" rule is stupid, too stupid... we are not signing business contracts around here or negotiating multimillion deals where "not understanding certain words (read abbreviations)" could be of high importance... look at the sun sports page online - i don't know of anyone having problem with their headlines written in everything but good correct english....

and as far as i remember we all asked for mods not so much because of "bad" words or insults (btw extremely common on stands of every football stadium in this world and we all use them, mods included :o) but because there were so many misplaced topics and repeating threads that made having a good discussions almost impossible...

and if it continues like this, what's next - "Never comment on bad performances, players' mistakes, other fans, only praise Manchester United players, manager and staff or your post will be deleted!!!"???????

Gavinio:

nver

He mispelt never ban him, ban him!

I kid, I kid.

Come on guys... we are all typing on keyboards - aren't we? Is it that hard to use proper english?

I'm sure we can all express our frustration ithout swearing as well...

There are so many more interesting things to chat about on a MANCHESTER UNITED forum instead of wasting all our time on these silly posts... Let the Mods do their job, stop bickering amongst ourselves and lets talk about our beloved UNITED...