An Elitist Appeal for Good Manners

[GovanAllan 0]

Now there's an idea a Boyd thread it always brought the best out of us. and we can give Ally a break till next weekend.

[craig 5,199]

derBerliner, I personally would appreciate if you would refrain from thworing around the Tim accusations. Thankfully this site rarely gets any Tims, and when it does, they are found out pretty swiftly by the superior debating skills of this board - they often "out" themselves very quickly because they struggle to keep a lid on their emotions.

 

Even those on here who consistently complain about things at the club do so from an emotional attachment to RANGERS and because it hurts them to see how far we have fallen. But, and this must not be forgotten, things are certainly FAR FROM ROSY with our club.

 

Much as though you have a right to try to find a positive in everything, those who see mostly negative have that right too - indeed, without those people then we would be without healthy skepticism and, God forbid, we ever lose that given what has happened in recent past.

 

Their opinion is as valued as yours and it is, from what I can see, coming from the position of having as much love of our club as those who either see no wrong or prefer to focus on the positive.

 

Again, personally, I dont think we have any Tims in our midst - certainly at least from the regular posters, regardless of their position on things at the club.

 

But it certainly isnt worthy of this forum to be throwing the Tim accusations around - just because they disagree with you or just because they dont see much to be positive about.

 

So please desist from those accusations unless you have something to support them with other than that they have very little good to say about the club (and, FWIW, Tims generally come onto the board and try to ingratiate themselves initially by being positive about the club....).

[craig 5,199]

Now there's an idea a Boyd thread it always brought the best out of us. and we can give Ally a break till next weekend.

 

If Ally was thinking straight he would be looking to sign Boyd up on a short term contract as the splitting of the support would move away from Ally and onto Boyd.... ohhh, wait, illegal transfer embargo.....

[simplythebest 0]

Why would you not be part of this 'elite'?

Well Andy you did pull me up a bit when I said that Max Rebo wouldn't be missed if he decided to not go back to Ibrox because of the orange strip. I realise it wasn't such a 'classy' comment but it annoyed me that someone would consider walking away for such a reason, the orange strip debate was pretty much irrelevant when I was saying that, even if I agreed that we shouldn't have one I wouldn't dream of withdrawing my support and i'd hope no-one else really would.

 

I'd consider myself polite in normal life so I don't know if the internet brings out a bit of a more eccentric side, but if I feel pretty emotional and strong about something I might end up being a bit over the top.

[simplythebest 0]

Maybe I am too entrenched but I see neither the snobbery nor the over sensitive attitude you talk of. My issue is when every thread ends up getting polluted with the same stuff time and again. It is one thing to bash McCoist and, to be fair, given results it is actually warranted. But to turn every thread into a McCoist bashing session ruins the thread itself because it descends pretty quickly, much like a Kris Boyd thread used to. There is a reason that we have combined half a dozen threads into the "McCoist thread" - so as to keep the bashing contained in one place - and, by bashing, I mean that in BOTH directions i.e. for both the and sides of the debate). But when every single thread descends into the same place it gets tiresome.

 

Personally I dont expect standards to drop. Though it depends on what you are talking about. If you mean the tone, emotion, debate on the forum then I dont expect the standards to drop because a level of decorum is achievable for all of us even if we are emotionally charged.

 

Cumbernauld Gers was rightly banned and we all know that. And, you are right, it was to try to uphold the standards we expect of our posters. The personal insults and the manner in which he posted was unacceptable (funnily enough, I actually bought some memorabilia from him to help him out, but also as I wanted it for a gift - and he delivered it to my Mum's house and she found him a thoroughly nice person - but his posting manner on here didnt reflect that unfortunately). Daniel Amokachi was banned for similar reasons. All members should be reminded that this particular forum actually allow a lot of stuff to slip through as being on the border of unacceptable, we basically try to give as much slack as we can. But when someone gets a warning and doesnt heed it, they get a temporary ban, when that person comes back on within a day or two and continues the tirade despite warnings then we have no option but to permanently ban them... and even more so when said person had already been previously banned under a different username....

 

So, yes, you are right, we do try to hold our posters to a higher standard - and, thankfully, the VAST MAJORITY of our posters maintain those standards - some come from other forums and it takes them a while to find their feet regarding the expected posting etiquette, but we also try to allow for that.

 

We are by no means perfect and, indeed, I have had to apologise for swearing at someone just the other week as it was out of order and I have my share of arguments - but the manner in which we do so should be with respect and, for the most part, that is what happens here - thankfully. And all the members should take great credit for that. yes, things will get heated, but everyone can disagree with respect and decorum.

 

I am not sure why you feel you will get banned, and more strangely because you are not part of some "elitist gang" - I am completely confused with your statement STB. Who are this elitist gang you speak of and why do you feel you will be banned ? I find your posting style just fine. I may not agree with everything you post but I certainly also dont disagree with everything you post - but you do post with respect, from what I have seen, and that wont ever see you being banned from here. As for the elitist thing I have seen that said here a few times but it certainly isnt the case - we try to administer the forum with even-handed natures and there is no elitist aspect coming from the admin or mods either.

 

If you dont wish to mention the "elitist gang" in open forum I would certainly appreciate a PM so that we can discuss privately because I am disappointed that ANY of our members would think there are factions here between elitist and non-elitist.

 

I can handle there being groups in the and camps but I am perturbed by a perceived elitist group.

 

For everyone, this is an emotional time for the club, we ALL are aware of that. We ALL want just one thing... the BEST for our CLUB. It is that simple. We will agree along the way and we will disagree along the way on many, many things. But we can have those debates with respect, it costs us nothing. And we would all do well (me included) to remember that.

The 'Ally bashing' thing is something where I think there's some over sensitivity, kuzentov is the only poster who i'd say probably takes it too far. Some forums do have a structure where there's a generic thread for everything but this isn't one of them, the creation of the Ally McCoist thread just seemed to be pandering to people who didn't want to hear a bad word against him. Although in fairness RM seems to have followed suit so I guess it may be for the best while the form remains as iffy as it is. Snobbery is more a description of Andy saying he wants to tell posters to go somewhere else because their discussion isn't welcome, although I take his point that he doesn't in fact say it.

 

When I mean standards dropping I just mean there may be more personal conflict and perhaps not so nice language used, we've all been hurting so badly.

 

Not debating the bannings, just mean that I don't think Andy has too much to worry about because the forum clearly sticks to a standard.

 

A couple of times i've just felt I may not last so long, people not liking it if posts take on a more emotional style, and Zappa did pull me up once or twice for interfering with the mod process. Although i'm probably exaggerating a bit saying I expect to get banned.

 

I agree with you there, hopefully this thread may act as a clear the air method for us all.

[Zappa 0]

Don't bring me into this! I have good manners and don't subscribe to modern youth language either FFS!

[craig 5,199]

The 'Ally bashing' thing is something where I think there's some over sensitivity, kuzentov is the only poster who i'd say probably takes it too far. Some forums do have a structure where there's a generic thread for everything but this isn't one of them, the creation of the Ally McCoist thread just seemed to be pandering to people who didn't want to hear a bad word against him. Although in fairness RM seems to have followed suit so I guess it may be for the best while the form remains as iffy as it is. Snobbery is more a description of Andy saying he wants to tell posters to go somewhere else because their discussion isn't welcome, although I take his point that he doesn't in fact say it.

 

I wasnt around when the decision was made to combine threads but from what I have seen and heard from the other admin & mods (I THINK it was Zappa that combined the threads) was that the decision was made NOT because people didnt want to hear a bad word about him but rather because people's emotions were running high and there was a period of a week or two where, it seemed, EVERY SINGLE THREAD became a debate about McCoist (notice how I managed to NOT use "basher" there ? ). Every single thread which started out as something else descended into a McCoist debate - and it had the effect of diluting, actually no, it had the effect of completely derailing the original topic.

 

THAT is why they were combined, not for any great desire to stifle debate about McCoist. I can assure you of that STB - the admin & mods know that their duty is to allow reasoned debate and, in fact, if we wanted to stifle debate about McCoist then we could have combined the threads and deleted them. We KNOW that McCoist is going to be debated to a great extent and that is just fine - but it shouldnt be at the expense of pretty much every thread that we have.

 

This thread is a case in point... here we are talking about Ally again in a thread which was simply asking for us to use our manners.

 

When I mean standards dropping I just mean there may be more personal conflict and perhaps not so nice language used, we've all been hurting so badly.

 

I dont really like the language some use, but these are raw emotional times - so I guess some leeway needs to be given in that regard. you hit the nail on the head though, we are all hurting badly - and we deal with it in out own ways,.

 

Not debating the bannings, just mean that I don't think Andy has too much to worry about because the forum clearly sticks to a standard.

 

Yeah, my bad - I didnt need to get into those bannings to be fair - but we absolutely DO try to uphold a certain level of debating.

 

A couple of times i've just felt I may not last so long, people not liking it if posts take on a more emotional style, and Zappa did pull me up once or twice for interfering with the mod process. Although i'm probably exaggerating a bit saying I expect to get banned.

 

I can say this.... the mods have never had a discussion over whether you should be reprimanded about anything - if Zappa pulled you up for interfering with the mod process I either cant recall it or it was dealt with swiftly and you moved on. I do not recall you being the subject of mod discussion. That was why I was surprised you felt you may get banned. I havent seen anything to even come close to warranting it.

 

I agree with you there, hopefully this thread may act as a clear the air method for us all.

 

I agree. Andy has a certain "style" and much as though it has sparked a fair bit of debate, hopefully ALL of us, every single one of us, can use it to realise that, at the end of the day, we all want the same thing - we just differ with how we think we should get there - which is human nature.

 

kuznetsov and I have had conversations about this too - we actually have very similar philosophies yet we disagree greatly sometimes on how we would get there or who we would use to do so. But the one common thread in it all.... we both want only one thing, the best for Rangers. Same goes for every contributor on here - we all want the same thing.

 

You think this debate is bad.... just wait till we are allowed to sing players again and Gribz starts asking if we could possibly re-sign Sebo & Buffel... just wait for THAT to happen !!! Or when McCoist eventually goes.... when Gribz starts looking for George Graham to be brought in.... (just kidding Gribz )

[Zappa 0]

You think this debate is bad.... just wait till we are allowed to sing players again and Gribz starts asking if we could possibly re-sign Sebo & Buffel... just wait for THAT to happen !!! Or when McCoist eventually goes.... when Gribz starts looking for George Graham to be brought in.... (just kidding Gribz )

 

It's Jimmy Calderwood now!

[amms 0]

I'm not happy about this 'elitist gang' term. Gang is so not the correct noun to use. An elitist troupe, an elitist assemblage or an elitist convergence, I could have lived with. There are so many synonyms that could have been chosen, the English language offers the discerning poster an agglomeration of possible alternatives. All Rangers message-boards should have a mellifluous flow, attractive on the eye and an almost musical cadence on the cerebral cortex.

[Anchorman 0]

I'm not happy about this 'elitist gang' term. Gang is so not the correct noun to use. An elitist troupe, an elitist assemblage or an elitist convergence, I could have lived with. There are so many synonyms that could have been chosen, the English language offers the discerning poster an agglomeration of possible alternatives. All Rangers message-boards should have a mellifluous flow, attractive on the eye and an almost musical cadence on the cerebral cortex.

 

There's certainly something that flows intermittently on this one....can't quite put my finger on it!!!