Post by racechick on Jul 10, 2015 21:56:04 GMT
Hypothetical forum
All characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
I need you to suspend disbelief for a while, as children do when listening to stories. We are going on a journey to a hypothetical forum, and it begins with a poster I mentioned a day or two ago in another thread. This poster was mentioned thus......
Say a person entered a pool game to predict the top ten finishing drivers in finishing order, and never placed Hamilton in the top ten would you think
a) the person is bonkers
b) the person has no idea about anything to do with F1
c) the person desperately wants someone else to win, so subconsciously puts the biggest challenge out of the picture
d) the person is trying to make some sort of obscure point
e) the person hates Hamilton's guts
f) a combination of the above
g) another reason...please state.
Let's now assume this poster is not bonkers and this poster has a reasonable working knowledge of F1. The main drive behind this poster's actions are option e) an intense dislike, or indeed a hatred of Lewis Hamilton. Fair enough, each to their own. But now let's suppose this poster belongs to a forum with onerous rules. And one such rule says you cannot say bad things about a driver or team and you cannot upset their fans ...........REGARDLESS OF SUBTLETY.....on pain of being banned. Surely omitting a two time world champion who is leading the current championship from a top ten position, race after race, after race, is a very clever and subtle way of putting down that driver and winding up his fans. No? Regardless of subtlety? This is against this hypothetical forums rules surely.
Apparently it's fine. The subtlety rule is to be applied at the discretion of the moderators. NO ACTION TAKEN.
Let's call this poster POSTER 1.
Let's now look at another poster. This poster is having a bit of fun. He's calling a driver a blonde airhead. You can't do that on this forum, it's against the rules. You cannot call a driver anything but his own name. But this is just a bit of fun right? Poster1 called another forum member BRITNEY. And the site owner called another driver BRITNEY. So surely this is ok? 'NO ITS NOT OK. THIS POSTER USED THE TERM AGAINST JENSON. YOU DONT FUCKIN' MESS WITH JENSON!! ' ( at this point spittle is issuing forth from the speakers mouth)
USER BANNED. Oh and only this user, not the other people using this term.
Let's call this poster POSTER 2.
Moving on to the next member of this fictitious forum, we come to a character who has no chance of flirting with the subtlety rule, this person calls a spade a spade. This person deals in facts and this person has a few observations about one of F1's historic teams. This person's thoughts go something like this. 'Ferrari are a disgrace! They hire and fire key personnel and team managers like other people change their underwear. They get extra funding and STILL they can't perform!' Well ok, fair comment that's Ferrari at the moment. 'THIS IS NOT FAIR COMMENT. THIS UPSETS PEOPLE. YOU CANT SAY THIS!! TRUTH?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN TRUTH! YOU DONT UPSET FERRARI FANS! OK! '
USER BANNED
Let's call this poster POSTER 3
And now we come to one of the most inoffensive sweetest characters you could hope to meet. This poster rarely makes waves but pushed to the limit, after enduring inanity after inanity, inaccuracy after inaccuracy, feels compelled to speak out. This poster in bewildered frustration injects some facts into the arena. Well facts are facts. Indisputable, they are facts. We're on solid ground here. Nope.
USER BANNED
Let's call this poster POSTER 4
'Jenson has bum fluff on his face.' 'DO NOT TAKE THAT DRIVERS NAME IN VAIN!!!' ( spittle is back)
POSTER 5 banned
'Hamilton drove well.'
POSTER 6 banned
'Baa, baa black sheep'
POSTER 7 banned
'Hybrid engines....'
POSTER 8 banned
'Hey man, what's goin on here?' 'YOU VIL NOT QUESTION ME EVER!'
POSTER 9 banned
'FFS!!'
POSTER 10 banned
'Jenson....'
banned! ( spittle)
'Button.....'
Banned! ( more spittle and fist banging)
Now back to reality, because that was just a fairy story. That of course could never really happen. If a forum actually ran its show like that there would be no users left to debate issues, no users left to chastise and to ban. And poor POSTER1 would be left arguing with his/herself.
Fortunately for us, in our little community here, our mods realise that if they speak to people reasonably and treat them fairly and respectfully, then they don't need to come armed with...... Encyclopaedic rules, ban hammers, threats, bias, cynical comments and high and mighty behaviour. Treat people as you would wish to be treated and 99% of the time you will receive the same back. But then our mods, admin and technical experts are just AWSOME!
