I have to say JWM, of your thousands of posts on our board, there must be at least one that's half decent!
I've no problems with the moderation on here: it's like driving - if you don't break the law you've got nothing to worry about! I've seen some independent sites go to the dogs, so to speak, for letting almost anything go, and once that happens it's darned hard to recover. Good moderation is to be applauded, it simply means there is pride around and that shows. Mind you, I'm a mod on my 'Royals' site so perhaps I'm biased - or at least see it both sides of the fence, ha-ha!
Daib0, do people on your specialist site miss the banter with other fans? Reading are not the only team that 'went solo' after bbc 606 died
Good question. The answer is 'yes' but we try to address that. We haven't got real local rivals now - haven't played any of Aldershot, Oxford or Swindon (in order you wish!) in over a decade, and Saints & QPR are just a bit too far away to be 'local'. But in football forum site terms, that's been fantastic, it means we can have a 'Rivals, but Friends' section to the site where anyone can post without signing up, and without the dangers that you'd get from Ipwich fans let loose for example. We also install into our members that we're especially keen to treat 'away' fans well, they make the effort to come, and we'd be even stricter on our own members' comments (who know the score) than the other fans. It takes a long time to build bridges, but the fruits are well worth-while. For example, we're sharing a League Positions game with both Sunderland and Liverpool forums (Sunderland Black Cat Chat forum instigated it) and it's brought fans together with good chat and banter. We have a series of 'Special Fan Interviews' and these include sessions with our own members, and moderators and important posters of other forums. I firmly believe that saying "show respect, and you get it back". Very rarely fails ...
