I could please myself and people I like, that's good enough for the country so it's good enough for a forum.
When I'm in power, you'll be first against the wall. I'll never please anyone, no one can. I'll rule with an iron fist.
The off-topic subject is difficult. If it is a seperate topic, then I don't really see the problem with new threads being created. What does become tedious is the times when a thread gets completely taken over for pages and pages. Take last night's one on the rumour thread; I am not on twitter, facebook or the like, but use two or three sources for news on Saints. They are the OS, BBC Sport, SSNews and this forum. It may be that I'm a dinosaur, but I get excited hearing about our team and usually check this site regularly during the day and particularly first thing. This morning I went to the last post and looked at the comments, realising there had been some banter, I clicked back a page without much reading. I then clicked back again and again and again until I found where I had last read the previous day. All abit unecessary really for the drivel that was there, but I have no problem with people doing this if they are given somewhere to do it. And to be truthful, I will join in myself sometimes as there is nothing wrong with a bit of banter. The tough bit is the Moderating part. I think alot of trust is needed but there also has to be a bad guy that can step in and say enough is enough. When I first set up business a while back, I joined a business networking forum to get help, advise and to read about other people and what they were doing. It was a "family" type atmosphere with 1000's of posters and operated in a similar manner to this. Where we talk football and Saints, they talk business. Now the main difference was the layout; that one had set subject headings and people posted under those headings whereas here all the threads are created as new subjects, which is just fine. That forum had a more informal area, where you could discuss anything from sex to what you were having for dinner that night. It worked. The simple thing was that if you didn't like the non-business topices )or for us football), you just didn't go in there. On here it would be harder as if we had an "off-topic" thread, then it is only one area and many subjects. Joe's suggestion was excellent - having a a sub section ("Social Saints" or the like, where people could have new threads that are non-football). This may not be possible as the forum has a structure already, but the designers maybe able to do this, I don't know, it would be worth asking. In the meantime, I think a little lee-way for an off-topic thread would be good. This will need a little trust from us posters, that the off topic subjects would be kept to a minimum and/or footy subjects would be kept as close to on track as possible, but it could work. I would never use the open General Chat area as it sounds horrific, but I would like to be involved with some general stuff here with fellow Saints fans. We start to "get to know" each other in a cyber way and can have some good banter and debate. I enjoy joining in with all types on here and would be good if we could create a method that works for us all.
If I'm honest I think that is more or less the conclusion we mods are coming to. A single thread is more likely to cause more problems than it saves.
A sub-section is 100% possible, by the way, it just depends whether the admins choose to give permission.
I agree a little ptf, however this is so subjective. How does one forum member decide when someone has gone too far off topic. What might be ok by you, might not be by someone else. It'd be hard. I agree that a response in disagreement need not be abusive, but when they are abusive I just put that down to a lack of brain power to find a constructive manner in whcih to debate.
As this is an open topic thread...........has anyone ever watch "Through the wormhole"? It's a space/science documentary series narrated by Morgan Freeman. It's definitely worth a watch if you're interested in that kind of thing - on any level.
There you are then....... you could be the head twat ...... See how easy it is to be side twatcked.... I need a rest......
It's probably worth checking out just for Morgan Freeman. I'll have a watch at some point (I've got days free seeing as the weather is always **** and I live miles away from civilisation) so got time to kill.
Seeing as we're off-topic, has anyone seen Beckham's latest bit of genius? I still don't know why we're not picking this guy. [video=youtube;LHXlj218cY4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHXlj218cY4&feature=related[/video] Who cares if he can barely move? We don't try and move anyway.
