QPR Board: DRAFT Ground Rules

Following the debacle involving one of our members posting a wum cross thread involving the QPR and Norwich City boards a week or so ago, and (when we as moderators appeared to do nothing to stop it) Norwich fans responded by doing the same to us.

All looked like kids' stuff really BUT in fact the incident simply highlighted the need for both boards to come up with some clear lines both within and between moderators of different boards.

Have to hand it to the Norwich mods, canary-dave and ThaiCanary, they both saw the problem and responded immediately by producing their own set of written rules / guidelines - and, to their credit, have willingly accepted my request to allow us to use these to inform a set for our own purposes on here.

Before producing the final version of the QPR board's guidelines, it is important to consult our members for their views.

Our DRAFT guidelines are as follows.


QPR BOARD DRAFT GROUND RULES

Not606 is growing in numbers across most boards. This inevitably means the potential for disruption to our board and the increasing need to moderate content and maintain the basic standards that prevent causing offence to members.

The current moderators on this board are:

• Northolt-QPR
• BrixtonR

Basic Standards

The site appoints moderators for those boards considered sufficiently active. Queens Park Rangers / Norwich City is one such.

The site’s Super Moderator, Cyprussydsafc, has posted an introduction (see ‘Announcement: Welcome to not606’ just above the big red + Post a New Thread button on the board’s front page.

In this Syd sets out the site’s ideas about basic standards amongst other things.

Whilst the site’s policy appears to be to avoid too many rules for obvious reasons, it does ask that each board agrees a set of ‘house rules’ with its members.

Basic standards for us has to involve levels of respect for others and the need to avoid personal insults with particular regard to our human differences on gender, age, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation; and religious and/or political beliefs.

Whilst this is not an exhaustive list, that’s about it really.

Anything more than this will usually have to be put to us by you as members as a request for moderation.

What follows below is a few general pointers.

Private Messages (PMs)

In order to communicate with each other without posting on public threads, the site has an internal message system.

The Private Messages button is situated at the top left of every page, immediately below the burgundy coloured Forum button

As moderators we tend to use PMs to communicate between ourselves and at times with individual members to explain our concerns or actions.

Caution: You are not permitted to store more than fifty PMs in total.

Banter and Wums (Wind Up Merchants)

General (non-personalised) banter is fine but ‘wumming’ and/or trading insults is not.

Threads or posts that appear to moderators on the QPR / Norwich City board to have been intended to antagonise and/or provoke an over-reaction from ‘rival’ supporters; or threads that descend into insulting posts will be closed / deleted as soon as they are noticed.

‘Cross Board’ Threads

Threads started on one club board but where the original poster (OP) has selected it to appear on other club boards are currently acceptable on not606. (They are meant for a bit of good natured banter between fans of opposing teams on match days.)

The problem with these cross board threads is that they can get out of hand and only the moderator of the OP board has the ability to do anything about it.

This means us having to put up with rubbish that comes over from elsewhere until the OP mod concerned has received our request to close / delete the thread - and that is assuming the OP mod is fair-minded enough to comply.

The moderators on this board will do all we can to co-operate with mods on other boards to minimise any negative effect from these cross board threads.

Reporting Offences

Members who wish to report house rule or general offences are asked to PM the moderators, with details of the thread and posts at issue.

Dealing with ‘Offenders’

The offender(s) will receive a private message warning them about their future conduct.

In the case of visitors to our board who offend in this way, they will also be sent a PM with their moderators copied in.

In serious / repeat cases, not606 site management will also be notified with a recommendation for a banning order relating to the board or even the site as a whole.

Posting Threads

Two things.

Repeated Topics: make sure a similar thread to your’s hasn’t already been posted. Moderators reserve the right to merge threads dealing with the same topics.

Avoid Cross Threading to Other Boards: in other words don’t touch the box showing General Chat and all the club names. If you ignore this advice and select other boards, expect to have your thread ruined.

Inserting Pictures

We are generally happy for members to include pictures, DVD clips etc. on to the board providing they are not of a crude or offensive nature.

Links to potentially offensive sites etc. must include a warning from the poster relating to the type of content they can expect to see.

Members failing to comply with these standards can expect information to be closed / deleted and a PM from the moderators.


If you have any comments, questions or suggestions for additional 'rules', please post them below asap.

Thank you.

 

North: Sticky these up for the next few days please.

 

Sir, yes sir!!!!

Seems a little unnecessary though, these boards appear to almost moderate themselves. I've very rarely seen any offensive posts or things that I would consider to be out of order.

The cross-forum threads are actually a welcome relief for me, wumming etc is generally in good spirits and really a vital part of the 'banter' between clubs.

In short, it all seemed fine anyway, so I'm not overly sure about the need for this. Is it just on the back of that one thread a couple of weeks back, because I can't recall seeing anything like that since. Doesn't seem to be a huge problem that happens on a daily, or even weekly, basis.

The relaxed atmosphere of these boards is what keeps me here.

 

Seems fine to me. Football is a very emotive sport, we by & large follow our teams with blind faith. It's easy to get wound up by a stray comment & reply with something that with a little more thought could have been worded differently. But, having said that a site like this needs some basic ground rules, to keep us all in check.

 

I understand where you are coming from Madge, but I do see the need for laying down the ground rules. If the rules are not in place, they can’t be broken. As with most walks of life, the rules have to be in place to try to prevent the minority ruining everything for the majority.

For this to work properly it would need every board to have a moderator and all of those moderators to be on board. I assume that you are trying to move in that direction?

Many of these issues would disappear if they ditched the cross forum posting. The mods would then have control over what was allowable on the board that they were responsible for. Clearly they are not going to drop this, nor live up to the agreement to limit it to only one other board (although the limit of 3 has now been imposed), is there any chance of allowing mods to have control of all threads on their board regardles of whether theirs was the originating board?

 

Seems fair enough to me, anyone disagree with any of it?
It won't be a permanent sticky, just resurrected when there is problems, and sent as a link to newbies.

 

Why are you responding like an American sycophant GMG?

Advice from the site / mod board says the purpose of moderators is to follow basic standards (see Syd's intro to the site) and to set-up 'house rules' on the club board. These house rules should be agreed with the members concerned. That is exactly what we're doing here - and the Norwich cross thread was the catalyst.

As for self-moderation, that's what we all (including Syd) rely on... but there are occasions, and quite a few recently, where this doesn't happen and where we've had to close and/or delete offensive material.

To reduce the need to do this, commonsense says that members (and future moderators) should be made aware of what's generally acceptable and what's not.

We do not intend to keep our ground rules up for ever - just long enough for current members to know the score. Thereafter they'll be brought back out only when there's a need to do so.

Hope this clarifies our purpose.

 

I do see where Madge is coming from in that perhaps he's concerned there will be extra censorship. However, I don't think there's anything to worry about there as North and Brix are reasonable chaps and allow the banter/debates to flow without much interference (nothing worse than a fussy referee getting in the way of a good game!). Hell, for all my antics I've only ever got a wee wrap on the knuckles from our Northy!

So its a big thumbs up from me!

 

Doesn't appear so Roller.

 

Pretty much, was one of the worst things about the original 606 I found. Threads being deleted/removed when they really weren't offensive at all - but I suppose the BBC has more of a responsibility to the general community/country than Not606.

Obviously don't have a problem with rules, just them being enforced too often and too hastily!

All in all I suppose I didn't realise we were at the point on these boards that warranted such an exhaustive list of rules and regulations, everything has seemed absolutely fine to me already, but maybe I'm blind!!!

 

You're right. Not a chance of that Swords. We neither have the time nor at the best of times do we give a ****... but there are times when members urge us to get a grip and it helps if we have some idea of whether we should or not.

 

Sounds reasonable to me. C'mon Madge, give your vote of approval!!

 

Sounds reasonable, just the things you will find on any board.

 

No probs, thanks North and Brix for all your efforts on behalf of us all and for keeping the site so entertaining and informative

 

Seconded

 

If you have a few simple rules then people can expect fair and consistent treatment.

I agree with the proposed rules, especially since ours mods are fair and relaxed.

 

Agreed.

 

I agree with Swords and Peruvian Hoopster

 

Agreed and thank you Moderators
It's an excellent forum
Tell all my Norwich brothers my eggs are ripe ,my milk is in and I pledge not to lactate freely and will express myself Bitty

 

All agreed then