When Randy, Brad and I created this place over 10 years ago we came to it with a common goal of not only making this an online meeting place to discuss Bobcat Athletics but to also do things differently from other message boards. We set the tone early that this site would not be overly moderated and that we expected the people that contributed on this board to help us police the board and ensure that high quality, adult conversation was possible. For a long time this has worked very well. Very, very few people have ever been banned from BobcatNation because it just wasn't needed. I can't tell you how many compliments I've received from people in the past about how much better BobcatNation was to read than other message boards. This is a large part of the reason we have had such great interaction with MSU Athletics in the past, because we and the members of this board treated this differently.
Sadly, that seems to have come to an end this football season. I'm not sure if it is the larger number of new members that don't share in the history of that mission or if we have begun to lose more of the longer time members that really helped keep things on track but in the last few months this place has really begun to degenerate. We've tried numerous things to try and nudge this board back to a place of reason and civil discussion. Randy has tried the half-joking posts, he's tried the near begging pleas to common sense, we tried the COBN thing last year and it worked for awhile. Yet none of it has worked this year. It seems that pretty much every thread now devolves into people calling each other names or threatening each other like we are back in 4th grade.
Don't get me wrong, I am in no way asking for the board to become a big session of singing kumbaya, so you can save your snide comments. I know as well as anyone that what makes a message board tick is differing opinions and the discussion that those opinions bring about. The problem is that for some reason all of the mature adults on this board seem to have forgotten that discussion part and simply resort to insulting each other with all the wit of an 8 year old and then threatening the others because of said wit.
Time to grow up or if you can't you are welcome to remove yourself from BobcatNation before we have to do it for you. Everyone here is a mature adult. Act like it. Discuss topics, actually listen to what others with different opinions are saying and then if you still don't agree write something that explains your point of view. They are opinions, everyone sees the world differently and you may not agree. Doesn't make you right or the other person wrong, stupid, ignorant or anything else you might say.
If you haven't recently I invite you to re-read our Terms of Service at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; We have been fairly easy on this in the past, that will be coming to an end. We as the moderators and owners of BobcatNation are taking back this board. There are a couple of ways to go about this:
- The membership here decides to re-engage as civil, mature adults and begin to help police our own and bring this board back to what it used to be.
- We as the moderators begin using the heavy hand and begin restricting those that can't figure out option #1
- Any post or private message with the sole intent to insult/threaten another user
- Any post or private message that includes personal insults or threats of any kind against any member of MSU Athletics or any other team/institution
- Any poster who repeatedly takes threads off topic with posts that do not add to the discussion
I'd like to say that it is too bad that the actions of a few have caused this to happen but lately the number that seem to be incapable of acting in a mature manner have gone way past the "few" point. Brad, Randy and I have put way too much time and effort into this place to see it go up in smoke. Please help us out here. We don't want to spend all of our time on here having to deal with this but in an effort to save the place from becoming nothing more than another internet cess pool we are going to try. Have a mature discussion, debate a topic and present your opinions while listening, weighing and responding civilly to others' opinions. Try it, you might just find you learn something and have a good time in the process.
