Can CP become a "civil" place again?

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by Makarov

Blasphemer! Stone him!

Look. I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.'

[Jbo]

I've shared my views on this in the past, so will keep my thoughts short.

My viewpoint, is that the very reason I was drawn to this site, to talk the Calgary Flames, has largely become unreadable.

Go into any game thread this year. Seriously, any one of them. And you will see "discussion" on how players are garbage/idiots/morons. Players are bagged on for every single little play.

And I sympathise with the mods. I really do. Those threads move quickly over a 3 hour game, and having to go back to find posts that may have been done 20 minutes before. Not fun for the volunteers that run this site.

Rather then only complain, here are my suggstions:
1) Report posts you think break the rules of the site. I honestly believe there is an attitude by most posters that someone else will do it. Report feature should take them directly to the post. How often have we heard the mods beg us to do this?

2) As I have requested before, there should be easy transparency for the mods and community. If someone gets temporarily banned, the community should know why Ie "Poster was banned for drive-by comments" Keep it open and transparent to the community, and the community does not have a reason to complain.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by nik-

lol, look at this hippie.

Godless communists

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Thor

When the flames started their slide, I stopped visiting this forum, I stuck to Off topic for this exact reason.

Yep, same here, it's ironic or sad that politics and religion are less contentious on CP!!

[Since1984]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

And yet, hooligans are seen as criminals, Raiders fans as unwelcoming, and Yankee fans just got laughed at in the sports world for booing Stanton at their first home game.

There are examples of it, but none of them are positive, and all of them are low bar. If you’re happy with a toxic fan culture, so be it, but I like taxbuster for standing up and saying something about it instead of lazily just hitting the ignore button.

And hey, maybe you could even excuse a toxic fan culture if there was some genuine passion to it. But go to the Dome, it’s a library. You want to excuse toxic behaviour under the name of being a “fan”? Well if you listen to the crowd in Oakland, New York, or Liverpool, you’ll hear what fans sound like, even when the team is losing. And it’s not crickets.

There are different level of fans in Calgary for sure, not all fans are toxic and in many ways what one person feels is "toxic" is another persons "passionate" fan. In every aspect of life these are opinions, some conform to what they think should be the norm and others have a separate opinion on what a fan should be.

Calgary should be a place where teams fear coming to play, perhaps it isn't so much the team and there inability to get the fans in the game....perhaps! it is the fans inability to drag that damn team into a game where they should be caring.

I'm not surprised this board has been mostly negative and hard to deal with as most of us care enough about the team to waste our time on this site and argue with other hardcore Flames fans. If we want to turn this forum into an embodiment of the actual fans at a Flames game, go for it, but even in 20,000 boring library Flames fans there will be quite a few people that are the negative fans there. It just seems there is so much policing and people that feel their opinion is more pertinent than others when it truly isn't, it is all equal.

Let Whiny McNegative be the poster he/she wants to be and be whoever the hell you want to be on the forum also.

lets all just remember this quote from Fight Club:

"You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

[zamler]

Originally Posted by calf

I write a post up, then delete it/don't post (not posting for other people). Sometimes because I'm being a dick or oversensitive. Or because I realize my logic doesn't hold up so someone reading and potentially responding would be a waste.

Ah got it. We've all done that (I think) which is a good thing.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

This is nothing. You should wade into the Politics threads and see what they think of Spendshi, Nutley and Junior over there.

Honestly, I'd say the political threads on here are easier to read than anything Flames related.

I don't read the Fire on Ice section that much anymore. At some point everything that the OP mentioned just ruins the experience.

Good thread. Something needs to be done. The ban hammer especially should be a lot quicker to act.

[BsFaninCGY]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_r...ernet_culture)

This is what is wrong with a lot of forums. They start small, people have lots of views, good discussion happens. Over time, the sites grow, become echo chambers, and the same few people are posting the same few thoughts - and it looks like that is the general consensus. But it's not. It's just those few people who post over and over.

The only way to combat what you don't like, is to drown it out with what you do like. Complaining about it wont work.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by calf

People who rail against political correctness always strike me as people who don't want to be challenged for the thoughtlessness of what they have to say.

All taxbuster & others are really asking for is people to put thought into what they say, positive or negative, and not to be a jerk about it.

Holy crap dude, did you miss the joke.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by MRCboicgy

peace and love my brother (or sister - I don't judge)

Yes you do. It's in your title (referee).

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Since1984

There are different level of fans in Calgary for sure, not all fans are toxic and in many ways what one person feels is "toxic" is another persons "passionate" fan. In every aspect of life these are opinions, some conform to what they think should be the norm and others have a separate opinion on what a fan should be.

Calgary should be a place where teams fear coming to play, perhaps it isn't so much the team and there inability to get the fans in the game....perhaps! it is the fans inability to drag that damn team into a game where they should be caring.

I'm not surprised this board has been mostly negative and hard to deal with as most of us care enough about the team to waste our time on this site and argue with other hardcore Flames fans. If we want to turn this forum into an embodiment of the actual fans at a Flames game, go for it, but even in 20,000 boring library Flames fans there will be quite a few people that are the negative fans there. It just seems there is so much policing and people that feel their opinion is more pertinent than others when it truly isn't, it is all equal.

Let Whiny McNegative be the poster he/she wants to be and be whoever the hell you want to be on the forum also.

lets all just remember this quote from Fight Club:

"You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

To the bolded: I think we can all agree that there is a difference between policing and asking for civility. Let's not invent arguments please. This is also not about someone's opinion being of higher value than others, but it IS about whether or not that opinion was presented in a way that is relatively acceptable to social norms, i.e. don't say it if you wouldn't say it in public/to someone's face.

Lastly, I don't think quoting a film that predicated itself on nihilism is a great way to build a community. That might be your personal perspective on how the internet should be, but I would like to think that we can be kinder and gentler to one another with just a small amount of effort. I think taxbuster is just reminding us to try a little harder.

[Cube Inmate]

I don't know if it's been said, but I think part of the problem on this, and every other medium, is the blurring of lines between fact and opinion.

Because you can't win a debate just by posting opinions, posters start to go down the road of posting "facts" to back up their opinions, which are oftentimes just as subjective. That's what's going on when people post stats to back up their opinions: the stats are objective, but the interpretation is still completely subjective. And now instead of arguing whether or not we agree with the opinions/conclusions/interpretations, we're arguing whether or not the facts are even right. "But I have alternative facts!!"

It makes things worse when certain posters habitually post their own opinions as if they were undebatable facts. The only thing that rises to this level should be E=NG.

[TheScorpion]

People like Gaskal and Jiri and Bingo and Dion and Puppet Guy are ####ing great and shouldn't change a damn thing. Posters like them are the reason I keep coming here

[Galakanokis]

I often find the pretentious, holier than thou condescending posts as bad if not worse than the more edgy, snarky ones. No hiding behind the snark but you often see people say "sorry, not my intention" or "not my fault you took it that way".

It is pretty easy nowadays to read a thread and know exactly who and how it will be derailed. The pattern repeats often.

[djsFlames]

Cant sugar coat it, a lot of grumpy old opinionated fans around these parts.

Part of it is just not having things that are collectively exciting enough to override the default yelling at clouds and peeing in each other's cheerios.

A coaching change will improve the mood greatly and allow for anticipation and speculation, which will be better than the standard churning pit of misery inviting more misery and piling on unpopular or positive opinions.

The team getting KOd on and off the ice and doing nothing yet about it hasn't helped. This team just needs a win in the worst way, to help unify people. Hopefully treliving climbs out of his tomb and starts righting the ship sooner than later.

[-TC-]

I'd love to see some data on the site... demographics, post counts, post count per forum/thread.. stuff like that.

I think it would illuminate some of the points being made in this thread.

[Itse]

Not that long ago we used to joke how bipolar things are here: after wins everything was great, after losses everything sucked.

IMO the big difference is lack of happiness after the wins, increasingly so for the last two or three seasons. This eats away the sense of community, because being happy together is what creates that feeling that we're ultimately all on the same side.

There might be a lot of reasons why that is, but personally I just think the Flames f***ing suck to watch right now in a way they've never done since I've been watching regurarly. They've got to be close to being the least entertaining team in the league. This is why even the wins haven't made me feel good, and if the Flames only leave me feeling vaguely unsatisfied after wins or disappointed and sad after losses, this doesn't exactly support me being all cheery and friendly when I come here. And honestly I hate that, because I want to feel like I'm supporting the team and being nice to people.

My personal response to this was to mostly to just tune out for long stretches. Switching teams has started to look very realistic. Or maybe focusing on soccer or something.

[ricardodw]

The top viewed and most posted thread on the CP Fire on Ice forum is 2017/2018 Trade Speculation and Rumors --- which makes sense

The next most active thread is a hate thread. ..Edmonton Is No Good V: Same Crap, Less Cap

I find it ironic that there is any expectation of civility when there are such a large number of posters that are comfortable posting on a hate thread.

So here's a request: think about your posts as if you were sitting across a table discussing the subject with someone you don't know. Would you say what you post? If you wouldn't....don't post it.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

People like Gaskal and Jiri and Bingo and Dion and Puppet Guy are ####ing great and shouldn't change a damn thing. Posters like them are the reason I keep coming here

Word filters bug the #### out of me more than obnoxious commenters

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by Itse

Not that long ago we used to joke how bipolar things are here: after wins everything was great, after losses everything sucked.

IMO the big difference is lack of happiness after the wins, increasingly so for the last two or three seasons. This eats away the sense of community, because being happy together is what creates that feeling that we're ultimately all on the same side.

yeah, two of the biggest issues imo:

1) the negativity after wins
2) the level of vitriol in game threads

these guys are pros, so there's going to be criticism...but once it veered towards attacking players as opposed to the play itself, those threads really became toxic...

i think a good rule of thumb people should follow is, before you hit the "Enter" key, is your post something you would say to that poster if they were right in front of you?

if not, you might want to consider rephrasing your point... or whether you actually have one.