What bungadiri has just done in the matchday thread is outrageous. Outrageous. I have no love lost for TDB, he was on my ignore list for years and you can go back and look at all the times I accused him of trolling. But if mods can call what he posted in that thread trolling, it is the worst example of mod overreach -- just nakedly imposing personal opinion out of spite -- I've ever seen on BigSoccer, which is REALLY saying something. Ismitje, I know you are one of the good guys. Don't let this stand. This is the kind of thing that gives BigSoccer mods such a well-deserved shitty reputation. Make a statement here and show that mods are accountable.
I've still not received any 'official' notification or explanation which is the most disappointing aspect. Forgot about me. Those in charge need to sort out this Messi protection before the boards deteriorate any further. We all know what Messi fans are like in terms of inflation and superlatives. The sad part is it is not required. Everyone knows what a great player he is. Unfortunately it has reached the point where Messi fans have free-reign to do as they wish and the second anyone questions them, legitimate or otherwise, they get protected and the 'dissenting' view is censored and the 'offender' punished. Now I hate to make the comparison but had Ronaldo done nothing against Iran and then benefited from lacklustre defending to score from a free shot EVERYONE here knows the situation and reaction would have been completely different. That is a fundamental failure of those in change to have allowed this situation to develop. All it does is kill discussion and remove objectivity. It is dishonest. It goes against everything BS should (and in fairness used to) be about. This is but one example. I've been here for a decade and I always use the state of The Beautiful Game board as the perfect example. It used to be the go to place for everyone to discuss things together. It then was allowed to deteriorate to nothingness. comme has done a great job in slowly moving it back to what it used to be. Sadly the rest of the boards are suffering from the same destruction of discussion. People used to be able to visit other boards and get into a discussion (and sometimes argument) that could go for pages and pages of long, spliced posts. Now we are stuck with the siloed individual boards I mentioned previously with little or no interaction between them and heavy handed moderation against outsiders. This breakdown in discussion and interaction with people holding opposing views means people are simply not used to nor can handle the types of discussions this place was great for. All it results in is more whining and more moderation. It is the wrong direction to be going in. Sort it out. There. Rant over. I had to edit the above as my Wi-Fi signal dropped. Onwards to the final game of the day.
My private message awaited the end of the match I was watching. But this will do. Here's the explanation. You were trolling. You were attempting to provoke a response with an argument that was so dramatically at odds with the facts that it could not but be an attempt to work people into a lather. As I noted in the thread, my response to you--banning you from the forum for Group F--was a garden variety response to a garden variety troll. People arguing based on differences of opinion are welcome. Wind up artists are not.
I'm going to assume that TDB has a rep and was nailed for persistent infringement. Looking at the specific posts/thread in question I have to agree that nothing in there particularly stood out as a wind-up or a troll. But I don't have enough of the history to truly place it in context.
Utter nonsense. My post stands up to any and all scrutiny. You allowed someone to question my point with a picture and I then conclusively proved my point correct. This is yet another example of what I described above. A clear Messi fanboy is allowed free-reign but the response to it, which was perfectly legitimate and discussing the game in question, was not. Ridiculous.
The fact all of my posts remain untouched in that thread says it all. I also see several people disagree with the action. Sad to see such heavy handed moderating and censorship ruining what should be a good time for discussion (ALL discussion) with people from around BS.
It's precisely because you do interfere, deliberately, with what should be a good time for discussion that I banned you. I understand that you are upset about the fact that I've deprived you of the opportunity to simultaneously antagonize both the supporters of Iran ("their defense lapsed") and Argentina ("Messi is overrated"). But preventing people whose only interest is in rubbing salt in the wounds of genuine supporters from doing so is one of the primary jobs of the Group forum mods. Perhaps you'd be happier in a less tightly moderated situation. Try the WC Rivalries forum, for example. I'm sure you could find people to discuss your conclusively proved points there.
Do you listen to yourself? You are banning a guy from a sports forum because he "offended" the supporters of a team by saying their defense lapsed, and of another team by saying that their player is overrated. What fighting words! Practically hate crimes going on right there! Take a few deep breaths, read your last few posts, give a hearty laugh and slap your knee and say, "Man, I DO sound ridiculous!" It's not too late. Step back from the ledge, man.
I could simply conclude by saying sometimes the truth hurts, people need to stop being sensitive when it comes to differing viewpoints and moderators need to allow not prevent discussion. You do wonder how these 'distressed' individuals you are 'protecting' are able to function in the real world. The fact that you have Iran fans incorrectly trying to deflect from their failings by proclaiming the goal as 'unstoppable' while simultaneously you have the usual tired Messi fanboys 'suddenly' leaping into action to over-hype their idol is not my problem. The main threads are for everyone as it should be. Posts will stand and fall by the responses to them. I stand by what I posted. It has yet to be refuted. Take a step back and allow the discussions to continue. Failing to do so is what ruins the discussions, threads and BS in general. I have no interest in the moronic ramblings of rivalries. I posted the following above but I will quote it again: If certain individuals get upset at differing viewpoints they have their specific threads in their own forums. For everyone else with the required maturity there is the main thread. If I post something wrong people will disagree. If others post something wrong I will disagree. We will have a discussion and then either agree or agree to disagree. That is it. Posts will stand and fall by the responses to them. It does not require a heavy handed moderator to jump in every two seconds to protect feelings and kill discussion. Stop mollycoddling. Stop killing discussion.
That the WC group forums are for general discussion is precisely the point. Your particular hobby horse--one of them, anyway--is the overrated-ness of players like Messi and Ronaldo. You imposed this argument on an otherwise freely flowing immediate post-match discussion. That's not you joining the discussion. That's you being a pain in the neck. Equally problematic is your unfortunate tendency to suggest that anyone who questions your position is somehow mentally deficient or blinded by partisan fervor (your "Messi fanboy" reference above is a case in point). I pulled the trigger on the decision quicker than I might have with somebody else, certainly, but that is a product of your reputation preceding you. You are welcome to start a thread on it someplace else, of course. As I've told you, you're banned from the Group F forum, only.
This 10000x. I appear to have just been banned from the WC Refereeing forum for expressing my opinion about the Suarez incident today. Ridiculous. My first post was a bit heated, as the emotion was still raw, but after that, nothing I wrote was any more inflammatory or antagonistic than anything the forum regulars were saying to me, and certainly no more inflammatory or antagonistic than other things I'd seen in other threads on the same board. @Huss, if I'm not reinstated promptly, I'm taking my traffic elsewhere. I've been here (under different user names) since 2000. I know I'm just one guy, and I don't mean a thing, but you may not want to drive your most loyal users away to appease a bunch of thin-skinned power-trippers.
You were banned for suggesting a conspiracy theory from FIFA to give certain teams officiating help to advance. That's something the forum explicitly calls out as a banning offense.
Yeah, seemed like you really wanted to have a well-reasoned discussion and analysis of the refereeing. You walked in and started talking about corruption and having there be a fix. You also said we wanted a "circle jerk," to "protect our own" (when plenty of people are critical of this ref and others) and enjoying "sticking it to people" instead of "making sure games proceed fairly and safely." The fact that you think you wouldn't be banned from the referee forum for that is beyond me. And to respond to your post on my profile, you didn't get banned for anything you said to me (except that last little part quoted above--but even there, I'm fine with the personal dig, just not the larger sentiment); I wouldn't have engaged you if I thought you were crossing any sort of line with me. The fact is, the ban was asked for due to the totality of sentiments expressed above. The forum is for news and analysis. It's about figuring out why certain things happened and not just ranting and raving. Everyone else is discussing a hugely controversial incident rationally. You've come in with a conspiracy theory and insulted all referees. You can probably do those things in any other forum you want. But doing it in the referee forum is being deliberately inflammatory and you know it. Hence the ban.
First quote: Was from my first post, when I was (admittedly) pretty heated, as I acknowledged. I could give you a detailed explanation of why fans in general (and I in particular) get so emotionally invested in this stuff, and get so upset when their team is done in by an unjust decision, but if you don't understand that by now, I don't know what to tell you. Second quote: Whether you like it or not, this is a meta-discussion that needs to be happening. Many of the refs on this board are way too eager to close ranks and excuse even the most egregious officiating mistakes, and to shout down / be insufferably condescending to anyone who might want to point out those mistakes. It's a major problem, and it's not just me -- read through this thread. There's no good, centralized place for fans to discuss officiating, and the one place where they might is moderated like North Korea. As much as you think fans bitching about refs hurts the quality of discussion in here, I can assure you that the inability of fans to make anything but the gentlest complaints about refs on these boards without being attacked and shut down by you guys hurts it so much more. As the OP said, refereeing is something people very much want to discuss in real life. That we can't do that openly on here is a massive detriment to this site. Also, it warrants mentioning that refs on this board routinely question the motivations of fans who post complaints about refereeing -- "Oh, you're just upset that your team lost", etc. I think it's more than fair for us to question the motivations of refs on here who engage in mental gymnastics to excuse every bad refereeing decision ("Hurr, durr, Chiellini would have been sent off, too, anyway!") and act like complete a-holes to anyone who has the temerity to call a ref out for doing a lousy job, even in the most justifiable cases. Third quote: What you're reading as a "conspiracy theory" is a throwaway line that you've chosen to focus on at the expense of the much more prominent and relevant point of my statement, which is that, if the game has evolved to the point where the current refereeing system is incapable of detecting one player viciously assaulting another like a wild animal, then perhaps the system needs to be changed. Crazy, I know. Also, calling FIFA corrupt is less a "conspiracy theory" and more an assertion backed by truckloads of investigative journalism from respected sources. Fourth quote: Well, this is a particularly special display of intellectual dishonesty you've engaged in here. You've conveniently left out the bit where I'm responding to, and almost directly paralleling, a rather dickish insult you directed toward me. Moreover, you've also completely left out the substantial amount of discussion I engaged in regarding the merits of video review. I'd say that was a worthwhile contribution, and it was quite a bit more reasoned than anything you had to offer on the topic. Uh, have you read some of the stories from people on the main refereeing board. Some of you guys seem like reasonable people, but others (including regulars) are just seething with vindictiveness and admit to doing various things that are utterly unprofessional, embarrassing, and completely counter to the goal of refereeing, which is to ensure that games proceed safely and fairly. Against that backdrop, the fact that you were so insistent with some pretty paper-thin arguments against video review led me to make some reasonable inferences about where you were coming from. I quickly changed course from my "conspiracy theory" (read: legitimate assertion that FIFA is shady as hell) and engaged in an interesting discussion about the merits of video review, and was doing so quite rationally. Also, re: "insulting all referees", so what? Why should I care? You may have some amount of authority and you might expect not to be questioned too harshly when you're on the field in real life, but on here, every referee is (should be) just another message board poster, like the rest of us. If you do or say something stupid or indefensible, you should expect to be called out for it. You guys have quite the ego if you think you're above that on here just because you ref in real life. But in any case, I guess you've convinced the admins on here that you're special and deserve special protection so that you don't get your fee-fees hurt. Everything the original poster on this thread said about you guys is true, and it's done enough to alienate a guy who's been using this site for a decade. Well done. I'm out. Enjoy your echo chamber.
Wow. Are there World Cup-level refs who are members here or lurk here and might be insulted that someone's accusing them of corruption? I don't have a dog in the fight --haven't ever posted in the Ref forum, IIRC-- but why is it BigSoccer's job to help make Internet surfing comfortable for World Cup officials? I could see this if maybe the site has some connection to FIFA and doesn't want to rock the boat wrt donations or whatever, but otherwise it's just handholding. Is there some way you can offer an explanation for the rule here, in this thread? duh... of course you can, but would you, just for clarification? If the discussion of a conspiracy is unacceptable in the Officiating forum and in the general WC thread, it's impossible for fans of different teams to discuss the matter together and arrive at the proper conclusion- they'd just end up in separate places agreeing with one another in the specific team forums. The bigger goal of addressing the question, determining the correct answer might involve some hurt feelings, but getting to the truth is what matters most. I didn't like some of the cough medicine I was given as a child, but it stopped me from coughing.
I can't, I'm not the mod and I wasn't involved in setting up the forum or the rules. I was just pointing out that he broke one of the explicit rules of the forum, so it makes it hard to feel like his banning was unjustified.
Ah, the dark knight returns. Well, o benevolent overlord, here is the latest development. In the ref forum, which I have completely avoided in good faith, they have now pulled my posts from a different forum in order to amuse themselves with some ref in-group mockery or something... who really knows what refs find funny. In the same thread, one of the mods is behaving very contrary to the guidelines so zealously enforced on outsiders. I have reported the post for your viewing enjoyment, and I post my response to the call-out below for the record since it will be deleted from there. I didn't post that in a ref forum. Considering that I have been respecting the rules of this forum even though I think they are stupid, it is pretty douchey to pull my post from a different forum and post it here. It doesn't surprise me at all though, as just a few posts above we have a typically biased post from a moderator, doing exactly the kind of personal grudge-airing and grandstanding that is allegedly forbidden and harshly punished when an "outsider" does it. You people have no one to blame but yourselves for the low regard that 99% of soccer fans have for you, of which this board's relationship to the overall bigsoccer community is a perfect microcosm. In the world, people who are widely disrespected by others are usually people who widely disrespect others. And very often people who habitually disrespect others are those who are empowered to do so by being in an authority position in which they are unaccountable for their actions and systematically encouraged to see themselves as unassailable. It is therefore not so surprising that when two categories which meet this criteria precisely, namely soccer refs and BigSoccer mods, come together, the results are what we see in these ref forums.
Serious discussion of the laws of the game and their application? 'Cause that's most of what goes on in that forum. By the way, If you think people aren't really damn harsh when it's deserved, go look at the reaction to the games officiated by Nishimura and Carballo in the first set of group stage matches. Those guys got ripped to shreds.
Yeah, it's serious discussion in a similar sense to the way the Central Committee of the Politburo had serious discussions about the welfare of the Soviet people. And the input of said people is just about as welcome.
Are all of your posts where joy goes to die? And for someone who seems to pride himself on respecting the rules of that forum, you sure failed miserably at it in the very recent past.