Good Morning CCS,
I wanted to give you a quick update on how we'll be moderating the Bears forum as we move into the season. As most of you are aware, things are generally pretty lax here, especially during the offseason. Some of this was posted in other threads, but I wanted to make sure everyone sees the rule changes, and how things are going to be handled moving forward.
As we're approaching the season, there is finally actual football to discuss again. This year we are introducing threads that will be more heavily moderated to keep the focus strictly on football. These will be tagged as [Football Talk Only]. You can add this to your thread when creating it if you'd like the thread to fall under these rules. Moderators may also occasionally tag a thread with this on a case-by-case basis. I've been testing this out in Dejo's Training Camp thread the last few weeks.
Inside these threads, personal attacks, back and forth ankle biting, trolling, baiting, and otherwise derailing the topic off football will not be allowed. If you think someone is saying something dumb, attack the argument and not the poster. Please report posts inside these threads using the report functionality so they go into our moderation queue (e.g. please don't @ me directly). I don't read everything, so what some might think is selective moderation, is almost always the result of me not seeing it. So please report. Also, there is no need to engage w/ another poster who you feel is violating the rules. That only creates more back and forth. Report it and move on.
Posters who violate these rules will get threadbanned from that [Football Talk Only] post. This means you'll still be able to read the thread but will be unable to reply for a period of time. First offense, 3 days. Second, 7 days. If people keep doing it this may escalate into a total forum ban TBD in length depending on the situation.
Other threads that are not tagged as [Football Talk Only] are business as usual. If you've got a problem w/ posters in these threads, please use the ignore feature. We want to keep what makes CCS, CCS (not a heavily moderated place) while creating a safe haven for new posters, lurkers, or other members who simply want to read/talk about football w/o all of the personal shit. I think this is a fair way to strike that balance.
Note: Political talk, anywhere in the Bears forum (football talk only or not) will receive a complete ban. The length will be determined by how often certain posters engage in this activity. It could be anywhere from a few days, to months, to permanent.
I expect this to evolve as we move along, but this seems like a pretty good place to start. I will update this post with any other rule changes, additions, subtractions, etc.
Thank you, everyone.
Rule Edit #1 - Something I just thought of that I want to be preemptive about. If you start a "normal" thread and get people to violate "Football Only" thread rules, change the title to "Football Only", and then retroactively report people for breaking the rules...I'm banning you for at least a month for wasting my fucking time. Thanks.