CAMELOT FANTASIES

Howdy,

Just thought I'd chip in with a few comments...

Giving people total freedom of speech is basically offering an unmoderated forum.  There are big negatives on providing that facility.  No control = Total carnage.  I've it seen on tennis.com and you've witnessed it on tennis 4 you where moderators weren't around to stem the bleeding.  If you don't have parameters in place then it doesn't work - what you build gets destroyed.

As an example, let's just say you have 100 members of a forum...  You get one member pissing off the rest of the community... people start leaving.  What do you do?  let them all go in the name of Freedom of Speech or bin the troll?  I'd go for the latter, or else you're left with a vacant space.

The real question is not about Freedom of Speech it's about the parameters you put in place and how adaptable and flexibile you are.  For instance, on the Tennis Frontier  - posters complained that the parameters were too tight... So we adapted.  That's the way the show should be run IMO.

There really is no such thing as total Freedom of Speech.  These are lessons learned as a forum evolves.

CD... I know you give tented a bad wrap on TF and his remark was grouchy but I've got to say he's an unsung hero on that website.  Most of his work goes under the radar as forum posters tend to focus on the forum without considering the rest of the site too much.  Just for the record, tented does the most news articles out of any of us, does all the proof reading on the entire website, does the TV schedules, orders of play, some board moderating and plenty more.  Take it from me, he pulls his weight... and some.

Running a board and developing an overall strategy takes time and effort.  None of us guys are getting paid, we are doing it primarily for the love of the sport and to keep an ongoing community together.  Sure, money would be nice further down the line, but it was and never will be the driving force in what we are doing. We're doing it anyway.

Cheers, BB