If I joined a board only to be told I couldn't post for the first 3 months, I'd swiftly find somewhere else and never go back. If I wanted to just read threads, I wouldn't bother registering in the first place.

The really sad thing is that I've been here before. I've been the co-creator of a board where the other admin got so out-of-control with rules and postcounts and paranoia over who was reading what that in the end I just walked away.

For the most part people just want to come in, read, maybe post and go. They don't want to jump through hoops.

And the Hill vs Schumacher threads before that* - they easily matched any of today's shenanigans despite having no more than three or four posters on each side.


I barely bother opening any post-race threads anymore. In fact, any incident during the race involving 'the usual suspects' is enough to put me off as I know that the board will be a flame fest within minutes of the chequered flag.



* I first started lurking on here in mid-1999 but those flame wars put me off posting until it had all calmed down.

I completely agree! I remember the days of old where I would disagree with people like Mrv and Deeq, and things would get heated, but we still respected one another and didn't ever resort to flaming.

I miss the old days. There are still a lot of folks here that I love to read, and it is worth going through the trash to get to their posts, however, it would be a lot better if one didn't have to do that.

But isn't that a shame? If the decent posters here don't talk about the race anymore, what's left? You want to leave the entire post-race thread to the posters with less noble intentions? Use the ignore list if necessary, or just read over certain posts and concentrate on the better material.

As long as even constructive criticism and valid opinions immediately set driver/team/series fans on a rampage of blind support, there can be no “debate”, no “civilized discussion” and no control over the trolling situation. So many folks here seem on the defensive at all times, so much so that they've taken to seeing any criticism – anything, like “so-and-so need to work on tire management” or “it's not smart to be rude to [person x]” - as a dire attack on their favorite competitor and, by extension, themselves.

I've belonged to some pretty rowdy (even a few infamous) online forums and even at the craziest, I wasn't seeing regular personal attacks over such trivial matters. I was a member here years ago, got a little put off by some of the bickering, moved on, but came back recently as I still had good memories of Atlas as among the best of the F1 discussion boards. I'm not claiming to be an innocent; admittedly, I can be an agitator though I've kept myself quite well in check here, I think – not even out of new member status yet. However, it is a little oh, let's say uncivilized around here...

I look in occasionally but I belong to the age group which is happier in TNF, where there are a higher proportion of grownups. The very low level of "debate" in the Racing Forum tends to keep me away. Far too much infantile catcalling, and too much argument of the schoolyard "Did! Didn't! Did!" variety.

I'm inclined to think that a lot of the cause lies in the anonymity of the posters. They're sitting at home, nobody knows who they are, so they let rip. And despite their passion, they often know little about the reality of motor racing at any level, and are probably too young to drive anyway. I don't like the anonymity, and so I use my own name.

The huge hype and commercialisation of F1 under Bernie has brought with it vast hordes of fans who think that motor racing began the day they discovered it, and who have been brought up on the endlessly trivial world of celeb worship and celeb idolatry. Few posters seem to realise that Grand Prix racing has been around for a hundred years, but that there's no guarantee it will be around another hundred (or even ten). Or that the highly restricted and choreographed circus we have today is just another transient phase in a long evolution.

One question I have asked in the past is, what happens when the bottom falls out of the world economy, and the sponsorship money for motor sport dries up? I don't know the answer, but I suspect an awful lot of the fanboys attracted by the colour and glamour of the current setup will fade away when the money, colour and glamour fades.

Then, I expect, there will only be the long-term and true fans of the sport left posting here. And they'll probably migrate to TNF. Problem solved.

In the meantime . . .

I used to be a regular at the rec.autos.sport.f1 news group before coming here in 2000. I left because the level of personal abuse, flaming, trolling and mindless profanity was getting pretty bad (some other contributors left along the same times for similar reasons and came here). I found people and the fans here extremely civil, accommodating and well-behaved even when in opposite camps and of opposite views- with some exceptions of course. Looking back rasf1 was at that stage much better off than what the bulletin board here is today. Then something happened at the bb, I would pinpoint this at the stage when Alonso was going for his second championship. I'm sorry to say this but Alonso-mania brought with it a lot of people who had very little interest in F1 before, a lot more than what had been the case previously. More quite young people than previous drivers had, who just came in hoards (numbers being much larger than before) to lift the glory of their own driver by abusing and flaming others, it did not help that many had a poor grasp of English which made the abuse even more crude and simple than previous incarnations. This was somehow managable but with Hamilton there came a second wave of new young people into F1 fandom who had very little interest in F1 from before. Nationalism and race (as in black and white) were suddenly issues that were touted both as attack and defense - spawning some ugly outcomes. Clashes between these fractions has escalated and has also ignited other "fans" of other drivers to become more abusive, more trolling, more flaming than previously.

Today I was looking for an existing thread were I could post some translations of interviews but those that qualified already had heading that suggests abusive attacks and those who looked more civil only contains messages of mindless yeah-but-no-but-yeah-well-your-mother-is-a-whore type of posts. There is worryingly little room for serious posters and serious posts nowadays, the abusine clutter/noise is quite bad.

Provocation between fans of different fans and teams has always been here at this board - but abuse spawns abuse and thee is probably no stopping the worst offenders now. I have never used a filter list for users on any sites, but I now carry 30 names in my censored-filter list.

If we are to assume we're going towards a similar fate to rasf1 with this pace albeit with a bit of lag - I suggest you go and have a look at the level of abuse going on there now. Every other word is fuck or n****r....

Perhaps a limit of (for example) only 1 post per hour for 'new' users.
People who really had a long term interest in being a member of the forums could handle that, but trolls who love the back-and-forth bickering in forums would be too frustrated.



Originally posted by TickTickBooom
Who would you ban, alfa1? Those whose opinion did not tally with yours? There's a word for that.

Perhaps, but I think I'm suitable to be a fair and impartial (but strict) dictator because I dont have a favorite driver or team, and never have.
I try to follow them all. I think they're all good, even the bad ones.
Havnt followed F1 for 30 years like yourself, just 21 years.

great thread

i'll grant you that this board is a tad....erm 'feisty' at the moment, but it continues to confound me that, while some board members have 'polarised' opinions on 'certain personalities' within the sport, their opinion doesn't seem welcome? sticks and stones? c'mon, i agree with the suggestion of a filter for the crudest of language, and i support the principle of the 24 hour ban, i can only suggest that these are used to deter those who make personal insults to other posters (and no, 'stupid' wouldn't make it into my list) and it isn't used to blanket-ban fan-boys off the board.....










yes i wouldn't ban someone for being a fan-boy, i wouldn't ban someone for ignoring the blatant black & white details in their face, i wouldn't ban someone for arguing black's white and red's no colour (as we say around 'ere), that's their choice. If they hold an opinion to the point that they'll type it out for the world to see, then fair play to them......i might think they're wrong and i'll argue the point but i'll happily concede if i was wrong about something to do with F1 (Max's inability to hold his position springs to mind lol) but in the end this is people with opinions and beliefs and i'd be particularly unhappy if i couldn't post on a board because my opinion wasn't welcome, and especially if it didn't tally with 'the majority'. In the end, one of two things happen.....either a debate rages on between polarised opinions on a matter and we all read and cluck and shake our heads about the frailties of human nature in this media-led 'instant gratification' world.......or we don't get to read the debate at all........think carefully

i love this board
i love the 'craic'
i love the information
i loooove the live chat for race weekends

i never use 'ignore'

Definately agree with this thread and im suprised to see some people here that either pretend to not know or simply dont know the difference between arguing with someone who dissagrees and having problems with trolls .

A troll's purpose is to argue with people while consistently ignoring logic for the sole purpose of disrupting good disscussion and debate. In other words, the troll knows full well that they're wrong but wants to cause trouble.

Been around AF1 since 1995, and on the BB since 98 and its always been a bit of a mix.. but before they linked up with Autosport it was better.

Now though, there is no respect between fans of different drivers, and its a haven of trolls and fanboys. I'm amzed that Autosport don 't run their own moderated forum to be honest, because this place sucks.

Half the people that post here know nothing about motor racing and think that F1 is basically Wrestling on wheels...

Also:

Anti-British xenophobia

WTF is that all about..?

This is a reply by Paul Kaizar to a poster in October 1997. RasF1 seems to have had a bad reputation for sometime. I actually posted to the topic using my full name.

Why are 50% of Villeneuve fans so volatile? I read the comments section, and there is always a Villeneuve fan of some description ripping into people for daring to criticise him...

...The comments section of Atlas is rapidly disolving into a poor imitation of rec.autos.sports.f1. Incisive comments would appreciated, not the petty backbiting that is taking it over now.

Message to ALL Villeneuve fans: Don't take life so damn seriously. Lighten up, will you?

Yours,

Steve Coe
stecoe@nucleus.com

I agree with Steve. The last thing I want is to have Readers' Comments turn into an extension of r.a.s.f1. And, I'm sure the majority of you would agree.

I've received many emails over the weekend regarding my Villeneuve comments. It seems that many of you can't accept that people do differ in their opinions and observations. Atlas does not exist to provide psychological counseling for racing fans with inferiority complexes. If you send trash, that's where it ends up.

Paul Kaizar
kaizar@atlasf1.com

I am Kimi fan too, mainly due to being such an shameless patriot (was Mika fan before Kimi, surprise, surprise) and constant unjust criticism against him is something you have to get used to here. I do my part to defend him, but I also try to leave obvious trolling posts without any reaction, not very successfully everytime, I admit.

BTW only thing I disagree with your otherwise excellent post, is "smilies would be disabled". Though smilies can be very irritating - especially when someone puts dozen "rotfl" smiles and nothing else in his/her post - but there are flip side of the coin too, as sarcasm/tongue-in-cheeck etc posts can be easily misunderstood when it´s written without smileys.

Interesting find F1Johnny! I wonder who that post all the way back in 1997 was talking about.

*cough*Slategray*cough*

A good start might be not allowing Driver A verses Driver B polls whether inter team or intra team; you know the Coulthard vs. Webber thread or Barrichello vs. Button thread - For instance, the Kimi vs. Massa thread is on to Volume II.

I wrote the Creative Writing 101 remark, because to have taken any part of it out of context to skew a particular point would have been unfair, just as happened with Lewis' remark "I let him past", the deliberate misinterpretation of which has led to pages of name-calling; we've all walked past a cinema with a poster full of glowing reviews.

The critic writes "With this cast it should have been the best production of Death can be Fatal I have ever seen" becomes on the poster:

"The best production of Death can be Fatal I have ever seen"

I believe you are bang on the money here, sir!

Change of generations maybe. New culture dominated by WWF, computer games, internet, etc. also maybe.

I myself am an admin of a national F1 forum. A lot of boys and girls in -teen age join after discovering Formula 1 for themselves. And almost all of them behave in the same manner - as if there had not been F1 before them. A lot of football-like ultra fanboyism comes with them. The only thing I see as positive action is to try to make those of them who have the ability to look back to the roots of F1, learn the history, get interested in the technical aspects. Not just to glide over the visible side. And there are also their manners or the lack of good manners and respect to others' opinions. I don't know. Maybe it is because my country has undergone a serious crisis and parents failed to teach them, maybe because of the global access to virtually anything via internet. And they hate to read, join a thread just to write what they wanted, often diverting it from the original subject.

I am a rear poster. One of the reasons being my lack of fluency in English. The other one, when I joined I used to learn many new things from here from participants I respected and from whom I took an example how to be good mannered in an international community. Now, because I have enough headache with our local forum and feeling bitter seeing the same problems here - the BB I used to give as an example.
The only effective way to fight trolls and flame-baiters is to completely ignore them. Not by adding to the ignore list (I never understood people who use it), but to ignore their post even if one can read them. This makes them starve because they feed their ego by provoking other people go low down to their level.

I completely agree with this. Even if that poster chooses not to move on and continues to troll in a thread just ignore it. I think this will generally keep the discussion on topic and basically cuts the troll out.

Obi

it's not the thread title usually, it's some of the users
there are a lot of people here who have different opionions and we can argue very well and in a civilised manner...
however there are people who just seem to post for fun (for their sake i hope they are not _THAT_ hopeless), or people who just hate other opinions and state theirs as "known facts"
however, i am very sad because a lot of times in recent months i find myself answering to this kind of trolls because there is only a level of stupidity that i can take. i am sorry because sometimes you just do them good by answering the same way and all the forum is going down.
can't we have someone from the moderating team/magazine answer to this thread? i know there is a fine balance between freedom of speeach/site traffic/quality level. however, as they don't publish only rubish news in the paper just to sell them, maybe they should not allow a lot of rubish in this area
what do you guys think?

There are trolls here – that's a given on any message board – but, for me anyway, they aren't the major problem. Trolling, when done in extremes of poorly and properly, can actually provide comic relief; either via the absurdity or cleverness of the troll. Most folks, I think, can tell when they're dealing with a true troll (ahem, Mat Rempit, anyone?). It's those who fall into the grey area that really throw threads off kilter. They start fuming over troll posts, taking them seriously and jumping in to defend their Superdriver or giving the 'Thumbs Up!' the troll as a bash on The Enemy (i.e. not their Superdriver).

The end result is a board filled with certain folks primed and ready for a fight and even totally innocent posters are met with the same fury as the deliberate ****disturbers. People start supporting everything done by Driver X and criticizing all aspects of Driver Y (or Team Y or Series Y...), sometimes losing all rationality about it, defending their favorites and discrediting their perceived enemies becomes the only reason they post at all, and slowly you lose the ability to have real discussions. Which is fine so long as you either don't let it get to you or if such sparring is what you live for. Thing is, some posters, often the most articulate and knowledgeable of the lot, become so discouraged by all the battles spilling into every thread that they decide it isn't worth speaking at all. And then we get the ignore list cropping up. I've never used an ignore list and never intend to. I understand why some people want them, but I'd rather see what everyone has to say.

The other much-maligned group is the newbie fan but them I no real problem with so long as they are eager to move beyond supporting one driver for whatever reason that driver brought them to F1 (nationality/”he's a hottie!”/whatever). Either they grow into real fans or they move on to be replaced by the next group of newbies. Happens in all message boards no matter what the subject matter.

Maybe because I don't support any one team or driver in a passionate manner I don't get all that upset about the silliness. That said, it would be nice if logical discussions could happen without the inevitable “How dare you say [insert name here] isn't perfect! Oh, and [insert other name here] is a loser and so are you, fanboy!”.

(Quick extra point; I see several posts pointing fingers at the younger members. This happens a lot online when discussing forum behavior but really, with anonymity and all, not everyone is open about their age. Besides, I've known both adult internet hotheads and very sensible teen posters. Trolling and dumb behavior crosses all generations. Ditto intelligent contributions. I've often been surprised to discover the age, gender, lifestyle and location of people online.)

Hi MikeTekRacing

In many of these 'troubled' threads there is more that one poster causing conflagrations. Mostly rather than address the poster I will generally address the subject, so I may start by posting 'Regarding comments about X driver being 2 seconds a lap slower than his team-mate' and then provide timing information, driver/team/engineering statements to support my post. After this I usually find that:
(A) A poster who has been riled by negative comments about 'their' driver/team is placated and responds in a more reasoned fashion, even if I may disagree with their post and or the sentiment.
(2) They don't respond to my post.

Obi

Two of the most sensible, intelligent and level headed posters I found on forums over the years turned out to be a 14 year old girl and a 19 year old guy. One of the most despicable posters I have ever met online was 52 and married with grown up kids. We are all just people.

I look back at how I posted at the start of my stay here and how I post now and the two are quite different. I can't be bothered writing a sensible discussive post anymore because I know the next six will be insults calling me a troll, fanboy, idiot, talking shite etc. Why bother? In fact I very rarely post anything outside of the bets and game forums, a forum that I note that the majority of the people haven't noticed at all with the number of players completely diminished.

The general tone of posts has really declined, in my opinion, over the past several years. I was never banned by Bira but she did delete a post of mine (where I reminded people that MM liked to run F1 like his father would have liked to run the world).

I don't like to come to the forums much anymore because there is so much rudeness, either outright or "hidden" behind stupid smiley faces - like talking s**t about people and putting a smilie face on it makes it all right.

My personal guide to internet discussion forums has a couple of rules:

1. Behave as if you have been invited to a party at a friend's house where you don't know most of the people. Get to know them and don't try to piss them off.

2. Don't say something on the internet to someone that you wouldn't say to their face, in a bar, after they have had a few drinks. You know, the things that you might say and then, several seconds later, think "why am I looking up at the ceiling, why does my jaw hurt and why are all these people staring down at me?"

I think that the forum needs more moderatators who operate perhaps in teams. That would prevent a McLaren fanboy like me from deleting a Ferrari fanboy's post unless another moderator (maybe a Renault fanboy) agrees. And vice versa, of course.

Flamers and trolls would be asked to self moderate. Failing that, their offensive, trolling, flame baiting threads would be locked and posts deleted. The next step would be a ban with the poster's ISP notified that the poster has been banned.

I think most of the people here really want to have a forum where they can reasonably discuss and debate things without people hijacking the thread or flaming it.

Just my two cents.

I support Obi's view that poor English is no reason to prevent someone from posting. I would rather have poor grammar than some of the ridiculous flaming posts that we have to suffer. Passion and understanding about motor racing is the most important thing.

In general there is a pretty good quality of poster, but as with any board on the internet there is an element who treat a sensible discussion as though it was an unsupervised playground. There is always space for the odd light-hearted remark, that is part of everyday speech. Some poster go way beyond what is tolerable or acceptable.

I have not been posting here regularly for all that long, so I am still learning about the personalities behind the signatures. In general the standard of posting and posters is not that bad, it is just the small number of one-eyed posters who will always bring any discussion down to their lowest common denominator who cause a disproportionate amount of irritation.

I couldn't agree with you more about these three points.

Obi

I first joined at the end of 2002 and don't consider myself oldschool, but it's fairly obvious the quality of the board has deteriorated significatly. No matter what the outcome of a race, you can count on some drivers being bashed and all threads with them sabotaged within half an hour of the race end.

Until something happens, I guess people better be ready to fill in their ignore lists with a dozen of names or more.

Hi pgj

Yeah, Personally I don't have any problems with a posters grammer. I don't mind if they use 'U' instead of you or there instead of their. There are posters here from many nationalities in which English is not their first laugauge, so the most important thing for me is that I can understand their post. If I can't, I just so and ask if they could explain or clarify their post.

Obi

Like it is with almost everything in life, "old times were better", that´s just a way people feel no matter what the truth is... in the old days drivers were better (Senna etc) this forum was better, sky was clearer, music was better (which is true ) and so on and on.

I was here even before 98, but the reason why my or anybody else´s "join by date" is no earlier than 98, is because this forum get so nasty back then that it was shut down for few months and everyone of us had to register as new members when this forum was re-open. So much for the ´good old days´when everybody were polite to each other.

Most of the trouble makers here are too persistent to be true trolls. Stirring up shit on purpose for 3 years... come on? If someone is mentally unbalanced enough to do it for this long, they might as well be mentally unbalanced enough to genuinely have no logic.

Either way we need to answer less to these guys, genuine or not, because that's where the problem begins. I know I'm guilty of this sometimes...

Very rarely post on this forum but do take a look now and again. The last month or so really has seen some seriously terrible stuff posted here. The orgy of Hamiltion-bashing makes my hair stand on end! I'd love to see a list of the IP addresses for the regular "trollers". I guess most of it originates in Spain, and yet this is NOT a Spanish forum. Bit of a cheek methinks.

And the moderators really, REALLY need to flex their muscles and stomp on blatant troll-threads. For example

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php?threadid=102891

Just look at the first post on that thread - what's that all about? The thread should have been locked/deleted immediately, and yet it wasn't and is still active.

Get a grip mods - a minority of loons are turning the forum into a mud-slinging free-for-all that is scaring off "ordinary" posters.

For me the best system would be one where the members could vote off each other. The actual standard of ethics is very high here (witness that waiter at Silverstone who wanted advice about skiving off and got a good earful!) So I think it would work well.

The frustration I have is the purely negative, destructive members, currently mat armpit and oloelpilote, who remain here, spoiling the board for everyone, because the rules are only about being abusive to other members. By avoiding that trap, they can stay forever even though their only purpose is to express hatred.

Normally, any social group has a means of excluding people, like blackballing. I'm only suggesting this way of excluding the most negative members, I think the fair majority here would ensure that.

Shame that in a thread on post quality you have to resort to lame jokes regarding a posters name

About people spreading negativity (hatred) about drivers and teams, that is of all times hell Frans, RDM and Slategray even made a career out of it.
Best to just ignore them if it bothers you and surely voting off people would not be the way to go, we would end up with a BB of homogenous opinions and that wouldn't do much for debate whatsoever.

IMO it's all just a phase that we'll snap out of sooner or later, if not than Autosport could always pull the plug and make this BB available to their subscribers only.

Empty speculation. And completely wrong.

The answer to this problem would be a restricted racing comments forum.

A forum you would get automatic access to after - let's say - 100 posts on the open forum and less than a fixed number of posts reported as offensive from different users. Should be a high enough number to prevent trolls to hinder the nice guys from getting access to the advanced forum, maybe less than 20.

This would create a two class system obviously, but I think it would help for more civilized discussions. And it wouldn't require monitoring from the admins as the users themselves would be the moderators.

Thank you very much, would you care to explain why and how undersquare?

Post rewritten:



Hmm, I stopped posting there some time ago because I found too many of the posters unpleasant. Here the problem consists mainly of idiots, whom I find easier to ignore, and most of the worst offenders lose steam quite quickly. Of those who've posted regularly for a while, there are only three I consider pretty much worthless (although because I try to skim the nonsense I may be missing some re-joining under new names).

But I don't think a second forum would work, even if it were desirable, because a large part of the nastiness is between veteran posters. The thought of being on a second forum might keep people in check for a while, I suppose. But on the internet people start to see themselves and others as opinions and sometimes opinions can't get along. Swearing doesn't bother me - it's pretty irrelevant to the nuttiness and boorishness which do, and there aren't many ways to guard a site against those.

History is full of pessimistic predictions about democracy, but in fact democracy produces the most tolerant and diverse societies. Oligarchies, which we have here however benevolent, are never as good.

A lot of whinging and whining I must say.Toughen up.And if you don't like what you hear,move on to the next topic.Not everyone says things the way you want to hear them.And pause and think that not everyone cares about the way you portray yourself either. It cuts both ways.
I love this site because of the diversity of posters that congregate here and long may that continue to evolve.

Doesnt apply to me but that sums it up perfectly

"Stupid" seems to be a heavily used word here...

I say let people express their opinions - no matter how "stupid" they seem to be. If you disagree or don't like said opinion, then don't read. Ignore it. Just like television, if you switch on a program you don't like then don't watch!

Mad Max says he's leaving next year, how about getting him as moderator - legal team and all. Would that be better?

It is worth pointing out trolling doesn´t require breaking the rules. Here are two examples:

"Driver X = overrated, he is nothing but average Journeyman who got exposed this year"

" Driver X screws up AGAIN "

All ok? No personal insults there. Still, pure trolling.

But wait: isn´t Freedom of Speech great? Doesn´t banning/restricting/ignoring people lead to forum where one cannot disagree? No!!! We ARE NOT obligated to read every single post or discuss with every single poster. In real life, we don´t spend even one minute "debating" with annoying drunk in local bar. We ignore him. See?

Here, let´s do the same. I have found out 99% of the time folks who complain about ignore list are popular guests on ignore lists, or even new incarnations of banned members. The same ones who write provocation after provocation. They aren´t worth my time, or yours. Want to avoid ending up to the list? Clean up your act.

That´s the way it works on Planet Earth, kiddos.

I like this place. But the quality of discussion has plummeted. We have lost so many great posters, simply because they no longer wanted to play childish games where Trolls/Bashers piss off people, get banned, create new usernames and come back to pose as F1 fans.

To those who complained about my ignore list, I have bad news for ya´

In the future...I WILL ignore the trolls, and I WILL advertise the List (yep, with capital L) to my fellow posters. I know...the List isn´t perfect solution, but easily the best one we´ve got. Try it! In most cases, 10 seconds of your time for adding 1-2 names will do the trick.

Cheers

Well I don't know if any of this was directed at me, but getting rid of the few haters wouldn't reduce diversity at all. If this is a sporting forum. There are plenty of fans to put every conceivable point of view that has any value at all. "I hate Ron he's a lier" injected into some random thread doesn't add anything, it just makes the forum a less pleasant place to be.

Yep. Seeing the posts of Trolls = placing huge pile of crap next to Picasso painting - for the sake of "diversity".

Sure...you can look the other way, get used to it, or leave the room. I prefer cleaning it up.

Mat Rempit is not a name, it is a Malay word refering to a bunch of idiots who are illegal street racers. They race on the streets with their modded small bikes without wearing any safety equipment and they never consider about the safety of other road users. You can search for mat rempit on youtube but I should warn you that some of the videos could be inappropriate by showing how those idiots were involved in serious accidents.

Not all Malaysian are like that but those bastards are actually responsible for the high accident rate in the country. They think that they are cool whe they do something very stupid like that but they are actually fools who are not only risking their lives but also others' as well.

If they are really interested in motorsport, we have a lot of opportunities in our country to race legally and safely like how I joined a real race team developing our own car from scratch. I feel ashamed with the stupid behavior of some people in our country and those behaviors would normally put the rest of us under a bad light in the eyes of the world. With that said, I would like to point out a quote from the movie Men in Black:



If I can find find a Malay word to describe them, the word would be "bahalol"

I suppose one way would be to make this a pay forum. However, some might pay the price and then try to get their money's worth...

As you said, "That´s the way it works on Planet Earth, kiddos."

Nah mate, not directed at you in particular. The 'you' was in the plural
I however take issue with your last statement. I reckon the minute everyone was all lovey dovey on this forum that would be doomsday..... The ideal is somewhere in-between!

Interesting thread. I started off posting here back in January. For a time it was great, but then things started to go pear-shaped. When you're slagged off or called an idiot simply for expressing your point of view it is hard not to react and I'm as guilty as that as anyone here. You give it back then you're as bad as the person you're feeling angry towards.

I've stopped posting too much recently because I've found the quality here has become quite boring and, like being in a bad relationship, things spiral into fights with a tedious regularity.

The hours after the French Grand Prix really did it for me this year. Every thread quickly turned into a anti-Hamilton hate fest which made me start to think this forum was becoming a waste of time. Any topic which started was quickly populated by trolls slagging him off and dominating discussion.

I almost never agree with him, but for all his annoying, self-righteousness and often infuriating opinions, I have to say Kar always plays hard but fair but on this forum. And for someone who posts to the extent he does that takes some discipline.

A lesson for us all perhaps? Hard but fair in the arguments.

I agree! Lots of posts on this forum annoy me by being "wrong" in some way but I'm not suggesting the posters would be banned. Possibly no-one would be banned, because behaviour would improve. But there would be a limit, somewhere, and we the members would be in control of it. For me personally, the limit would be somewhere between Slate, who is a star, and the aforementioned Mat wotsit who is just a campaigner. But the actual limit wouldn't be mine, it would be a consensus, and rarely used I think. Mainly, the same people would be banned, but a lot quicker. Being banned quicker would mean they would be less inclined to re-join with a new name.

List is ok, but I find advertising someone getting into that list quite annoying. Advertising someone that he is ingored isn't really ignoring.

I've just started my own ignore list and it seems to work. Many will feel I'm a troll but I've tended to try to give some of these guys a dose of their own medicine. In hindsight not too clever, and ignoring them completely is no doubt more effective.

I'd personally love to see a Members Club for Autosport subscribers. The rules are if you get banned you would have to re register and pay another annual subscription. Maybe some posters would think twice about playing the silly games if the cost were likely to be £30 every time they were thrown out? It's the only way I can see to avoid the re registration abuse which makes the banning of these trolls a futile waste of time. And these guys aren't balanced. I got this recently from Arrow/Drexl/Whatever




Quite amusing really but hardly the prose of a balanced and mentally sound individual. Now if a person like that can simply change identity with impunity, what realistic hope is there that we can have reasoned and sensible debate on the forum?