Has anyone else noticed that out of the 37 threads on the first forum page, only 5 involve discussion about actual sporting (on track) side of F1? And 4 of those threads were created many months ago. On the whole first page the only fresh thread discussing the current F1 season is the 'silverstone preview' thread. Its quite amazing isnt it?

The place has become totally polluted with political and regulatory discussions rather than sporting. Its sad that in an F1 forum you can barely find a thread to discuss the actual racing. Really reflects the sad state of affairs in F1 and this forum. I come here to talk about the sport yet I cant find any discussion about it.

Time for politics section for this forum?

Button will win the next race.

next

Time for people to stop making a new thread for every retarded thought they come up with.

start watching NASCAR and join those threads. they're full of racing comments.

The forum is fine, i dont want to have to to to seperate forums to read things involving the same sport, maybe f1 needs its own forum or something who knows, your thread is in no way related to F1 so you're worst of all.

Reflection of F1 in general these days....all about the politics, little to do with racing.

You said it! What racing? Besides the 2009 as already been decded. Woth the stupid politiccs and predictbale racing 2009 is perhaps one of the worst years ever in f1 racing

+1. Perfect weekend for it, they're on a beautiful, winding road course with lots of elevation changes. Three ex-F1ers in the field. At least three continents represented.

Since April 09?

What happens on the track is only a fracture of F1. Been watching F1 for 30 years now and it's the mixture of sporting, technical issues, politics, glamour, etc. which makes it so complicated, different and enjoyable to follow. Politics have always been part of it!

As someone just said, maybe Nascar could be your stuff rather than Formula One.

The politics has huge consequences on the racing. Dont blame the fans of the sport for caring about what is happening to it. These are turbulant times and the forum reflects that.

The political side of racing is still racing related. I don't see which of the other forums it belongs in.

What does annoy me greatly are the huge amount of threads all covering the same topic, even if a new thread deviates very very slightly. I don't know what the thinking is behind that. People don't bother reading other threads to check their content and what has been said already? People want a bit of glory and their name posted as the OP?

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Its boring as f*** and I cant be bothered to entertain any of them.

Button will win the WDC, but who will win F1? Much more interesting and unpredictable fight. People tend to look to where the action is.

Well I for one like the pretty colors and I like it when the cars go zoom zoom, and I think the drivers are all Gods and I think they have really nice manicures too.

I lolled when I saw that this thread had been moved because it was not a racing comment.

+1

Forum description from the main page:

Racing Comments
The place for debates on the current affairs of Formula 1, rallying, MotoGP, NASCAR, V8, Indycar, and all other forms of motorsport. Be warned: arguments are welcome, personal insults are not.

my 2 peneth, i think people do need to calm down on the FOTA vs FIA thing, none of the endless 'Maxs is Mad, down with Spnaky!!!111!!' followed by, 'but F1 is such a complex beast, you just don't understand what it all means' are actually going anywhere. Its fine people want to express their views but there do seem to be some epically reptitive arguments

Can't people at this point just wait and see what happens rather than trying to out post each other!

Buford, Buttoneer

Madras & petri

Agree with everything apart from sending fanboy off to NASCAR.

As for the number of threads and seeming repetition, methinks that given the monstrous increase in postings, the administrators are doing an amazing job of herding all of the cattish, and elephantine, and bovine, and owlish, and wolfish, and piggish, and fishy, and parrotting, and dogsbodine posts into appropriate pens or fields.

Not to mention alla them climacteric cloudy, riverrunic, swampy and thundering posts, and still managing to keep several of the brilliant people from days past from bolting.

And then people start complaining when there is more than GP post per weekend, when traditionally there have been one for free practice, another for saturday practice (or maybe those two were one, I don't remember exactly), another for qualifying, and another one for the race.

And now FOTA has announced they are launching a breakaway championship. Makes the thread starter look rather ignorant and silly.

Same

in a round about sort of way...

Wow did you see '..X..' go round, then he came round, then he went round ....

i hate these calls for censorship - leave the forum alone and allow the contributors to form the shape of it

if you want to see thought police and how it kills a forum, I couold point you to a few big ones - which are as sterile and interesting as a pan of boiling water

Hey look, a newbie telling everyone how the forum should be run.

More moderation makes for a better experience. Just look at the rules and ban list at SomethingAwful, one of the most popular forums on the internet.

You know, sometimes that's not a bad thing.. you never know where people come from.

- How about child boards (no, that's not for the -18 only)?

Seriously. Racing Comments forum is usually a laugh of wacky opinions, but this last few days it's gone mad. Loads of new users just basically attacking each other and saying nonsense. Time for a clean up?

Yes agree, that is F1.

could not agree more..

I find the forum increasingly difficult to read.

The discussions on big subjects are moving so fast, it's hard to keep up. I also think the points are debated to the Nth degree and the more interesting facts are getting lost.

Who wants to read 10 pages just to get the gist of where the argument is at on the 11th page?

I think we need some kind of News Article comment thread on the main site, to take the heat off the Racing Comments forum.

It needs splitting up into smaller chunks.

It would help if the policy was not to merge threads if there is anything resembling touching on the same issue.

I say keep everyone opening threads, if the discussion in the thread is worthwhile that thread live and prosper, if it is not then it whither and die.

A couple of times I have made threads and posted in threads which were merged into others, which had zero to do with the subject matter I was posting in reference to.

There are also all the self appointed policemen, who are busy pointing out a question may have been asked in 1999, and you should know better than opening a new thread then.

Lastly the fact that some 43% of the posts in the long threads, are posted calling each other names of varying degree, and adding zero to the actual thread.

A slashdot-like moderation system might do the trick.
I agree it's difficult to follow the large threads.

Season will end and things fill get a lot better until spring comes. That's the Atlas F1 circle of life ;).

YES I completely agree with this.

This is a very busy forum but none of the other forums I go to are so insanely keen on merging topics. The same topic can stay in the top of the forum for months.

When a story takes a new twist, then it's time for a new thread with a different slant on the topic, not another 20 pages in an existing one.

I really do hope the mods can experiment with different tactics, because I don't feel compelled to carry on reading and posting the way it is at the moment.

Let natural selection take it's course and have an ever-changing recycling top fold of the forum view.

It is also my opinion that the kind of knee-jerk reactionary personality lead witch hunts which Hugues and Lord mentioned in their leader columns in Autosport this week seem to thrive and prosper on the Autosport forum. The quality of what I'm reading is dictated by a small hardcore of people seemingly arguing for arguments sake and they all have predictable views especially on the Mosley stuff. It's very tiring when you just wanna move on and talk about racing.

I don't mind talking about politics, and yes this year has been heavy on politics and light on racing.

But there needs to be a more varied slant on stories and a more inteligent discssion. Its like a kid's playground at times and there is the usual class system. The new kids, the establishment, the bullies and the cliquey groups which form, always expressing the same slant on stuff. Example: any political issue. It's the FIA's fault. Any racing issue: debated in so much detail it becomes anal. Any other issue: ignored.

I completely agree. Reading the forum is like reading an anti-FIA propoganda site at times. Why does Max have to dominate the agenda. This issue has been solved in F1.

It's time to move on. Will it just carry on with Todt as the new Max?

I hope not, I'm sick and tired of all the politics (personally), but I fear that it will.

Here is a clearer explanation of what I think would be cool...

Say for example Renault's 2 year ban. Immediately a new story like this appears on the forum for people to debate. But the story is so large it should really be broken down into it's component parts. Flavio's lifetime ban. Pat's 5 year ban. Renault's continued invovement in F1 at board level. Influence on Alonso and driver market. FIA's politically handling of it. And numerous other issues.

As it is, all the threads even remotely related to this topic are merged into one mega thread, which moves so quickly you cannot keep track of it.

Any comments from the mods on this matter?

Can we not split topics up a little more and let more individual posts survive (with the ones remaining being the survival of the fittest)?

Scrolling down a bit more is a lot easier than having to read 20 pages and then finding another 5 pages of new stuff waiting for you. The chat moves too fast.

Crashgate related threads from the first page
How will Flavio be remembered?
RENAULT: TWO Years Suspended Ban
Alonso knew?
WMSC hearing: Piquet's 2008 Singapore crash intentional?
Career ending ban too harsh on Pat Symonds
Singapore 2008 - winner? Different WDC? POLL!
Briatore and the drivers he manages
The Piquets: End of a Racing Dynasty?
EU Laws
Why are the FIA punishments so subjective and not consistent?
Cheat or wise: What is acceptable?
N. Piquet future.....?
Derek Warwick on Flavio's departure from F1
NEW RENAULT SPONSOR REVEALED AFTER WMSC HEARING!
Flavio & Symonds - with regards to Fisichella

so, what do you want changed?

A temporary subforum? Once discussion on it has died down then merge it back into the main forum?

There are people (like myself) that would like to discuss something other than the Renault saga.

That is, unfortunately, a practical nightmare to administer and would lead to a lot of confusion.

From the discussion in this thread so far we have everything from "It would help if the policy was not to merge threads" to "There are people (like myself) that would like to discuss something other than the Renault saga". If we merge everything into one topic, there will be more choice on the front page, but then the threads will become impossible to follow. If we let them all run, then the current topic will be the dominating factor on the front page. It's a no win situation for moderation. The solution at the moment, it to try and keep some things in single threads and others let run their course.

The "Renault saga" should start to die down a bit now and hopefully more disparate discussions will take over.

I understand what you are saying, but I am not sure why you feel moderation is needed.

To me the moderators should ensure that the under age can come here, and not be subject to offensive language, as well stop one or several posters, who take it out on each other, and if in a thread the posting is as Mel but in the rules, a string of name calling posts.

Apart from that.

Why would there be a need for moderation?

Why can Renault being investigated not be kept apart from

Drivers managed by Flavio

EU Law

Verdict against Renault is good / bad (which ever posters think)

?

These to me are tangents of the same original matter, but the discussion in those threads as very different in what they and the posters posting in them attempt to convince every one else of.

I understand that this to an extent is how it currently is, and I am equally aware that there are 'duplicate' threads. My point is that those that are duplicates, will die out, once every one stay in either of the entries.

I am of the opinion that a lot of threads are impossible to follow, simply through their sheer size, and for the very fact that everything under the moon is being discussed in those threads, rather than have the separate issues dealt with in separate threads.

I meant to say it's a no win situation for moderators. Sorry if that was misleading, spelling mistake on my part.



I think as Gilles4Ever pointed out, these subjects are currently running in their own threads. It would be very difficult to manage all posts in each of these topics to keep them in the defined threads, a lot of threads tend to wander around a point anyway and cross over subject matter. I'm struggling to see how we can moderate the forums better to "tidy" up discussions without increasing the workload by some considerable amount considering the sheer volumn of posting that is done each day. Although we are open to constructive ideas

Well, with Autosport's online presence blessed with such popularity, it could open many doors.

The forum design might have to move away from the usual BBS way of working. Have you considered a social-networking style community?

This could have the potential to be amazing. Rather than having an open discussion centred around one page like the standard forum BBS is, the discussion could happen in a more distributed fashion, and so a lot of the situations where threads get locked in a back and forth between 2 or 3 people (alienating everyone else and going off topic) could be avoided.

Autosport online is great in that it has so many F1 fans around, who want to talk about F1. The forum format as it stands, I don't think will be sufficient in the years to come. I am all up for new ideas, so lets get some started.

Thanks Slick, but seems that you and I are talking past each other to an extent.

I will be my usual curmodgeonly, cranky, witty, smart and polite self. Attempt not to break the rules, and stick around regardless of how the BB is moderated. Having been here in various forms since 1999, then I can't really say that I don't know the lay of the land. And my general comment / feeling is that the AtlasF1 BB have no peers in the online world.

Thanks to you and the other moderators for being there, taking the time, and live with all of us and our demands for a world build in our image only.

What an absolutely horrid idea!!!!!!

Dear AtlasF1,

Please please please please

Do NOT go down that road.

This option is not being considered at this stage.

The forum will therefore remain... hum... a forum..

I can only speak for my own experience, but almost every moderated forum (note moderated as opposed to free-for-all where anything goes) I've ever posted at merges threads to keep things organized. In fact, this is among the least draconian merge-wise that I've encountered. I don't know where some of you guys are hanging out online, but the moderation here is pretty standard fare.


Possibly an explanation for my confusion: The majority of folks at the boards I've frequented tend to prefer big, multi-page threads with all the related info in one place, but this is one of only two motorsports related forums I've visited. Are the others of this type more free form?

I feel the merging of threads is over the top at times.

For example there is a thread speculating about the possibility of Raikkonen going to McLaren.

Now, if he does indeed get confirmed as going to McLaren, that should be a new thread, rather than buried in the existing one.

But experience suggests it would probably be merged in.

New developments should be new threads.

If there are no new developments, then stay in existing speculative threads.