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We hate Harry/"player"/Levy/Spurs...

doom

Well-Known Member
Dec 13, 2003
2,368
1,338
Excellent discussion which is what SC should be about..

Much of the talk seems to stem from peoples thinking that this is some kind of democratic forum and therefore everyones views should be heard...

We need to treat these persistent negative posters for what they are, a huge annoyance and ban them from posting, otherwise it will only get worse and I and others will stop coming here.
 

bryanabutler

SC Supporter
Jul 15, 2007
1,342
583
if we thought Redknapp or any player was wrong for Spurs, no matter what our tone or how much it upsets the people with opposing views, as long as it wasnt abusive to anyone, we should be able to say so.

if we thought Redknapp or any player were great for the club, no matter what our tone or how much we upset the people with opposing views, as long as it wasnt abusive, we should be able to say so.

As long as their is no kind of abuse to others, people should chill out a bit and realise that their not the only ones that matter.

A quick read through this thread makes it clear that some people want this place all to themselves and look down on others that dont share the same opinion as them while some are more open minded to the views of others.

Some people are easily pleased and will cheer the club all the way down the leagues not really carring what happens along the way, others wont be happy to settle for a glory year and will want to build on sucsess, some are easily taken in and some are a bit more shrewd, thats the way people are and its a shame that even if they couldnt get on in the real world some find it impossible to get along in a forum.

Forums are a great place to debate the ins and outs, ups and downs about something we love but we cant go throwing our toys out of the pram if we lose a debate or someone comes up with a better argument for something that we had now and again, sometimes we have to hold our hands up and say fair play i haddnt thought of it like that.

The one thing that brings everyone here is our love of Spurs, wether some worry about the future and take the present glory days as read or wether some just want to celebrate whats going on now and think the future is a bridge we'll cross when we come to it, it dosnt matter, we all love Spurs and we should take each post from every member as seriously as the next, as hard as it is sometimes.

COYS.
Welcome to the site
 

SimonSpur

Member
Feb 11, 2004
179
4
if we thought Redknapp or any player was wrong for Spurs, no matter what our tone or how much it upsets the people with opposing views, as long as it wasnt abusive to anyone, we should be able to say so.

if we thought Redknapp or any player were great for the club, no matter what our tone or how much we upset the people with opposing views, as long as it wasnt abusive, we should be able to say so.

As long as their is no kind of abuse to others, people should chill out a bit and realise that their not the only ones that matter.

A quick read through this thread makes it clear that some people want this place all to themselves and look down on others that dont share the same opinion as them while some are more open minded to the views of others.

Some people are easily pleased and will cheer the club all the way down the leagues not really carring what happens along the way, others wont be happy to settle for a glory year and will want to build on sucsess, some are easily taken in and some are a bit more shrewd, thats the way people are and its a shame that even if they couldnt get on in the real world some find it impossible to get along in a forum.

Forums are a great place to debate the ins and outs, ups and downs about something we love but we cant go throwing our toys out of the pram if we lose a debate or someone comes up with a better argument for something that we had now and again, sometimes we have to hold our hands up and say fair play i haddnt thought of it like that.

The one thing that brings everyone here is our love of Spurs, wether some worry about the future and take the present glory days as read or wether some just want to celebrate whats going on now and think the future is a bridge we'll cross when we come to it, it dosnt matter, we all love Spurs and we should take each post from every member as seriously as the next, as hard as it is sometimes.

COYS.

Hello mate, and welcome to the site.

The intention of this post wasn't to suggest people who had different views to mine should not be allowed. I'm not sure how long you've been viewing the community as a guest, but there has been an overload of trolling and an oppressive and unwarranted amount of bile with no justification lately. It had become overwhelming and was threatening to swamp this site and detract from the very debate that clearly you, others and myself all want.

It's not about losing a debate and throwing toys out of the pram. It's been really just to flag some of the recent trends, and see if others feel the same as me about it.

Your final paragraph captures the ethos of this place perfectly and is exactly why it is such a great website. The problem has been that recently any opinion and discussion threads have been plagued by people with no other agenda than to provoke others or repeat an inane and often irrelevant point ad infinitum. This has drowned out 99% of people on here, to the detriment of the the vast majority.

Anyway, back to my first line! Welcome! And COYS!
 

Gaz_Gammon

Well-Known Member
Apr 16, 2005
16,047
18,013
if we thought Redknapp or any player was wrong for Spurs, no matter what our tone or how much it upsets the people with opposing views, as long as it wasnt abusive to anyone, we should be able to say so.

if we thought Redknapp or any player were great for the club, no matter what our tone or how much we upset the people with opposing views, as long as it wasnt abusive, we should be able to say so.

As long as their is no kind of abuse to others, people should chill out a bit and realise that their not the only ones that matter.

I think that this is a realistic answer to the question being posed here. Why have a forum to offer opinion and communication if the opinion and communication cannot be anything other than mainstream and lacking passion (not to be mistaken for abuse may i add)? We are not all blessed (me included) with great written prose, but the way that some on here show their passion for the club, it's management and players points to one thing. They do care, and whether we all see it that way is another matter. But they do care, or they wouldn't post.

Now whether the way, style and content that their written response or the start of a thread appeals to everyone is a different matter. The nuts of this is not whether a written response on SC offends the one who reads it, its' whether the one who's reading tries understand the posters point of view given the circumstances surrounding the post.

We cannot expect everyone who posts on here to be like we would like them to be (perhaps like you and me?). This ain't going to happen. Each of us either has to give them a wide berth and try and understand their point of view or just don't read their thread. The only other way around it is for SC to have a link to two forums, one for those who see no wrong and those who like to bump and grind.

I work between the U.K. and U.S.A. and though we speak the same language there are large cultural differences. I work in teams where some have ego's almost as big as Old Big Nose, and others that have the ego of Mick McCarthy (to use football as an example). I cannot shut out the OBN and MM opinions, but i can try and change their opinions based on argument (civil). Perhaps this is where patience becomes a virtue?

As the old saying goe's opinions are like assholes.................everyone has one.

Perhaps not a great example, but one that i am sure we all understand.
 

SimonSpur

Member
Feb 11, 2004
179
4
I think that this is a realistic answer to the question being posed here. Why have a forum to offer opinion and communication if the opinion and communication cannot be anything other than mainstream and lacking passion (not to be mistaken for abuse may i add)? We are not all blessed (me included) with great written prose, but the way that some on here show their passion for the club, it's management and players points to one thing. They do care, and whether we all see it that way is another matter. But they do care, or they wouldn't post.

Now whether the way, style and content that their written response or the start of a thread appeals to everyone is a different matter. The nuts of this is not whether a written response on SC offends the one who reads it, its' whether the one who's reading tries understand the posters point of view given the circumstances surrounding the post.

We cannot expect everyone who posts on here to be like we would like them to be (perhaps like you and me?). This ain't going to happen. Each of us either has to give them a wide berth and try and understand their point of view or just don't read their thread. The only other way around it is for SC to have a link to two forums, one for those who see no wrong and those who like to bump and grind.

I work between the U.K. and U.S.A. and though we speak the same language there are large cultural differences. I work in teams where some have ego's almost as big as Old Big Nose, and others that have the ego of Mick McCarthy (to use football as an example). I cannot shut out the OBN and MM opinions, but i can try and change their opinions based on argument (civil). Perhaps this is where patience becomes a virtue?

As the old saying goe's opinions are like assholes.................everyone has one.

Perhaps not a great example, but one that i am sure we all understand.

Gaz, good points about style and understanding mate, but that isn't the answer to the question posted. I actually didn't ask a question, it was a discussion borne out of being fed up of the vitriol that was swamping threads without any reason to back them up. Not about people showing too much passion, or "mainstream" views (whatever they are!). Please see my post above yours for my reasons (which I thought I'd made clear first off).
 

JoeT

Well-Known Member
Jun 7, 2005
3,813
935
'Davidmatzdorf'. Yesterday in response to your claim that roughly 20 people were disrupting debate on this site, I asked you to name them....because i.m.o. that number could be exaggerated. I would guess that number is quite a bit less....but note I used the word "guess", maybe you could enlighten me please.
Also it bothers me a little to see someone casting a net of innuendo over so many on here without being challenged.
I still await your response on this.
Finally I see that (part) of the discussion has moved on to the more general topic of free speech in society and who/how it is controlled...you gave an example of Nazi sympathisers. Surely the country has criminal laws stating when a group steps over this "tricky" line? In Canada we have these and also a Constitution to guide lawmakers. On this site there there is no such thing, so the question again remains who decides?
This we will never be able to unbiasedly sort out...we could of course go from 'mob rule' i.e. one could be banned according to the highest number of posts sent in, or at the other end of the spectrum by a site all-knowing 'philosopher-king'?(and would we trust that person I ask myself?)
For myself, I prefer the K.I.S.S. ( Keep It Simple Stupid) approach and let the site organizers simply decide - according to simple decent rules of behavior (no personal insults allowed, or an apology is asked for) - and as I requested yesterday: posters, let us all - when in a pique and write an angry response - simply slow down, re-read what we have written before we click that darn "Reply" box.
 

Chedozie

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2005
2,619
2,639
'Davidmatzdorf'. Yesterday in response to your claim that roughly 20 people were disrupting debate on this site, I asked you to name them....because i.m.o. that number could be exaggerated. I would guess that number is quite a bit less....but note I used the word "guess", maybe you could enlighten me please.
Also it bothers me a little to see someone casting a net of innuendo over so many on here without being challenged.
I still await your response on this.
Finally I see that (part) of the discussion has moved on to the more general topic of free speech in society and who/how it is controlled...you gave an example of Nazi sympathisers. Surely the country has criminal laws stating when a group steps over this "tricky" line? In Canada we have these and also a Constitution to guide lawmakers. On this site there there is no such thing, so the question again remains who decides?
This we will never be able to unbiasedly sort out...we could of course go from 'mob rule' i.e. one could be banned according to the highest number of posts sent in, or at the other end of the spectrum by a site all-knowing 'philosopher-king'?(and would we trust that person I ask myself?)
For myself, I prefer the K.I.S.S. ( Keep It Simple Stupid) approach and let the site organizers simply decide - according to simple decent rules of behavior (no personal insults allowed, or an apology is asked for) - and as I requested yesterday: posters, let us all - when in a pique and write an angry response - simply slow down, re-read what we have written before we click that darn "Reply" box.

David "roof garden" Matzdorf is one end of a scale and Stokespur is another.

We can all choose to read their posts or ignore them, what has been happening recently is every thread is being bombarded with Redknapp is rubbish posts, to such a degree, that no one can comment on relating article.
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030

As well as what felmonger wrote, I wrote this above, which is basically "how so?":

I worked, both voluntarily and professionally, in co-operatives for about thirty years: co-operatives are ostensibly democratic organisations, quite like many internet message boards. They almost all failed in the end and the reason was always because democratic, egalitarian structures find it very difficult to deal with a small number of relentless, highly-motivated people whose objective is to destroy anything that does not follow their line and whose technique is to keep hammering away with their undermining behaviour until all of the positive-minded people walk away in disgust.

The underlying reason why these egalitarian organisations were powerless to prevent themselves from being destroyed is implicit in this sentence: "everyone has a right to their opinion". That uncontroversial statement is very easily and commonly confused with the very different statement that "everyone's opinion is as good as everyone else's opinion". The result is that maliciously-motivated individuals operating in egalitarian structures are permitted free rein to spam and swamp and snow every discussion, because no one has the guts to tell them to shut up and fuck off, for fear of being perceived as anti-democratic.

In the end, the people who have been putting their time and energy into making the organisation work just think "why bother?" and wander off, leaving the forum to the malicious and the incompetent - who are very often the same people.

My experience is that, like many voluntary organisations, the hard graft is done by a handful of very keen individuals. The other members seem to be happy to go along for the ride. The problems arise in the motivation of these keen individuals. Many are driven by a genuine belief that the co-operative model can compete effectively in the market with any other type of organisation. And, as in any organisation, personal ambition plays a big part, for good and for ill.

The complication in the UK is that co-ops are seen as political organisations and attract political activists. As a breed, these folk tend to talk hard and work hard in their own personal and/or party interests. The interests of the co-op members, who want stable and rewarding employment, comes a very poor second with these people. They move on up the slippery pole of success in the trade union movement, or as prospective candidates or into lucrative quangos leaving a co-op full of members with no experience of running a business and, thus, ripe for failure...

Your description is very familiar, but I was on the opposite side of that equation. I started out as a mere member of our tenants' co-operative, but eventually I started earning a living in the affordable housing field, founded on what I had learned helping start the co-op. Because of that last fact, I was quite content to keep doing the voluntary work and to use what I had learned in my work for the benefit of the co-op, including project-managing a substantial new development for them for nothing - work that would have cost tens of thousands of pounds over the course of 2-3 years.

The problems arose from the conviction of certain people that no one could posibly be doing this work for nothing: they must have some corrupt motive, either for power or money or both. Never mind that anyone with any competence who craved power or money could find no worse vehicle for attaining this than a non-profit housing co-operative. No, for corrupt people, anyone who appears to be doing something from conviction must necessarily be concealing a corrupt motive.

Eventually, doing several hours a week of voluntary work in exchange for being repeatedly attacked and accused of corruption by corrupt people loses its attraction, especially when it comes with screaming abusive telephone calls after midnight and Nazi symbols being scrawled on one's front door.

Nowadays, I won't even work for co-ops anymore. They're all infested with these twisted individuals who are determined to undermine the people who are contributing their energy for nothing and, as felmonger suggested, they spend way too much time wrangling about supposed principles and way too little time doing the job they were set up to do.

As I said, the people who just want to do the work eventually get pissed off and walk away. And that's why this isn't all that far off the subject of SC.
 

Riandor

COB Founder
May 26, 2004
9,411
11,607
Aaah the Internet... the great leveller.

It's like "Name your pub atheltic" vs "Barcelona" on a council estate street when it comes to forums. It doesn't matter how right or wrong you are, people will tell you in no uncertain terms, because on the Internet, you are faceless.

As for who decides, well fortunately the mods do... and we, as hopefully respectful users of this domain have to accept their rules and their opinions on what is ok to post and what is not. Don't like it, jog on. But it's a thankless task and a lot of what you don't want to read will stay on here... those who tire of the spiteful posts will either add the individuals to a growing "ignore" list or alas move on.

That is the way of all things.

Oh and in terms of society, all you can do is rely on a high level of education for the mass population, which means I am off to learn Swedish and browse scandinavian forums instead... for tasty blondes obviously.

:-D

No seriously, there is always a very vocal minority on all open forum message boards, like I said, that's the internet for you.

Up to the rest of us ignore the less desireables until they troll elsewhere.

That being said, nothing wrong with differences of opinions, including being upset with Harry's, Levy's, "players" mistakes (even I get angry at players under-performances, because by and large you know they could do better)... We are all human, we all make mistakes. Like the Transfer Window, this isn't FM, it's real life, you can't reload when you lose... the difference with Spurs these days is when we play like crud we can still win!!

Seriously, we're possibly 3rd and about to play AC MILAN!!!!!!! Yes we can get better, but it DOES NOT happen overnight, considered and constant improvement is always the better solution and should we finish above Man City and dare I say it even Chelsea, we will get considerably more kudos from the footballing world than if they finish above us.

Oh and I've said enough about the transfer window and our "so called failures", so i'll refrain from repeating myself.

R.
 

billnick

Well-Known Member
Jul 29, 2003
1,246
341
Excellent discussion which is what SC should be about..

Much of the talk seems to stem from peoples thinking that this is some kind of democratic forum and therefore everyones views should be heard...

We need to treat these persistent negative posters for what they are, a huge annoyance and ban them from posting, otherwise it will only get worse and I and others will stop coming here.

Surely the persistent "everything is wonderful because we were worse before" posters are just as irritating to some as the persistent negative posters are to others? Both groups fly in the face of logic to varying degrees. I agree that the "everything negative" brigade, conspicuous largely by absence from this thread, are irritating in many threads by posting diatribes which are nowhere near the point of the discussion. At the same time, but to a lesser extent, I've seen threads where the "everything is fine" type start talking about it too - which has exactly the same effect of hijacking a thread, albeit from a different angle of attack.

If it's not to be a democratic forum who decided that? I sincerely hope that was sarcasm.

At the end of the day, if everything someone says irritates you, there's not really any reason to read what they say.
 

JimmyG2

SC Supporter
Dec 7, 2006
15,014
20,779
Riandor.
You should be reprimanded for mentioning football on this thread.

We are getting a bit up ourselves here.
Of course whether its Mosley marching through Jewish areas in the East End in the thirties or the EDL marching through Muslim areas last month or people disrupting a football website there are basic principles involved.

But come on. A few (10/15/20?) over excited people suddenly discovering that they can express themselves, perhaps for the first time on a website with with a readership of several thousand can surely be ignored, or ridiculed.

I like this site very much for the level of discussion and feel sure that the moderators can handle obscenity and personal abuse as they have always done.

All the rest is opinion. The idiots are not always wrong either but I generally don't encourage them by giving them any recognition.
They are like flies at a picnic, irritating but hardly requiring calling in the Air Force.
 

TTID

Member
Apr 20, 2005
83
68
I could be wrong here, but this whole debate has stemmed out of the evil that is the january transfer window
I think some people thought buying a striker was such a given and so easy that the fact we didnt became bigger than the football. For me all the real anti harry/levy started getting worse during this time
A season is a long drawn out affair. At the beginning of the season who would have guessed blackpool being midtable? After the first ten games who could see past Chelsea winning the title? And now who would put money against united?
debating is fine. but to call someone a s**t manager or c**p chairman halfway through a season when you are chasing a top four place and in the last 16 of the champs league is massively shortsighted
I beleive evryone is allowed an opinion and to debate there point, but the problem is a lot of the posts have real venom to them when talking about harry/levy/jenas/crouch etc. Its rarely "jenas wasn't his best today, he gave the ball away to much and wasnt tracking back enough " its usually "jenas is s**t get him out the club and lets sign x"
 

JimmyG2

SC Supporter
Dec 7, 2006
15,014
20,779
Its rarely "jenas wasn't his best today, he gave the ball away to much and wasnt tracking back enough " its usually "jenas is s**t get him out the club and lets sign x"
Jenas has been 'shit' on here ever since he joined the club, so what's new?
 

felmonger

SC Supporter
Sep 10, 2004
207
33
[q Its rarely "jenas wasn't his best today, he gave the ball away to much and wasnt tracking back enough " its usually "jenas is s**t get him out the club and lets sign x"

Jenas has been 'shit' on here ever since he joined the club, so what's new?

If I remember correctly the figure of hate and ridicule before Jenas was a bloke called Carrick. I wonder what happened to him?
 

billnick

Well-Known Member
Jul 29, 2003
1,246
341
If I remember correctly the figure of hate and ridicule before Jenas was a bloke called Carrick. I wonder what happened to him?

Absolutely. I remember Huddlestone got a lot of unwarranted grief too - with some fair criticism - and we badly miss him at the moment. I would go so far as to say it's had a bigger hit on our style of play than losing Modric or VDV, despite them being more able all-round footballers.

I'd be interested to know something. Crouch has been provider for a lot of VDV goals, but I suspect it was Huddlestone who touched the ball before Crouch more often than not.
 

jolsnogross

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2005
3,727
5,430
I’m arriving late to this thread. It’s been interesting, a good example of what SC is about, and well done to Simonspur for posting it because it’s been building for a while. However, I also agree with JimmyG2 that we’re edging towards taking ourselves a bit too seriously.

This thread has arisen mainly because of a relentless effort by a few posters to turn every other thread into a Harry bashing one. There are other topics, but Harry bashing is the main one. The reason to criticize this is not because of the opinion itself, but the relentlessness of it. There simply is no need for anyone to constantly harangue almost every thread with exactly the same opinion while paying no regard to the title of the thread or the constantly changing circumstances that is a feature of football. So it’s not the content that is problematic, but the repetitive nature of it. I think some people have missed that distinction.

To those who are guilty of the repitition: consider writing an article, voice your opinion directly in the title, and have at it in the comments section of that post. If that exact same opinion is all you have to contribute to other threads, you don’t need to bore everyone with it because it is well understood.

To those, including myself, who object to the repetitive nature of certain opinions: try not to engage them directly in every thread. Silence is a powerful response too.

And to the broader argument about censorship, Britain is one place where the most enlightened debate on the subject is aired. As an example, read this fantastic and widely reported response by Phil Pullman to a question about his book “The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ”

Question/Statement: “The title of your novel seems to an ordinary Christian to be offensive since you call the son of God a scoundrel. It was a shocking thing to say.”

Response: “Yes, it was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it they don’t have to like it. And if you read it and dislike it you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it. You can write to the publisher. You can write to the papers. You can write your own book. You can do all those things. But there your rights stop. No-one has the right to stop me writing this book. Nobody has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read. And that’s all I have to say on that subject.”


There’s no reasonable way to prevent people from posting opinions without creating ‘a decider’ who will ultimately put most of us off the community. The SC moderators are good at their jobs because they have a light touch. The benevolence of the community is the ultimate answer here and as others have said, this isn’t new to SC. We’ve had similar issues previously and eventually came unstuck and moved on.
 

StuckinPoland

Active Member
Feb 8, 2005
903
39
what an interesting thread.

we all have opinions, and clearly some are closer to my own than others. and there tends to be people whose opinion i agree with 99% of the time.

my opinion tends to be in the minority on a few things; a simple example being that i would play pavlyuchenko in every game because i think he's the best striker we have. i'm not anti any player in particular but, like others, i reserve the right to state my opinion on a forum like this.

i'm thrilled that tottenham are 4th and with a decent shot of being 3rd on merit. i'm not too fussed we didn't buy a striker and i'm delighted we didn't get the OS.

but i want us to be 1st. and i will always look for ways that improve Tottenham as a team and club. i personally probably agree with Harry 20% of the time and I agree with Levy all of the time (Jol's sacking and the OS stance excepted). however, i don't doubt that they want the best for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. i just differ in how we achieve the goals we want.

i love my team. and so do most of the people on this site, which is why i come here as much as time allows. my only issue is those who resort to name calling and swearing. there's never a need for it.

spurscommunity is the best spurs forum on the net. long may it continue.
 

the shelf

Well-Known Member
Jan 8, 2009
584
512
I think people are in very real danger of taking themselves far too seriously on this site!
 
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