Deterioration of ICF

[BlueBlood]

Hi friends, I am an avid Indian cricket fan like most of you guys and grateful that we have a discussion that fosters our knowledge and community. After a hard days work, it feels great to come and discuss about cricket for a few minutes and relax. However, over the past several weeks I am noticing increasing negativity, stupid comments and feel I'm actually losing brain cells by coming here due to some posters such as "amits" and others. I guess amits etc. (you know who you are) feels it's a joke and can say whatever crap he wants to make himself feel better, but in the process he and others like him are making me (and I'm sure many others like me) to participate less and less and visit less and less. For the betterment of this community I'd like to request to moderators around here to be a little stricter when it comes to posts which are "purposely" negative and stupid. Please don't take this in a bad way but I miss the days when people like Gambit posted some excellent analysis and statistics, and now we see people having thousands of posts in a few weeks that are pure garbage and don't even belong in the "jokes" section. If I'm out of line, I'm sorry but this is a sincere request. -BB

[the_mokc]

yea i agree with u a group of posters snub and make fun of anyone who doesnt agree with them and then the majority of rest are too brainless to have an opinion of their own.

[Zap_Brannigan]

Yeah....i asked the moderators to cut down new member registration a long time back. That way only the people who moved from the former icf would be here which would have led to 1 deep meaningful thread every week. But alas, they refused to listen me. If they had done that, not only would we have denied posters like h4te, amits and EMC , but also posts like this. So this is a paradox.

[Rajiv]

While I agree somewhat to the OP, but you simply can't have a place where there is only serious discussion and no fun. The fun has got wayward with single line smileys, nonsensical threads but we were too lenient to let it go as we felt folks were enjoying themselves We need to strike a right balance between the two and avoid "kiddy" stuff. You must realize this is indeed a board where you are entitled to your opinion and mods and admins are not getting paid to do a job, so it's not like a classroom 24/7 Also, if we simply stop registrations, how else can we get decent posters? do we have to give them a test

[Mr. Wicket]

Just a few random thoughts that I'm trying to string together into some form of coherency... - Yes, a LOT less heavy duty discussion here right now. I suspect that's largely because of the lack of serious cricket. Do note that back when India played Australia, England and NZ in some excellent series, we had a great balance of the 'banter' threads and some pretty serious discussions as well about everything ranging from strategies, batting methods, match conditions and tactics. Right now there's not much to talk about in the cricket forum, so obviously quality has gone down. Hopefully this'll change soon. - amits is not a 'new member', Zap. if you're trying to play the 'old ICFer' card, then you oughta know he was hanging around at Rivals, SportNetwork (and a bunch of other boards he got kicked off). - Deliberate trolling/etc is getting irritating. Whether it's amits' attention seeking (nothing new, he's only been doing it the last few years over the web), or other people derailing threads with ridiculously OTT comments aimed at players like Tendulkar, Dravid and Dhoni just to get responses and seek attention, it's really tiring. Can we end it? It's run its course, it's no longer interesting or entertaining and it's tiring to see the same old crap again. - One off-topic thing. Don't be dissing h4te. He's cool with the EMC. And he's more entertaining than most of this board. - The whole stopping registrations idea is ridiculous. And you can't stop the EMC registering. He's got speshul mod powars (not to be confused with either of the Powars; Ramesh and Kiran). - The stats/analysis pieces that the oldies - Dhondy, Gambit, myself and a few others used to regularly write - a lot of good there. Problem is that some of us have tired of going over the same points again, others have put a lot of time and effort into it over a few years and don't necessarily have the time now to keep writing those sorts of articles on a regular basis. If you're upset there aren't any more like them - why not take a couple of hours and write some up? - Oh, and Rajiv's post is right on the mark.

[EnterTheVoid]

You make some good points, BB I love Idli, You hate Dosai, I am leaving ICF, I want to know what you're wearing, whether you're male or female etc amongst others - seriously, WTF ? Who needs to know and who cares ? Some of the non sensical fluff threads should just be scrapped Not to mention the pages and pages of spam, ahem, cricket smiley's - check out the first half a dozen pages of the IPL match threads for an example Just to add to what I've said, you are correct in saying that "some" people feel the need to contribute less. I personally don't post as frequently as I used to. Part of the reasons are the sheer number of threads that are just aimed to "attention seeking" - as in say something that is unwarranted and OTT so you can piss people off and get as many responses as possible. The people who run this site, I assume volunteer their time, effort, money etc. They do a decent enough job

[Mr. Wicket]

You make some good points, BB I love Idli, You hate Dosai, I am leaving ICF, I want to know what you're wearing, whether you're male or female etc amongst others - seriously, WTF ? Who needs to know and who cares ? Some of the non sensical fluff threads should just be scrapped

Why? If people want to discuss such things... let them. There's a forum for those threads that keeps it separate from cricket discussions, so those threads don't get in the way of discussing the cricket. As long as it's not crude, vulgar or offensive/insulting - let it stay on the site.

[Zap_Brannigan]

I was being sarcastic. I Know Amits is an oldtimer,although he seems to never grow up. I did have the same problem a year or so ago, when we saw a massive influx of people for a particular series and there was no coherent argument on the front page. But that time has passed and the mods are doing a great job in moving joke and OT posts out of the main forums. Although, problems still persist with trolling a single player when he effs up once or in just one series, without proper justification. But the mods are just regular people, who instead of hanging out with their wifes and kids, are trying hard to maintain the biggest cricket forum on the internetzzzzz.Learn to live with stupid comments because remember that your opinion probably looks stupid to me and vice versa.

[Desi Cartman]

You make some good points, BB I love Idli, You hate Dosai, I am leaving ICF, I want to know what you're wearing, whether you're male or female etc amongst others - seriously, WTF ? Who needs to know and who cares ? Some of the non sensical fluff threads should just be scrapped Not to mention the pages and pages of spam, ahem, cricket smiley's - check out the first half a dozen pages of the IPL match threads for an example Just to add to what I've said, you are correct in saying that "some" people feel the need to contribute less. I personally don't post as frequently as I used to. Part of the reasons are the sheer number of threads that are just aimed to "attention seeking" - as in say something that is unwarranted and OTT so you can piss people off and get as many responses as possible. The people who run this site, I assume volunteer their time, effort, money etc. They do a decent enough job

sree, how does a thread about dosa in chit chat bring down quality of discussion in cricket talk

[EnterTheVoid]

Why? If people want to discuss such things... let them. There's a forum for those threads that keeps it separate from cricket discussions, so those threads don't get in the way of discussing the cricket. As long as it's not crude, vulgar or offensive/insulting - let it stay on the site.

Sure, no problems. Just seeking a balance, thats all.

[graphic23]

My contribution to what Mr. Wicket has already stressed, No one disses h4te.

[EnterTheVoid]

sree' date=' how does a thread about dosa in chit chat bring down quality of discussion in cricket talk[/quote'] I am not taking pot shots at anyone. I do post in these threads Maybe the one about the dosa doesn't really convey what I have in mind, but what I am trying to get is some of the threads, you know which ones I am referring to, which contain pages and pages of meaningless fluff should just be locked ?

[Desi Cartman]

I am not taking pot shots at anyone. I do post in these threads Maybe the one about the dosa doesn't really convey what I have in mind, but what I am trying to get is some of the threads, you know which ones I am referring to, which contain pages and pages of meaningless fluff should just be locked ?

I know u aren't taking a shot me :icflove: .. but sree the problem is that people who spend more than an hour everyday here can not just talk about cricket all the time. as long as miscellaneous stuff is chitchat and jokes , I dont think we should have a problem.

[flamy]

The Cricket Talk forum is dead right now because there is no cricket, only "circus" :cantstop: But, we have excellent discussion when there is a series on. Right now, it's all about the IPL and what can we discuss there but the cheerleaders? brb, enhancing and contributing to the advancement of ICF forums through thoughtful and meaningful posts...

[Desi Cartman]

btw a lot of these complaints come from posters who dont even post more than once a year. It'll be better if they start posting than whining else you dont have a right to complain .. no matter how much annoying or funny people believe amit's posts are but that guy thinks and spends a lot of time typing that and posting replies to his threads.

[BlueBlood]

My observations were mostly from the IPL forums. While I understand IPL induces very little "serious debate" I still find it ridiculous that the same people keep fighting over petty things such as "dhoni is selfish" and "dhoni is not selfish" etc. which is very irritating. And then there are people who fight over petty things which cloud some threads with myriad of posts that go unnoticed.

[Mr. Wicket]

Agreed, desi. ICF is a site where if you want to discuss something, all you need to do is hit new thread and start a discussion. If people want to have more discussions on serious cricket, they can do a lot by also starting them. Just opened a thread to discuss selection for tomorrow's test match at Lord's. Zap, BB, are you going to get involved and discuss anything?

[flamy]

btw a lot of these complaints come from posters who dont even post more than once a year. It'll be better if they start posting than whining else you dont have a right to complain .. no matter how much annoying or funny people believe amit's posts are but that guy thinks and spends a lot of time typing that and posting replies to his threads.

Very valid point. He is 100% genuine and backs it up with stats and keyboard aboos.

[flamy]

Agreed, desi. ICF is a site where if you want to discuss something, all you need to do is hit new thread and start a discussion. If people want to have more discussions on serious cricket, they can do a lot by also starting them. Just opened a thread to discuss selection for tomorrow's test match at Lord's. Zap, BB, are you going to get involved and discuss anything?

OK, let me go and bump an old thread that is a good off-season topic.

[Desi Cartman]

My observations were mostly from the IPL forums. While I understand IPL induces very little "serious debate" I still find it ridiculous that the same people keep fighting over petty things such as "dhoni is selfish" and "dhoni is not selfish" etc. which is very irritating. And then there are people who fight over petty things which cloud some threads with myriad of posts that go unnoticed.

the way to fix it is "report the thread" and mention please merge it with other "dhoni is selfish" threads .. Then I guess it will be easier for you to ignore 1 lousy thread .. do I make sense