Some BIG Changes Around Here

Hurricanes Football
1

This isn’t HUGE but it is IMPORTANT.

Most of us come from a long-running Miami Hurricanes community over 20 years in the making. Dallas created this site 4 years ago because m-h.com was overrun with trolls, ignored, and on its last legs.

TheMiamiHurricanes.com has served up good discussion over the years. Dallas took the time and expense to set up great forum software and preserve the community. But the site has its own problems.

Dallas knows this, but he has a lot going on. Real life is taking over any time he once had to contribute to this place. He’s getting lots of messages, lots of requests, lots of complaints, and he has no time to deal with it.

The Solution

Effective immediately, Dallas has passed ownership and admin of the site to me. He’ll still be around to talk football, but from now on he’ll have absolutely nothing to do with running the site.

From now on, if anyone has any questions, concerns, or issues with the forum, talk to me.

How This Affects You

Mostly, it doesn’t. I’m not planning sweeping changes to the forum software, or moderation, or anything like that. The main idea is to keep what works.

That means the main portion of the forum will be reserved for Miami Hurricanes football. The Storm Shelter will continue to exist, and members of all political stripes are welcome to rant.

The Elephant in the Room

It’s clear to everyone except himself that Stormfront has been the majority source of commotion in the forum. He’s had years to improve and change his behavior but has only gotten worse. Lately even his staunchist supporters have encouraged him to chill out. Stormfront has flatly refused.

Essentially, this single poster has been a problem for a long time, he has been given a lot of chances, and he has ignored them all. He refuses to be a part of this community. As a contributor to this forum, he is irredeemable. His presence stifles discussion and harms the reputation of TheMiamiHurricanes.com.

His list of infractions are as follows:

1) Doxing Forum Members
Though many of us know who Fish is, Storm crossed the line by posting personal emails and legal filings.

2) Bringing Politics into the Football Forum
This is such a simple request, and so fundamental to this site. We’re here to talk football and don’t want conspiracy drivel on the main board. Multiple political posts, conspiracy posts, berating posters for objecting to such content, and even a refusal to remove “Obama Treason Trial” references from his signature all break this basic rule.

3) Complaints of Harassment
Stormfront has racked up written complaints of harassment from multiple forum members.

4) Low-Quality Poster
Repetitive image posting (Michelle Obama crotch shots), regular lies (Pope arrest, Trump is president), constant challenging other forum members (stugotz, he is right and everybody else is wrong), inability to type without all caps (TICKEY TOCKEY), duplicate threads about the same thing (5 Epstein posts in the same afternoon), mass mentions (6 people per post, 50+ times per month), etc., all contribute to a low-quality forum environment.

5) Troll
Low quality is one thing, but Storm’s refusal to compromise, abrasive and challenging behavior, and constant name-calling and memes signify a greater intent to troll. This has been made explicitly clear with his declaration of intent to “ruin” the football board.

6) Threats
Stormfront has made indications and threats, implicit and explicit, of looking for forum members in real life. He often threatens legal action stemming from gross misunderstanding of the law.

7) Popular Vote
I am sure many forum members can come up with other ban-worthy infractions, which is exactly the point at hand. Several threads have more or less called for a popular vote to ban Stormfront, and the community has spoken.

Everyone has been asking for a change to be made and that change is here. Effective immediately, Stormfront is permanently and irrevocably banned from TheMiamiHurricanes.com.

Back To Business

Aside from that, I expect it will be business as usual around here. We’ll be very slow in the offseason, and my hope is that we can grow some members and have good discussions as we get into fall. It will be a pleasure to continue the good work that Dallas and Shadow have started.

If anybody is in touch with previous forum members who have left the board (or who haven’t joined us yet), please check in with them, let them know the site is more hospitable, and that future improvements are possible. If anybody has other friends who like to talk football, invite them over.

And finally, if anyone has any thoughts or questions or concerns about any of the above, feel free to reply and make your opinion known. Thanks.

6 Likes
7

All I can see is “ignored content.”

Not sure why. I must have a setting set incorrectly?

8

My content is ignored? Are you ignoring me?

9

Guess not because I can see this post. But, the opening post just says ignored content.

I don’t think anyone can ignore you because you are a leader, mod etc? Not sure.

10

That’s extremely strange if you can’t read it. Is it blocked for anyone else?

You could try logging out and reading it like that maybe? It’s a long post.

11

Yeah, it’s just the first post in this thread. I can see the others. Weird.

12

And here is the first post.

1 Like
13

Well, after figuring out how to log out and logging back in, I can see the post finally. Thanks.

14

Ok good. Then you can ignore my redundant re-posts.

15

It’s a shame it came to that, but geez, did he deserve it.

Addition by subtraction to infinity.

Moderating the rest of us knuckleheads should be easy duty. We don’t act up that much.

16

Thanks anyway.

17

I was a member of the “old” board (I can’t remember when I actually joined) and then it migrated to this one. Shadow was king enough to let me in here and I appreciate it. Aside from the Locked on Canes Podcast and because I’m all the way up here in Virginia this board has been my go to for 'Canes news.

First, thank you for coming in and cleaning house. It was long overdo and I don’t mean that as a slight to the mods but it just reached a fever pitch recently and enough was enough. So, again, thank you!

Second, I am all for keeping all football news under one category but I defer to Skeeter on this one.

Third, I was really ready to be done with the board (for only THE one reason) but I’m really happy to see it cleaned up and with a clearer direction moving forward.

305, Thank you! Dallas, Thank you!, Shadow, Thank you! Skeeter, Thank you for all of your work on the recruiting part of this board.

Here’s to 2024!!

1 Like
18

Happy to help.

10 years ago there was some quality high-level Canes discussion on Sean and Shadow’s board. I really want to get back there again.

Here’s to hoping.

1 Like
19

Shadow is long gone. This was never his board, this was Dallas’ board. He started it because the old board (still up by the way) had been abandoned.

Shadow banned me from the old board for two weeks for posting that Al Golden should be fired. I thought that was pretty f’ed up especially since Golden was fired a few months later.

305 seems like he will be able to moderate impartially which is not easy for most people to do. Moderators need to be even handed.

20

TBH , I ignored most the threads he (Storm) started as they were both tedious and ultimately drifted toward the irrational. I was unaware of the “doxxing” ,threats and harassment (again …I tended to gradually exit a thread once he entered).

I appreciated that he informed of the stunning unfortunate news of CaneBill’s passing and the links for further info but the constant bickering, childish name-calling and creation of crazy topics was too much.

3 Likes
21

My feelings about Stormfront are similar to those of Xereus. I would not however have banished him in perpetuity, but this site is a private entity, and as such, its governance is in the hands of its new owner 305 who did not arrive at his decision capriciously but explained cogently why he took such action. While I disagree with 305’s decision, I am probably on the minority side of this issue, but having owned numerous businesses over the years, I am a firm believer in the rights of ownership.

22

Thanks, bikki.

You’re right that it’s not something I did lightly.

To put it in context, everyone here just went through a full year of zero moderation. Nothing at all was done. Besides the one facet I just addressed, everything else went surprisingly well.

My opinion is that this community doesn’t need any mods at this point. If we triple in size things might change, but for now we can govern ourselves.

2 Likes
23

Most of the posters here have enough sense not to drag politics or nutty conspiracy theories into the football board. If you want to get political or go way off topic,there is a whole forum devoted to that nonsense plus Twitter and a million other sites that trade in politics.

There are cases where politics and football collide but, I would hope that people post that stuff in the Shelter where it belongs.

Banning Storm was the absolutely the right thing to do. Most all of the regular posters wanted him gone because he acted like a total dick on this board and pretty much ruined it. I’ll take Bikki’s word for it that Storm is an okay guy in real life but he certainly didn’t demonstrate that here.

We shouldn’t need much moderation here at all. If someone goes wild, flag the post and 305 will handle the matter appropriately.

24

I am never in favor of banning anyone. A poster can have a bad day, come on this site and just vent. Storm destroyed the site. There was not a single topic that he had where it did not involve some bs. It got old and I think most agree was hurting the site. Most people you meet from these sites are usually good to be around.

25

I don’t even think a lot of flagging is necessary. If every once in a while a thread veers off-topic, there’s no need to clamp down. If a poster has different beliefs than another (or even offensive ones), usually redirecting the conversation, ignoring the comment, or even posting your disagreement are all better options than flagging them.

Even the NFL-is-rigged garbage wouldn’t have gotten so many complaints if it was a single thread that went sideways. It was the repeated willful intent to troll that pissed everybody off. That’s what moderation is for.

A damn shame too. I could name 5 regular posters who quit coming here because of Storm. I could probably find 5-10 more if I scrolled through the user list.

Even worse, how many potential NEW posters did we lose to all the drivel? Who sees a conspiracy-ridden site full of angry arguments and wants to join? (Besides Warden :wink: of course).

A lot of damage was done.

You know what? That’s a nice thought and I think I’ll take his word for it too.

1 Like