Hi everyone,
It is a very sad and rare occurrence that I have to make these posts, however information has come to light that I feel I need to make public in order to obtain a bit of closure and repair some damage the user has done.
Over the past few months we have been dealing with a user who took up more moderation time than any other user ever has in 10 years, that user constantly found cause for complaint and set about systematically trying to undermine everyone and everything on the website, continuously causing problems and causing arguments. These were done both in public, private forums and private messages. Whilst as moderators this happens from time to time it eventually got to the point where we could no longer excuse the behavior and in all honesty we should have cut that person off a lot earlier, however for various reasons we gave them more leeway than usual.
This user was banned last night, and will no longer be permitted to take part in the website, I won't share the private events that lead to this but needless to say there were threats, abuse and harassment involved and eventually I took the decision to ban them permanently despite them being a premium member.
Since the banning it has come to light that this person had also been sending abusive private messages to various users on the site, not just moderators but other general users too, threatening violence and harassing them many times simply because at some point the other person had posted a contrary view to the now banned member or had simply liked another persons post. On top of this that user was also sending multiple private messages enticing people to leave silvertails this had been going on for several days/weeks. We suspected this had been happening and the person had been harassing people to the point they either agreed or stayed away for fear of running into this user.
Harassing users particularly in Pm as well as enticing others away from the site are clear breaches of the rules and should be reported immediately.
Most of this persons victims have reported this information to us but I fear there are probably more that either haven't come forward or have not yet seen the full and true danger of this individual.
I ask that if someone is sending you threatening private messages on this site with tone that clearly shows harassment and abuse please report them, no one should have to put up with that kind of behavior especially not for simply expressing an opinion on the forums, this site is built around the principle that you can freely express an opinion on football without any fear of being abused or victimized we encourage free thought and disagree that there needs to be a party line that needs to be followed and that everyone has to be blindly positive or loyal. We don't subscribe to the "true supporter" idea and believe wholly that everyone's opinion is valid and being a fan of a team does not mean you have to agree with everything that goes on with that team and staff, in other words you are free to share your thoughts without fear of retribution!
That was shattered by this individual who harassed and attacked in private and tried to justify it by trying to be a martyr and lie and malign in public.
So going forward please report such activity we want you all to enjoy the experience here. I know that I have learned more about footy by discussing the actual game and plays through the years and my knowledge has expanded massively by being part of the robust and amazing discussions we have, I want to encourage that because when you understand the game you really do learn to love it more and appreciate great plays no matter who is behind them.
So in summing up I wanted to apologise to those that suffered the harassing pm's and posts by this user and hope it has not deterred you from using the site further, I also wanted to apologise for not taking action sooner.
Hopefully we can move forward from this incident and not have to deal with further incidence such as this.
Let's look forward to next year!
Dan
It is a very sad and rare occurrence that I have to make these posts, however information has come to light that I feel I need to make public in order to obtain a bit of closure and repair some damage the user has done.
Over the past few months we have been dealing with a user who took up more moderation time than any other user ever has in 10 years, that user constantly found cause for complaint and set about systematically trying to undermine everyone and everything on the website, continuously causing problems and causing arguments. These were done both in public, private forums and private messages. Whilst as moderators this happens from time to time it eventually got to the point where we could no longer excuse the behavior and in all honesty we should have cut that person off a lot earlier, however for various reasons we gave them more leeway than usual.
This user was banned last night, and will no longer be permitted to take part in the website, I won't share the private events that lead to this but needless to say there were threats, abuse and harassment involved and eventually I took the decision to ban them permanently despite them being a premium member.
Since the banning it has come to light that this person had also been sending abusive private messages to various users on the site, not just moderators but other general users too, threatening violence and harassing them many times simply because at some point the other person had posted a contrary view to the now banned member or had simply liked another persons post. On top of this that user was also sending multiple private messages enticing people to leave silvertails this had been going on for several days/weeks. We suspected this had been happening and the person had been harassing people to the point they either agreed or stayed away for fear of running into this user.
Harassing users particularly in Pm as well as enticing others away from the site are clear breaches of the rules and should be reported immediately.
Most of this persons victims have reported this information to us but I fear there are probably more that either haven't come forward or have not yet seen the full and true danger of this individual.
I ask that if someone is sending you threatening private messages on this site with tone that clearly shows harassment and abuse please report them, no one should have to put up with that kind of behavior especially not for simply expressing an opinion on the forums, this site is built around the principle that you can freely express an opinion on football without any fear of being abused or victimized we encourage free thought and disagree that there needs to be a party line that needs to be followed and that everyone has to be blindly positive or loyal. We don't subscribe to the "true supporter" idea and believe wholly that everyone's opinion is valid and being a fan of a team does not mean you have to agree with everything that goes on with that team and staff, in other words you are free to share your thoughts without fear of retribution!
That was shattered by this individual who harassed and attacked in private and tried to justify it by trying to be a martyr and lie and malign in public.
So going forward please report such activity we want you all to enjoy the experience here. I know that I have learned more about footy by discussing the actual game and plays through the years and my knowledge has expanded massively by being part of the robust and amazing discussions we have, I want to encourage that because when you understand the game you really do learn to love it more and appreciate great plays no matter who is behind them.
So in summing up I wanted to apologise to those that suffered the harassing pm's and posts by this user and hope it has not deterred you from using the site further, I also wanted to apologise for not taking action sooner.
Hopefully we can move forward from this incident and not have to deal with further incidence such as this.
Let's look forward to next year!
Dan
