I think Ohio Fan is being straightforward when he says he locks some threads because posters get into heated and continued arguments that can potentially start flame wars. Many of us, even if unintended, have gotten sucked into a flame war.
There are always going to be factions on sports forums. In our redmen.com world those factions have usually been coach - centered. There were those who loved Mike Jarvis and those who didn't. Same went for Steve Lavin.
Those differences have been magnified on redmen.com because of the hiring of Chris Mullin. For some it will be very difficult to criticize our greatest player. That is why coaching criticism of outsiders was more tolerated here, whether mods admit it or not. I, and a few others, saw Mullin's hire as a no-win situation for Mully. He would have to exceed his predecessor in many areas from wins to recruiting. To date he has struggled to meet those goals.
Those who are honest and objective will admit that no outsider would have been given the leeway that Mully has been given after three mediocre seasons. Obviously it was going to be a long learning curve but sports success is not based on grading by curves but stark statistics. Defenders of the staff will go out of their way to chastise critics of those stats by accusing fellow fans of disliking coach Mullin as the reason for their criticism. How can any St. John's fan hate our greatest player?? The reason some didn't want Mullin as coach was because of what is going on in this forum. Much of the guilt free objectivity had to be tempered. Thus criticism of Mullin sometimes leads to flame wars between factions.
That leads me to Mike's topic. While I and a few others try being sarcastic with our opinions some take that sarcasm and choose to go into personal attack mode. If certain poster is disliked by a faction then we see ad hominem attacks on the source poster because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument. You will see by the "likes" in those threads who the factions are.
People who have never met will accuse the other of being vile, dishonest, disloyal, clowns, and any other derogatory name to diminish the poster. Needless to say, this makes the mods job very difficult. They too may fall into a faction because, rules or no rules, they have strong feelings for the program. Accordingly, even they do not all get along.
Which leads me to Paul Massell who has had to suffer our battles yet has managed to keep it all together for us crazy fans.
As someone who has gotten many a warning and demoted to the Rookie Forum, please let us not attack each other because of differences of opinions. I think those who were not fans of the program have already been dealt with. Those who have remained over the bad times should be more tolerant of others whether pro or against anything said. When we get a warning from Rich or North it's usually for a good reason and that reason is usually because things have gotten too personal.
