• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

Recent content by Francois the Postman

  1. Francois the Postman

    Since there is no explanation

    Oh ffs, please tell me that you are above stumping on mods who put in a hell of a lot of time, just like you, if not more, and who are no longer posting here, so they can't put your snide remark into context. I just emailed Barrus that I was going to keep stumm, but if you are going to drag...
  2. Francois the Postman

    The end is near

    Martin, you are without doubt the only reason why I happily break any vows I made to myself, and post here one more time. Reading that you have called it a day... I can't let that slip by without publicly saluting you for the "job" done, here, on the site that had become part of you, I guess...
  3. Francois the Postman

    Time to hang my bike on the willow....

    Thanks for the kind words people, appreciated. [And thanks to those who can drink my blood, for staying out of this one :)] I guess that I will have to disappoint those that are hoping to see me return as a normal poster here. I haven't left the community, but I suspect I will have left...
  4. Francois the Postman

    Time to hang my bike on the willow....

    ... and step down as an admin. For a long time I felt that this place was the perfect place for a cycling community to hang out and meet. I have stopped feeling that way. That change has nothing to do with the mods or forum users, but is purely down to the way CN and FP "value us", and the...
  5. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    Thankfully, vast areas of the forum still require next to no moderation. The Clinic was erected to keep the other areas more "like these good ole days", and that certainly has worked reasonably well. It is easy to spot problems and conflicting mod-wishes in the forum, and within the Clinic, and...
  6. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    You are dealing with volunteers who are already handling far more posts than they are able to read, and forced (in a volunteered kinda way) to read many posts and threads purely on a "is this a valid post" level. What you suggest would add even more work to our pile, when the vast majority of...
  7. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    We have that system here too, although you guys can't see those. It has its good points and its bad points, and we only recently started to use it (combined with the 3-strike system it made more sense). Far from ideal though, and certainly not as good as better alternatives out there. Initially...
  8. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    It is obvious we cater for a wide audience, all with their own interests. And all probably utterly bemused by what interest others. So if we can all leave people the room to have their fun here, undisturbed, that would be sweet. Commenting on how little value those threads have, or how boring...
  9. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    Can you give me a link so I can have look? Without knowing the forum you refer to, it is hard to judge how comparable they are, in what context they operate and how they are set up. What works for A doesn't mean it works for B. Keen to have a look though, I am not hostile to any of those...
  10. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    So don't get inflamed. Put them in a spot where the only way to get their desired effect is by turning up the derailing volume. Then it becomes MUCH easier to spot if someone is genuine or not, and will be dealt with much swufter. PLUS we don't need to spend hours in here talking about free...
  11. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    It is something I have proposed to the same people who are complaining here, on more than one occasion, but it was never taken up. Yet it is the very thing that keeps being requested, of that thread in particular, HEAVY moderation, even by those who advocate that the ideal mod is the one who...
  12. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    One side-observation, I recently took 600+ posts in that thread, and weeded out a lot of stuff that added NIL to the discussion. It took me 8 hours. Not the time that any mod can give day in day out. A sizeable percentage was meaningless or breaking house rules. I don't want to go back and...
  13. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    The moment people are willing to pay for 24/7 moderation, and each and every post is screened before "public release", that's the moment when a post has been approved, or allowed to remain. The few mods here are not always online, and hardly able to read each and ever post. Some posts are...
  14. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    I have long been an advocate of restricting new users to x-posts per day until y posts are reached, but the forum ain't set up that way, and it looks like we have to look for alternatives house, even less-ideal. Several suggestions have been offered to work around that, to make threads very...
  15. Francois the Postman

    Moderators

    In the trolling context: Posters (old and new), who are posting to get a rise out of people (trolling) will be dealt with as such. Folk, in that case, are not posting an "opinion" but a "disruption". Especially with new posters, if it is the former or the latter is hard to judge. Some think...