TiU Moderation Campaign

We the undersigned, mostly consisting of members of the ThisIsUnited Internet messageboards, wish for the owners of the TiU forums (Newsquest Ltd) to implement some form of moderation on the boards.

This could come in the form of:

- a Newsquest employee who takes control of the moderation.
- a Newsquest employee who manages the moderation process, with elected or self-chosen moderators who are already trusted and respected users of the boards.

A discussion on the forums and a gradual decrease in the overall post quality of general users of the boards has brought to attention the following annoyances and descrepancies 'proper' users face when accessing and using the forums:

- a sensible, OUFC-based topic can be turned into a school playground slanging match within seconds. The amount of 'useless' topics like these makes it hard to find a post which interests a 'proper' user and drives the real posters away.
- racist and/or abusive posts can be present on the forums with the only option being to contact the 'forum administrator'. Should this be done, a response often takes more than three or four days. Although this is obviously down to a heavy workload, it is unacceptable on the public domain.
- abusive or downright annoying large images can be used as signatures or placed in posts. Again, as above, you can contact the forum administrator, but the wait is unacceptable.

We have discussed some solutions to these problems, one of which was attempting to set up our own 'break-away' forum, but feel the small effort involved in moderating the forums would make a large impact on most of the aforementioned issues.

We are aware of the fact that the boards are offered as a free and unlimited feature by Newsquest, but feel that as our visiting is making the company money (via paid advertising) that a little effort should be made to enhance our use of the boards.