How moderation works

We run this place with a light touch. Most of what happens on The Concourse needs no moderation at all — it’s just fans talking. We’re not here to police opinions, tone, or whether you’re being fair to your own manager. We step in for a short, clear list of things, and the rest of the time we stay out of your way.

This page explains exactly what we’ll act on, what happens when someone crosses the line, and how to challenge us if you think we’ve got it wrong. No mystery, no hidden rules.

What we act on

The full spirit of it is on our concourse-honest rules page, but the short version: we moderate behaviour, not opinions.

Slagging off a performance, a decision, a signing, an owner, a pundit — even harshly — isn’t something we touch. Disagreeing with the room isn’t either. What we do act on is the stuff that stops this being a place people want to be:

• Racism, homophobia, transphobia, religious hatred — slurs of any kind
• Threats of violence
• Targeted harassment — pile-ons, or going after one person again and again
• Doxxing — posting someone’s address, workplace, or private details
• Pretending to be someone you’re not
• Spam
• Deliberately spreading things you know to be false
• Anything involving the safety of a child

Keep it about the football. The Concourse is a football forum, not a soapbox. Talk about the game — the matches, the players, the managers, how a club’s run, the lot. What we’re not is the place for general politics or the arguments you can have anywhere else online. We’re not going to card you for it, but threads that drift off football and into the wider political punch-up will get steered back, and posts that are just there to start that fight may be tidied away as off-topic. There’s a whole internet for that. This bit’s for the football.

Child safety is in a category of its own. Anything that looks like child sexual abuse material or the exploitation of a minor is removed immediately and reported to the proper authorities. There’s no appeal, no second chance, and no debate about it. More on that on our child safety page.

How to report something

Every post and every thread has a report button. Tap it, pick the reason that fits best, and it lands with our moderators. You can add a note if there’s context we’d miss.

The reasons you can pick from are: hate speech, threats of violence, harassment, doxxing, spam, impersonation, off-topic, misinformation, child safety, and a catch-all “something else” if none of those quite fit.

A couple of things the report button is not for, just so you’re not waiting on a reply that isn’t coming:

• “I disagree with this.” That’s what the downvote’s for. Being wrong isn’t against the rules.
• “This is rude.” Rude-but-legal is the whole point of the place. Strong language about a bad performance isn’t something we’ll act on.
• “I don’t like this person.” Not something we can act on.

We don’t action reports just because something got reported a lot. A hundred people reporting an unpopular opinion doesn’t make it a breach. One person reporting a genuine threat does.

What happens when someone crosses the line

We don’t go from nought to banned. For most things it’s a ladder, and where you land on it depends on what you did and whether you’ve done it before:

• A word in your ear — a quiet heads-up that something wasn’t on. Usually that’s the end of it.
• A yellow card — a formal warning that goes on your record. Get enough and they add up.
• A red card — for something serious, or for collecting yellows. A real mark against your account.
• Taking the post down — sometimes the content goes and that’s the only action needed.
• A temporary suspension or restrictions — a cooling-off period, or limits on what you can do for a while.
• A permanent ban — the end of the road, for the worst behaviour or for people who clearly won’t stop.

The serious stuff — threats, hate, anything involving a child’s safety — jumps the queue and gets dealt with fastest. The low-level stuff like spam and off-topic posts gets to when it gets to.

We tell you. We don’t do it behind your back.

This is the bit we care about most, so we’ll say it plainly.

We don’t shadowban. Some platforms quietly hide your posts so nobody sees them while you carry on shouting into the void, none the wiser. We think that’s cowardly. If we take action against something of yours, we tell you — what we did, and why, in plain English. You’ll never be left wondering whether you’ve been silenced.

When we explain ourselves we’ll be straight with you: clear about what rule was broken and what happens next. We won’t sneer at you, and we won’t apologise for keeping this place clean. Both of those would be a dodge. We’ll just tell you the truth and move on.

If you think we’ve got it wrong

We’re two blokes and a small team of moderators. We’ll make mistakes. So you can appeal almost anything we do.

When you appeal, tell us which of these it is — it helps us look at the right thing:

• You got the facts wrong — that’s not what happened.
• You’re missing the context — there’s something here you didn’t see.
• The punishment doesn’t fit — fair cop, but this is heavy-handed.
• You’ve read the rule wrong — this isn’t actually against the rules.

Your appeal goes to a different moderator than the one who made the original call — never the same person marking their own homework. If you’re still not happy, it can go up to a senior moderator, and then to an admin. We aim to deal with the serious cases first and fastest.

A few things can’t be appealed, for obvious reasons: anything involving child safety, anything we’ve been ordered to remove by a court, very old decisions, and ones you’ve already taken all the way up the ladder.

That’s the deal

Talk football, however passionately you like. Don’t be poison. If you cross the line we’ll tell you, straight and fair. If we get it wrong, tell us back. That’s moderation on The Concourse — no shadows, no stitch-ups, no surprises.

— Ashley & George