Yes, the rules do apply to everyone. And yes, some of the rhetoric has been over-the-top in the past couple days. I'm chalking it up to frustration on the team's play, but I don't want things to get carried away.

It didn't take a baseball IQ test to get an account here, so lets not be condescending.

No, but if you allow people to say anything they want, eventually they will. I've seen many message boards (literally) go down in flames because there was no moderating presence. You (and I don't mean you personally) don't have to post here if you don't want to; there are plenty of other places where you can vent to your heart's content.

I read today with disgust letters published by the Plain Dealer about the Indians.  The PD editors printed things they knew were not true, or were misleading, about the Indians, written by people who understand little or nothing about the situation.  (And no I will not provide a link.)  The only reason to do that is sensationalism.  It lends no understanding or enjoyment to anyone's season.  It is destructive at worst to any fan's understanding of what has happened to their team.  At best it is pointless.

There is a slippery slope here:

Expressing frustration.
Exaggerating things out of proportion.
Outright player-hating, manager-hating, GM-hating.
Taking events out of context.
Distorting the facts.
Actually getting the facts wrong.
Getting the facts wrong repeatedly even when corrected.

All of these things are antagonizing to other forum contributors (and moderators) to some extent.  At the top of the list, we all need to vent, and venting togetheer is a positive function of this forum.  The bottom half of the list is the kind of garbage printed in the PD, which can be found in any number of other web sites.

If that's what you want to read, my sincere advice to is to go find one of them.

I don't believe that anyone does want to read that stuff.  I believe that beyond a certain point, is self-indulgent on the part of the author and antagonistic of other readers.  In my view, it is really not any different from trolling (see #3 above).  More to the point, it is destructive to the goal of having a site with high quality Tribe talk.

Here at Let's Go Tribe, we have exercised very little control over the user-generated content -- which on the whole is almost shockingly good.  It is basically a Tribe discussion paradise here, unparalleled on the Internet as far as I've seen.  We censor almost nothing and have only ever banned one person -- in fact have only ever discussed banning one person.

As a result, occasionally somebody will cross the line into trolling, baiting, hating, flaming, stupidity, whatever you might want to call it.  Like the PD, we do essentially publish those remarks, however passively.  Unlike the PD, we here -- all of us -- put those comments in their proper context, by calling people out when the things they post are mistaken, or foolish, or hateful, or just plain crazy.

As your lovely co-host, arguably I should refrain from doing most of the calling out.  Clearly there are plenty of other folks here who are capable of it.  That said, the group in general looks to Ryan and me and to set the tone -- and to keep obnoxious users' excesses in line.  We field requests to ban users, limit the length of posts, ban emoticons or signatures, establish a user rating system, block users, etc.

Despite our fairly strong "open forum" stance, there are those who confuse the occasional smackdown (or ban) with suppression of their freedom of expression.  They say we don't apply the same rules to people we disagree with, etc.  But this is a cop-out.  Folks here strongly disagree here almost every hour of the day.  We also influence one another -- and we correct each other, usually gently.  Because usually a gentle correction is all that is necessary.  This flows in every direction.

I believe that any user who is making even a slight effort not to be an antagonizing jackass -- beating on the same inflammatory point over and over again, getting facts wrong repeatedly and deliberately -- is going to be treated civilly here.  Ideally, even treated with kindness and respect.

I believe if we were to act any other way, eventually we would be no better than the other forums.