Big Finish Shut Down Forum

[Rob McCow]

Here are some dictionary definitions...

'Prejudice - intolerance of or discrimination against a person or group, esp. on account of race, religion or gender'
'Bigot/Bigotry - an obstinate and intolerant believer in a religion, political theory etc. Dogmatist, partisan, sectionalist, intransigent. Prejudice, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, partiality, partisanship, dogmatism, discrimination.'
'Bully - persecute or oppress by force or threats'

Those are the definitions of those words that we understand at Big Finish. Unfortunately, there have been examples of all these on our forum recently.

As we have said many times, we are a small company. We set up our forum for the purpose of fun and lively debate about our audio productions. But in recent months, there has been a significant increase in the number of postings which have fallen into the categories of those definitions listed above. Some threads containing these kinds of posts have run unchecked, simply because we don't have the manpower to monitor all of these threads. In this respect, we have failed to keep the forum as a fun and friendly place for our listeners to discuss our productions, and as a direct result of this, a number of listeners have been seriously offended.

It is becoming clear to us that, as a commercial company, the forum is becoming counter-productive. Rather than creating an enthusiastic and engaged community of people who enjoy listening to our productions, it is potentially turning into a forum for angry and polarised debate, which is already upsetting some listeners, spoiling their enjoyment of our productions and leading them to decide to part company with us.

Of course, the vast majority of posts are good-natured, and much of what most of our listeners have to say is informative, humorous and helpful. However, we feel that the minority who intentionally or otherwise offend others and display levels of unacceptable prejudice bring into question the whole existence of the forum.

We are therefore taking the step of suspending the Big Finish forum for an indefinite period while we consider this issue fully. Anyone wishing to convey comments to us at Big Finish can still do so via the enquiries@bigfinish.com and podcast@bigfinish.com email addresses. Our magazine, Vortex, will continue to answer listeners' questions, as will the regular, weekly podcasts. And, of course, our Facebook page will continue. We still very much welcome your thoughts and comments.

We are very saddened that we have had to take this decision, but hope you will understand that we find ourselves in a very difficult position.

This is tremendously sad news. From one perspective, it goes to show how difficult it is to keep things from spiralling out of control on an unmoderated forum. I suppose if there's the threat of being sued or of the company name being tarnished, then the forum has to be taken down.

I can't really comment because I have no idea what things were like on the BF forum - are there any regular users on PS?

[Si Hunt]

I don't use it regularly, but I dipped in the other week and it seemed fine.

But this is what internet forums are like. People will be ruder when sheilded by a computer screen, so you have to have the resources to moderate a forum or it will occasionally get scrappy.

As I said, I had a look at all the threads I saw were fine. So this shouldn't be taken as a sign that the forum was an unpleasant place; perhaps just that, as always, you can get an unpleasant element creep in and they don't want to have to waste their time dealing with rubbish like that.

Even the nicest forums, like Planet Skaro, have had their odd moments of unpleasantness.

Si.

[Lissa]

They're in a tough position because they're a company and if they had volunteer moderators, as happens on most forums, those moderators would be acting on behalf of the company and would make the company look bad if they did anything wrong or went loopy as often happens. On the other hand, they can't have a tie-up with somewhere like GB (as the "official Big Finish forum") because they don't want to put the company's name on a board that is likely to be critical of their products.

They still have a discussions page at their Facebook site so that should take the forum's place.

[Junkyard]

I've skimmed though it quite often over the last year and posted a few times. And I tend to agree with Si Hunt, it was no worse than most other forums I've seen. But opinions are always relative not absolute. What I find a reasonable comment someone else might not.

[Lissa]

Is this guy a cock? I think he's a cock. He's not happy about the shutting down of the BF forum.

The only reason I buy direct and not from amazon is the forum. I await a final decision before cancelling my preorders. Sorry to be that guy but the forum is part of the service I paid for.

The phrase "no it isn't" springs to mind.

[Captain Tancredi]

Rather than creating an enthusiastic and engaged community of people who enjoy listening to our productions, it is potentially turning into a forum for angry and polarised debate, which is already upsetting some listeners, spoiling their enjoyment of our productions and leading them to decide to part company with us.

That sounds pretty much like a commercial decision to me- it's not as if there aren't other places where you can discuss BF releases if you're prepared to look for them. I can only assume that they've had some comments or cancellations which have referred to the forum and they're not in a position where they can afford to lose customers just to keep the forum going. Either that or comments have been made which are potentially actionable, and they've had to act to protect their most valuable asset, namely the Who licence.

[Si Hunt]

It's up again. Anyone fancy being a moderator?

Last week we took the unprecedented step of closing the Big Finish forums, after some remarks made on certain threads moved away from discussion of Big Finish and audio drama and into realms we felt were unacceptable.

After a few days of reflection, and listening to the thoughts of our loyal customers, we have decided to reinstate the forum as of today. As many of you have said, it would be a shame for all the informative debate, close contact between Big Finish and its listeners and sheer camaraderie to be curtailed just because of the misjudged behaviour of a few.

We would like to stress that we know the vast majority of our listeners are sensible people who would never deliberately entertain indulging in prejudice, bigotry or bullying. We will not be seeking to ban anyone from the forum in this instance, in the hope that we can all make a fresh start.

However, we would like to make it clear that we are now operating a zero-tolerance policy on unpleasant, anti-social, prejudiced, bigoted and bullying behaviour. The Big Finish Forum is meant be a fun place for people to express their views on Big Finish productions. With the continuing, loyal help of our listeners, we hope it will continue to be so for a long time to come.

To help achieve this aim, we are now looking for voluntary moderators who might be willing to donate some of their time in supervising the content of the threads (in line with guidelines that we will draw up). If you are interested please send in your details to enquiries@bigfinish.com