The chat wasn't great last night, was it?
My main concern with making the chat infrastructure more complicated is that it should not pollute the main chat with lobbying to have this or that poster unbanned, or bitching about this or that mod. I have seen that happen that way at other sites. People bitch about me, that's unavoidable, and I don't ban people doing that unless they're being particularly obnoxious and/or going on about it too long. I wouldn't like to see a string of chat lines about how Pros or whoever are flogs who ban too quickly, etc etc.
Last night underlined a few things for me. First, it validated my "no prisoners" approach, because if you don't ban people then that's what happens. It only takes one bad egg, and TrevorC (who was also Goodisgod btw) was that rotten egg. Second, it told me that if for whatever reason I am not in the chat, then there does need to be a mechanism for someone else to be empowered to ban. I will look into this during the week. At this stage I'd like that power to be restricted to Pros, because he's got a proven track record. I realise I may be loading too many things on him, but I intend for him only to have this power when I know I'm not going to be there, which is only a handful of times per year.
As for numberwang's point about mates at the footy talking about things other than footy, that's all very well, but you're not with mates at the footy, are you? The Internet is a broadcast medium, and you're broadcasting your private conversation to the 75,000 people who come to FF every weekend. I think I'm well within my rights to not want the FF chat to descend into a half dozen IM chats going on simultaneously about things other than footy. You're there to talk footy.
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