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There are a ludicrous number of internet-based sports message board forums from which to choose. Some are so large the membership is treated like a herd of cattle, wearing a brand but lacking an identity. These boards generally have so many rules that members are not free to express their opinions in an unfiltered manner. If a member does choose to exercise the least bit of indiscretion he or she is publicly chastised and issued a warning or an infraction as though school is in session. These boards are so regulated they are more like a military academy than a place for the flow of ideas. People are not robots. Then there are boards with much smaller memberships, often claiming to have been founded in opposition to "big business" type boards. These begin with the best laid intentions of mice and men and often go awry. A platform of "less rules and more freedoms" is the norm. Frequently, the staff of these boards are simply those who have been around the longest or those chosen out of nepotism. Their initial enthusiasm is usually bumped by complacency and the board as a whole suffers. These boards also frequently operate on false pretenses or platitudes of some false notion of "equity" or "justice" amongst the membership. A cursory glance often shows any such claims to be false on face. Members often find their ideas censored for arbitrary reasons on each of these types of message board forums. Little or no explanation is given for the actions of staff beyond canned responses. "Baiting", "Trolling", "Flaming", "Profanity", "General Nuisance", "Personal Attack", etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

At the opposite end of these forums are the forums that allow anything. These forums seem to follow a policy of "it's only illegal if we get caught." They tend to run far from organization and make it seem as though it is the interest of the membership. What these forums never say is that the Communications Decency Act Of 1993 places the vast majority of potential legal liability on the individual member, and not on the forum owner, administrator or staff, so long as a "reasonable good-faith effort" is made by a forum to adhere to the law. So, if a forum has a TOS that says "You agree not to violate any laws, statutes or ordinances" they are for all intents and purposes indemnified and held harmless from the actions of their membership. Everything from plagiarism to copyright infringement to software piracy to child pornography is a possibility on these forums. And there you were thinking it was just a sports forum that was really cool for allowing you to do whatever you want. What do you care? It's their board. Yes, but it's your potential liability.

There are also forums that get caught up in form over function. These will have state of the art forum graphics and immaculate arcades and game sections and perhaps even a comprehensive music and video section but lack any substantive sports content. If Madden is your thing, these boards are where it's at. If real NFL team sports are your interest, it won't be found on this type of forum. The "Madden Experts" on these boards often believe that everything in the video game world translates to reality in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, PGA, ATP, et.al.

For every different member taste, there is a forum to suit that member. PSF is looking to take the best features of every type of board and combine them into what we hope will be to the liking of most of the people most of the time. We like to keep it simple here inasmuch as is possible. We are a sports forum. Who we are and what we are is in our site name. We focus on professional sports. We do have forums for other sports and we are not opposed to making forums for other interests if there is enough member interest to support an additional forum. We are not disk space or bandwidth limited. We follow the law. We do not do gray areas here. We have automated RSS feeds that provide every news story for every sport and every team we cover every four hours off-season and every hour in-season. We have a chat box to keep the off-topic B.S. out of the forums. We have news, rumors, and discussion for every team. We do not censor free ideas unless those ideas infringe upon law or the rights of others to express themselves. We are always looking for ways to improve and we actually want our members to make suggestions. That doesn't mean we can implement all of them but if something makes more sense that the status quo we are open to improvement. Message board forums that ignore their membership are not destined for success. Large or small, we make progress every day. We are not driven by the almighty dollar but by a dedication to being something better than what we left behind.

If you are tired or bored with sports forum message boards as usual, give PSF a look, or perhaps another look.