Celtic fans deserve safe spaces for positive debate.

If you’re reading this, then I’ve decided to publish it. And if I’ve decided to publish it, it’s because I’m drunk and don’t care too much, so this is going up at 8:00 in the morning—if it goes up at all. And if anyone thinks I’m actually up at 8:00 in the morning writing and posting this, they’re mad. Sunday morning at that time, just back from Manchester after watching the Legends game? No chance.

No, this one’s being written in the boozer because I’ve got a few drinks in me, and a little time on my hands. It’s come to mind because of a conversation about social media and the comments that some of the articles here—and elsewhere—occasionally get. Someone asked me how I handle it. And I told them I don’t read most of it. You can’t read it all if you want to stay sane.

I am grateful for every single one of you who is out there, reading this stuff and commenting on it, good or bad. At the start, when I was fighting for every hit, every click, and every reader I could get, it was hugely important that people came, read the stuff, and commented, no matter what they had to say. When you’re doing this for the first time, it is all about building an audience and being relevant to that audience.

There have been so many people who have been incredibly supportive of me over the years, and I am more grateful for it than most of you will ever know. Every time I’ve tried something new, people have backed it. Every single time this blog has weathered a storm, people have stood by it. And to all those people, I owe more than I will ever be able to repay.

But there are also those who enjoy needling me, who come on just to spit bile about how much they hate my guts or the site in general. And some of those folks are Celtic fans themselves. I’m writing this piece with no expectation that it will do any good, change anyone’s mind, or alter anyone’s behaviour. I just want to state a couple of facts.

First, if you want to come on here to abuse me, leave poisonous comments, or indulge in personal attacks—whether directed at me or anyone else—please feel free to write as much as you like. Express yourself fully. Write hundreds, if not thousands, of words and post them for moderation. It will never see the light of day. So, knock yourself out.

The only person you’re talking to is you.

I’m lying when I say I don’t read most of it. Because on this site, anyway, I have to read almost all of it. There are different ways of reading. When you’ve done this long enough, you can skim a long email in two seconds because you’re only looking for certain words and phrases to know what you’re dealing with. The vicious ones never get fully read. They get skimmed and then binned.

And it’s even worse if you’re one of the several people whose emails and IPs are already on the blocked and banned list. Occasionally, I have to check the blocked and banned folders because some comments from people who aren’t blocked sometimes end up there.

But while I’m in there, I see familiar names—people who must know they will never again be published on this site, who don’t even get the consideration of moderation but go straight into the bin without me ever seeing what they’ve laboured to write. Yet they still come on here to vent and spew bitterness, knowing I’ll never read a word of it.

I genuinely marvel at that kind of behaviour.

I can’t understand what motivates someone to scream into the void like that. It’s like that old rhetorical question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Does shouting to an audience of one really fill that emptiness in your soul? Do people banned from commenting believe they’ve been martyred somehow?

O’Brien tells Winston in 1984: “We have no martyrs here.” The Party don’t allow martyrs. They won’t permit martyrdom.

If you’re one of those people whose grotesque personal behaviour has gotten you banned from this site, every comment you ever made goes with you. No one will remember you were here. It will be as if you went down the memory hole, as if you never existed. There will be no trace left for anyone to find later and wonder, “Whatever happened to that guy?”

I’ve given this a lot of thought lately, which is why I’m sitting in a pub writing about it after I’ve had a few sherbets. There are sites that used to tower above anything across the city. They were places you could go for sensible conversation with genuinely awesome people, and they were filled with those awesome people. But over time, they allowed themselves to become filled with petty, pointless, vindictiveness, people pursuing agendas and snapping at anyone who disagreed with them.

My problem for many, many years has been that when someone goes low, I’ll go lower. I learned my political trade in the Glasgow Labour Party; they practically invented the idea that “you do better with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.” Debates in that sphere often got brutally personal, and if you couldn’t go low and aim for the belly you were a sitting duck.

I’ll debate anyone on anything if it’s reasonable and rational and they are willing to discuss the merits. But the moment something degenerates to personal insults, I’m still as bad as I ever was, my first instinct is to reach for the amputation knife, and I won’t hesitate to use it.

That is why I am taking a holiday from commenting on this site or anywhere else for a while. Sometimes, you need to step back for the good of your own sanity. But more than that, because these sites are filled with genuinely good people who want to talk about their team and have a laugh with like-minded fans, it does nobody any good—and it certainly does this site no good—if I am here arguing with people who can’t keep it civil.

The toxicity that’s taken root on other sites will never take root here. That’s why comments are moderated, and I’m sorry it sometimes takes forever to get them published. Workarounds are being considered, solutions are being looked at, but none of them so far are entirely satisfactory.

For example, I don’t want to make every person who uses the comments feature register a WordPress username and profile first. That’s one of the options under active consideration, but it’s something I’ve refused to do when most people find it easier to use the current system.

But the current system has its own issues. Anyone can attempt to post here using a fake name and email address, and the only thing standing in their way is that it has to get past me first.

I don’t like to moderate comments.

I’d prefer that you could have a free-flowing exchange of ideas and opinions and debate things without my interference, and without waiting for me to press “post.”

Believe me, that situation is not ideal, but I have a long memory. I remember when every single thread on this site, before moderation, quickly degenerated into venom and bile from Ibrox fans, or a tiny fraction of “Celtic fans” flinging the same at their fellow supporters.

I don’t have to look far to see other Celtic sites, once cathedrals of positive discussion, now more resembled hate-filled swamps where a handful of people have poisoned the atmosphere to such a degree that they are virtually uninhabitable.

I’m always looking for new ideas for this site, and some will be more successful than others. I haven’t ruled out, for example, putting a forum on here where people can discuss the articles or any other damn thing they want. But if I do, it won’t turn into a quagmire.

The good people who come here every day to talk Celtic and laugh at Ibrox deserve a place where they can do so without some loudmouth shouting down their opinion, or where the pro-Ibrox mob can come to abuse people and taunt them on their favourite, sick obsession.

I will forever be looking for ways to make this site run better, and I’ll always acknowledge that this site belongs to you more than it does to me, and that it wouldn’t exist without you.

In doing that, I have to make compromises sometimes, but the search for solutions to our handful of problems goes on, and maybe something good will come out of this piece, like finding an answer that is permanent and doesn’t compromise your ability to have a proper discussion here, without me having to approve every comment.

But I’ll be blunt: it’s been a week where I’ve had some ghastly reminders as to why the site is run this way, and why comments need to be moderated. I’ve seen what’s happened elsewhere, and this place is never going to go down that road—not while I’m the guy in the editor’s chair.

Solutions are coming though, and not in that “the Ranjurs are coming” way either; actual solutions, and positive changes. On this site will go.

Not bad for an article over a beer, right?