Not every forum needs to be busy to have a specific purpose, as all of those do. But there are a number of others that could go, and there have been discussions of that in the mod forum.

No, he doesn't.

CreamOfTheCrop
banned

So Cream of the Crap and James "whatever his name was" are both banned. So lets fire the thread back up. They were the two bad apples. The rest of us never stalked the Trooper.

Open the thread

Please don't discuss vlogs in this thread or your post will be deleted.

After some time to see what happens, it is clear that this solution is maybe the worst ever.

Instead of gobbo just banning a couple doofs from the thread every now and then, you close a wildly popular thread and start a new one to talk about the same exact ****, save for one guy: Trooper? And then end up modding like 5x as much in the new thread because god forbid someone mentions trooper?

Alrightythen...

+1 It really makes no sense.

Thank you and well said. It's beyond ridiculous.

I have been a mod of NVG for a few years now and I have recently become a mod of LVL and think the mods in LVL have been doing a terrific job. That said, here are my thoughts on the Trooper thread.

I too have been thinking about the Trooper97 thread over the past week and originally agreed that it needed closed. Also, even though I, unfortunately, am the main culprit in deleting Trooper-related posts in the new vlog thread I have to agree with 27offsuit's post.

This "Trooper" thread and Trooper's situation has now swung from a fairly recent arrangement to have it unchained (per the former ATF thread regarding Trooper) to the current situation of all Trooper references being verboten. Quite an extreme swing. I think there is room for middle ground that could allow us to keep the Trooper thread open.

I have been active in LVL for many years and followed the Trooper thread since its inception. I think Gobbo outlined one clear problem with the Trooper thread in this thread when he stated "people only want the thread open because it was "schadenfreude incarnate". There, were obviously other problems with outright idiotic posts, gimmick after gimmick accounts, the posting of personal information, physical threats, and outright over the top nastiness and cruelty uncalled for in LVL.

With all the said I think thread is an important part of LVL and I personally would like to see it continue. I have really enjoyed the Trooper thread and a at one time referred to it as epic. The number of views and posts is truly amazing. Excluding some of the bad posting that goes on as mentioned in the previous paragraph there has also been plenty of fun and interesting posting too.

If the thread were to be reopened I would be willing to mod the thread very actively. I would let it run far from unchained but at the same time I would work hard to ensure it doesn't become stifled and lose its character. In other words, I would certainly encourage all the reasonable criticisms similar to many of the posts currently found in the thread and the interaction that has occurred throughout the thread but I would also remove posting that is inappropriate, ridiculous and overly mean or nasty. Maybe we could even get the Tooper97 interacting with everyone again.

I say we give it one more try with a middle ground approach and see how it goes.

I am sure R*R would do a fine job on a re-opened Trooper thread, but I say wait a bit. It is too much fun watching the miscreants getting banned one by one as they go through their trooper-hate withdrawal. The new vlog thread sucks, but their angst is almost palpable when all they can post is something like "nice vlog Andrew".

One last request if Trooper thread is re-opened, can Trooper gimmicks (if any) be identified? Might be fun to go back and read some parts with that info or to see how wrong most of the accusations were.

I think if moderated properly, he'd come back.

I doubt Trooper97 would come back. Even if he did he'd probably leave the first time a "hater" criticized him for as an example limp calling A7off from EP and calling down 3 streets after he flops top pair.

Yeah you may be right. He does have very thin skin, especially for someone who chose to put themselves in the public eye.

Giving it further thought and notwithstanding what I posted above, I think the old thread was bad enough that it should stay closed. However the Trooper vlogs and discussion should be able to continue in the new thread where it will be actively moderated. Basically a fresh start.

Is this an official endorsement?

Can we open that thread up to Trooper97 discussion?

I realize the old thread was a dumpster fire but censorship should not be the solution in this case in regards to a fresh/new thread identifying all the LV vloggers.

I have discussed this with Gobbo. We both agree to give the "Trooper" posting another chance.

I think Gobbo made the right decision to close the original thread. It was getting terrible. The closing has also resulted in some good discussion in this thread. I think we can handle Trooper stuff in the new thread but the old thread is going to stay closed.

So here is what is going to happen.

Trooper97 vlogs, discussions etc. will be allowed to continue in the new thread. That thread will not be unchained and I will work with the other LVL mods to keep it civil.

I personally am not going to allow a lot of the horrible posting that went on in the original thread to take place and I will be very generous with post deletions and bans if needed.

I am going to undelete all the Trooper related posts that I have deleted to date in the new vlog thread and remove any infractions issued that resulted from those posts.

Thanks for all the input everyone.

Have fun!

Now that Troop is back in the equation, I've been dying to talk about that cleavage shot Troop got of that one girl at the Restaurant while in Aruba. I mean, he couldn't have more blatantly pointed that camera down in there.

Just out of curiosity, what do you consider the 'horrible posting'? Are we talking about just the losers threatening him/ posting his hotel room numbers or whatever? Or is this going to turn into a "safe space" where nothing critical is going to be allowed? I think the main reason why the last thread was so popular is that the Trooper is a victim of his own narcissism. And every critique posted here was met with a 3 minute diatribe the next day on his video saying everyone on 2+2 doesn't know anything.

I'm just hoping that people will be able to post funny comments when he's wearing his "I work harder than you hate" shirt, talking about waking up at 6pm and heading to the strip to grind out a 2 hour sesh.

There is a thread for that comment but it's not this one. (:

I am not going to define horrible posting but there was al lot if it so I am sure you can figure it out. Common decency and sense will play a factor but it does not need to be a safe space full of rainbows and butterflies.

Also, I love funny comments.

oops, sorry. Thought I was in the other thread.

Okay, mods, I'm going to give you a perfect example of how the same people who created the havoc in the original Trooper thread have now conned you into reopening discussion about Trooper in the new thread.

Quoted above are two requests from a poster in this thread imploring you to allow Trooper's vlogs to be posted and to allow discussion of his vlogs. But once the decision was made that such discussion could take place and one of Trooper's vlogs was posted in that thread, here was his very first comment:

So there you have it. They lobby you to allow discussion and then go there for no other purpose than to insult him and foment dissent. They're not looking to discuss Trooper at all; they merely want to be able to troll the thread. I guarantee that in no time at all, the positive comments and interaction with Andrew, Tappanzee, and other vloggers will be overwhelmed by all of the troll comments about Trooper.

I'm not going to deny that there are trolls and perhaps mitsi is one of them but your accusations in this instance are completely false and baseless.

Mitsi made that comment before he made the 2 comments in this thread. In fact, he made it a few days before Trooper discussion was allowed in the new thread. When you realize that context, then his comment actually makes sense. He was replying to timfbmx posting a Trooper video. At the time posting anything about Trooper was against the rules of the thread. Thus when mitsi said "get this **** outta here" he was 100% correct. That video should not have been posted.

For the record, that mitsi post in LVL has now been deleted as, among other things, it is no longer relevant.