> Independent until limited by discretion is limited,
It has always been discretion ultimately. We have tended to take a "anti interventionist" approach in general.. and I have no desire to change that.. but at some point if one approach doesn't work.. something else needs to be tried.

> irrespective how one words it. I see no reason why anyone should be banned from the forum for airing an opinion and not even to 'give breathing room'.

If we ban someone for a few days.. it won't achieve anything other than exclude them from a few threads.. I'm hoping there will be users who start taking a more active role (there seem to be enough who have told us why they don't post..).. That takes time..

This said, I think we need to get tougher in the mean time on a lot of other comments on the forums.

In reply to:

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With a sad heart I will also refrain from posting here as much (albeit I have been doing so in any case and voluntarily so over the last week). Not just out of principle but because I make statements that although are researched and backed up go against what you seem to want from this forum.

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That is of course up to you. We're not trying to remove criticism of PN.. But from what I've seen of your posts (and I can't confess to reading all of them by any means) your approach is less inviting of conflict.

seb

I don't for one minute think that the decisions made were done in response to pressure from PN. I know from my discussions here of the amount of problem emails and PMs you used to get not only from them but from posters on both sides too. No, that can't be the reason or cause.

I do, however, feel that this has come about to sanitise the forum and to send out a message to anyone else not listening. It was to bring in a cease fire (so to speak) but very poorly thought through IMO. A moderator's task is not made easy on this forum and no doubt has a fine tight rope that they need to walk but what TBB is trying to do is doomed to fail. Either you will have an artificially calm forum or no credibility for being independent.

I strongly feel that Simon is being made a scapegoat. I am sure he doesn't really care (he faced similar behaviour from PN in their own forum) but for me this is about the independence of thought and debate that should follow. If one is expected to limit their views and opinions (on topic and important subjects instead of personal attacks) you will have stifled discussion.

> There are people with big chips on both sides

Exactly... Often each side thinks it's just the other.

seb

>I've notice that problems posted here are sometimes answered with 'you should move isp' rather than help a poster get to the bottom of the problem


That happens in other forums, AOL is one.

But if you look at post of late, please point out where it has been said without cause.(As I might of missed it).

By doing this though Seb you have just thrown half a bag of chips away.

Maybe deleting the snide posts as a zero tolerance approach may teach those with snipes to stop making them, treat those as a spam post.

You will never have 100% harmonisation, in fact, now there can only be 50%. No one knows where or what the line is that has been drawn.

"I don't mind you sharing your opinion on our forum but the first part of that comment (which I presume is targetted at PN)"

WRONG presumptions by mods is one of the serious problems in these forums. Read that post again, tell me what did you read into the car part of it. I illustrated a couple of items which are the sort of thing that Watchdog deal with, did you see it tonight?

So what am I from your post do I need to justyfy? What was the point of your post except to try and twist what i had said. Looks to me that you might be going out of your way to look for those other bans. Tell us know who is in your sights, save us the trouble of trying to walk on those eggshells.

Yes you have changed the atmosphere in here, not only does it pong it is quite acrimonious now. Any sense of calm that had descended over the last few weeks you have shot out of the window. Still will be quiet when you have banned a couple dozen more..

>No one knows where or what the line is that has been drawn.

But we know what "side" the line has been drawn on!
It remains to see how one sided it stays

In reply to:

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He was usually well informed, and had reasonable points to make. Some other people just bicker on here for the hell of it. If anyone should be banned, it's them.

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It really is a shame, banning any poster should not be necessary IMO.

But I know exactly what you mean.

I don't have any IDEA of what you've done to defend him. How am I supposed to know that if it's not public domain!?!

This is exactly the sort of aggressive post which pr100 used to suffer.

I am simply stating what I saw from the mods on this forum towards pr100.

I feel a good post from paul2002:

In reply to:

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I'm a plusnet customer but not a fanboy. I liked most of PR100's post until a few weeks ago, certainly agreed with some of it, but recently I personally thought he had lost the plot. The forum that had gone quiet in recent weeks, he appeared to be more frustrated because of that. I'm not up on the history of PR100 and Plusnet, but if I read his post for the first time in the last few weeks I would had thought he held a grunge rather than wanted plusnet to be better which I believe is close to the truth.

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PR100's posts used to be good, but the recent ones seemed, perhaps, argumentative for the sake of it. A ticking off was probably coming but I think 3 months is probably a little harsh though!

I also feel rsharma's point is quite valid:

In reply to:

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If moderation and peace is such a priority then surely the sniping, insults and personal pursuit of other posters should have been high on the list. And yet, despite bringing this to the attention of those responsible, the very same people are here on a regular basis, without any input to the discussion, posting freely attacking posters not the subject or opinion.

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Both rsharma and (until recently) pr100's posts are usually on-topic, well reasoned, researched, and most importantly, regarding the issues of Plusnet. What their posts rarely are, are personal attacks or insults. I lost count of the number of threads that rsharma started that were well constructed to be replied to with little more than abuse or one-liners attacking him rather than trying to counter the argument he was making. This then resulted in some counter attacks and the thread was lost. Yes, people should have moderated themselves, but that clearly wasn't happening.

I think that if these attacks and non-constructive posts were stamped on earlier or harder the battle ground that this forum became could have been avoided and the topics could have been discussed rather than the posters.

Overall though I think the staff/mods of TBB do a good (but thankless!) job and it's still a great site. Keep up the good work - and good luck with this issue

As for the TBB/PN conspiracies, don't forget your tin-foil hats people! (can you tell I've been reading FC recently? )

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-07 23:23:57)