What's a forum without people posting, some friendly banter and opposing views. By MAMs decision to remove the above posters we now have less views and these forums have lost their humour and rich content. I say bring back GF and DB immediately.

Please post your support if you agree?

Office party.

Hasn't happened yet, just practising! :oD

Seriously though, whatever is happening behind the scenes, I hope it is resolved quickly with no hard feelings and a return to normality (whatever that is!).

"when is enough, enough?"

Well Skinny, It would be up to the discretion of Ian and Mike I.E. a warning first and then a month in the slammer as outlined above.

3 months community service!

Yeah, they must come and do my gardening for starters... we live on a 1 in 2 site -):

I think we should all follow TANKERS example , who states his point of view in a calm and polite way and doesn't offend anyone.

Isn't this all out of our hands? Gf said that his legal representatives were dealing with it. MAM then effectively said all is now 'Sub judice'. I can't see it matters what we think until that is resolved.
Not sure about db4. Presumably wrong place, wrong time?

George - an excellent and sensible post (36)

As you know we are very patient and very very tolerant with posters. In the 12 years we have been going, I can count on one hand those we have banned. We have a team of moderators who kindly keep an eye on the boards, so sometimes you will miss some of the more choice crap that’s posted as we remove it before most of you wake up!

We like free speech but when the enjoyment of others is impaired by individuals and they go beyond what is reasonable, we take action, as we have done in this case.

We did have a yellow card and a red card system in place but to be honest we never needed to use it because the posters themselves normally see off the rebels. In a sense the board self moderates, we occasionally intervene with warnings both public to them on the BB’s and in private by email.

We have a good squelch button which does work but it only works when you squelch someone and don’t turn them back on again 5 minutes later. Some say they squelch a user and then instantly comment on the squelched users post, very odd!

One of the users we banned this week decided to completely trash our BB’s over a weekend which meant our Moderators and myself spent a good part of the weekend watching their antics. Goes with the job I suppose.

Sometimes individual egos get bigger than our boards, so it’s time for them to go and never return.

B .... i would fully concur that the pair of them became totally ridiculous and tiresome in their antics ..... however, one of the perpetrators - oh GF for goodness sake! - was actually a very long term, useful and interesting contributor except when in one of his sillier moods

that said, there have been far worse serial offenders from the point of view of racism and the like, and assuredly it is not unknown for them to be re-admitted to the fold (more than once!)

though no name should be considered bigger than the game (the board), i think that this place will be very much the poorer without GF's presence

i am fully aware that a number of people would not agree with me, but i very much hope that you will reconsider and, perhaps with a further cooling off period, allow them back (it would be unreasonable to allow one without the other) albeit under strict licence .....

as you said, the members are usually most effective policemen

..... but not in this case???????????

55011 - no, but that is something of a red herring insofar as members cannot (surprise surprise) delete another's post

Be that as it may.

I say, let Mr Boydells' ruling stand.

I agree, not exactly a rush to get GF reinstated was there. Democracy rules :0)

Well since his ban i have had a couple of emails back and forth with Goldfinger .

I always got on well with him and when i first arrived here more than 10 years ago he was always helpful where i was concerned .

Trashing threads is wrong without doubt and it seemed out of character for him to do that .

For me he was always one of the better posters ,there are some supposedly hot shots on here who wouldn't give you the time of day .
As for arguing on the internet i can't see the point , you can never get to punch the person annoying you so why bother .

chris - how valuable to the site do you feel DB was? .... you don't really need to answer!
:-)

55011 - is this an alter ego for a member whom we might all know?

55,

Have spilt your old ale again?

arguably only fred is older than me on this site, but i would be more than happy to act as Father of the House and try to keep a lid on GF's excesses .... there's a small chance GF will listen to me (DB assuredly will not)