Come on Nick....take control of your site.

[Neil Appleby]

Memo Mike and Nick: The time has come to raise the bar again.
This board is slipping fast into a bog of foul language and High School standard slanging.
It isn't amusing and it's certainly not entertaining. Let's restore this place back to relevance....PLEASE!

[Mike]

Neil

The VPT is doing what it was always intended to do, allow an unmoderated forum for those wanting one and to keep those topics away from the moderated forums.

Posts from that forum should never have been included in the email sent to subscribers, that was an oversight for which I apologise. It has now been corrected.

Bulletin Board users who wish to use the VPT can still do so, but those not wanting to are no longer subjected to the posts.

[Pugsville]

It's the free speech thing. Once you start the censorship thing where will it end? Generally it's better to put up with the short term annoyance. Censorship is a long term and subtle thing, you don't know what your missing. It's also a hard line to draw, you can't legislate taste.

Nick and Mike have a comprise with the VPT providing a outlet, with a warning on door. YEs it should never have been posted out, but hindsight is so %100 accurate.

The only thing that dissappionts me is - Someone came in with some low grade, flamebait and we have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. Mainly as even this short pre season is dragging for us pie fans eagerly seeking some sort of on field redress for this wooden season.

As someone once said (sort of) - "Never agrue with fools as it's hard for the observer to tell the difference"

pugsville.

[GeorgeQ]

Or "Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"

Dilbert.

[paul]

Good philosophy George, although I got sucked in to the discussion.

Mike & Nick have done the right thing again.

I stopped reading the thred a few days ago. I must admit seeing the invader going from confident and cocky to repetitive and confused was entertaining for a while.

[Mike]

Don't feel bad about getting sucked in by Larry Paul. He provided something that this bb badly needs sometimes, a bit of light relief. We had our very own slapstick fallguy and he kept popping up to be smacked again and again. Coming as he did at the normal end of season lull in the board the temptation was obviously irresistable and that thread broke all speed and volume records.

I made the mistake of not watching the thread closely enough and the snowballing traffic caught me unawares. That thread highlighted a shortcoming in the operation of the bulletin board and consequently the VPT has been removed from the nightly emails and can now perform its function without intruding into the other forums.

[peps_12]

Any chance of those who want the VPT entries included in the nightly post-out getting a separate email just for that forum?? Those who are offended by the way letters are arranged can choose not to be included.

Leaves a gap in the reading material without it.

[Mike]

Yep ...we can do that peps, with one small change. Rather than have those who do not want the mail from the VPT ask to be excluded, we will leave the exclusion as standard and ask those who would like mail from the VPT to be included, to request it.

Those of you who would like postings from the VPT included in your email please let Nick know. nick@magpies.org.au

[paul]

Congratulations on moderating the content on the VPT.

While I am oppossed to censorship as a means of imposing one persons standards on others etc. the two Roo contributors were basically abusive gate-crashers who were only trying to incite hatred and return abuse.

At no stage did they present any opinions for which they were willing to enter into logical debate.

It seems Larry got the message that he was wasting more than just his time. Roo boy obviously did not have the same incite.

I think all we regulars would agree that moderating such postings is not rampant censorship - merely showing consideration for the majority of other users.

[Mike]

Thanks Paul, it's nice to have the vote of confidence.

Nick decided it was all too hard and handed the whole thing over to me and I have a big problem with exercising power in situations like this. The bb is much bigger than Nick and me; we provide the facility and carry the responsibility of controlling it, but the bb is actually a collective of everyone who uses it, including Larry and Rooboy.

Whatever we did or didn't do was going to meet with mixed reactions - Mick summed it up well in an email: "damned if you do, damned if you don't". In the end I just got sick of them. Even an endangered species can push you to your limit.

[Pete the Pieman]

Well done Mike (and Nick).

There is a limit and I believe you imposed it in a timely fashion.

Must say tho - the traffic through VPT certainly explode, didn't it?

You are probably aware that Larry's RooBoys site is basically closed for business. Nobody posted there apart from Larry and I and the board had been wiped clean as of my last visit. So much for the Kangas supporters on that site!