Goodbye

[Eagle]

Had enough of ignorant extremists for the time being at least.

Quite frankly Dumbo and his co conspirator Half Baked are beyond the pale and when you have an admin who seems to think abuse is quite acceptable there is no point in carrying on.

I will join many including Mary and Annie who quite simply have had enough.

My best wishes to the few remaining moderates on this Forum .

A great shame when a once interesting and enlightened Forum gets taken over by terrible extremists.

I shall not be looking at the Forum anymore.

[somerandombloke]

Dumbo and his co conspirator Half Baked are beyond the pale and when you have an admin who seems to think abuse is quite acceptable there is no point in carrying on

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/diction ... tish/irony

Dont let the door hit your ass on the way out.

[_HB]

Who's this Eagle character and why should we care?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Flounce

[chrisj1948]

April Fool?

Regards
Chris

[missT]

Dumbo and his co conspirator Half Baked are beyond the pale and when you have an admin who seems to think abuse is quite acceptable there is no point in carrying on

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/diction ... tish/irony

Dont let the door hit your ass on the way out.

[SquashedCommuter]

Hi Eagle,

Sorry to hear you are leaving. You were one of the few rational voices to be heard on this forum.

It is very sad to see this forum being overrun with certain left-wingers with nothing better to do with their time than interrupt intelligent debates with silly comments and cause interesting discussions to be shut down.

Wishing you the best and it was good to read some of your debate-stimulating posts.

Thank you.

[wrightie]

On that news I'll once again become an active contributor.

[somerandombloke]

Two people told me last night theyd be unlurking now Eagles retired.One had been called an ignoaramus by Eagle when she said how much she admired Gordon Brown. Not "I think your wrong and heres a reasoned argument as to why I think that" but "Your an ignoramus". I honestly dont think the guy had any idea how much he abused and offended people who he disagreed with. And he certainly couldnt take it.

[admin]

I did temporarily close this thread as Eagle would not be responding. But then I thought better of it. Eagle was our most prolific and one of our longest serving posters. I can say for every post he made it would generate many more in outrageous response - so for a forum admin he was really good for traffic. The forum died a bit when he was hospitalised.

He also represented a view that is mostly not popular here yet it is representative of a section of our community. It has a right to be heard, a right to be argued and one no one should ignore no matter how much one disagrees. I am sad he has gone even if it will lighten my mailbag.

Admin

[somerandombloke]

The thing isthat prolific and abusive posters need to be called on what they say.

1 - A science and technology (mostly!) forum I belonged to a couple of years ago had a nasty old git on it called Davo who was a hard lefty computer uni lecturer who offended the shit out of everyone with almost every post he made. Then a Young Conservative aeronaurics guy came on and started calling him on his posts demanding he didnt jus say 'Your wrong you fool' every time until it became obvious taht Davo was actually not very bright and couldnt carry an argument. He flounced and traffic picked up hugely on the site (I knew one of teh admins socailly)

2 - The old Crystal Palace Life forum I used to lurk on had an energetic stupid right wing prat called Dazza who just loved to offende everyone using tired old clicheys over and over and over until basically just about everyone left. I just had a look at it and it had two posts yesterday and none in the previous 4 days

[admin]

The more posters we have, the less chance any one of them can dominate discussion and drive people away. Our regular base is better than many forums but still quite thin. So if you want to help find a friend, or if you are a lurker come tell us why ... and not posting because of another poster just lets them get away with it.

An opportunity for a shrinking violet to bloom as a hardy annual?

Admin

[Robin Orton]

I have mixed feeling about Eagle's departure.

In terms of offensiveness and dishing out personal abuse, I think he was usually quite restrained compared with some. What drove me up the wall (until I took up mindfulness and rhythmic breathing in response) was his style of argument - or, rather, unsubstantiated (usually) assertion. If you advanced a counter-argument, he might occasionally admit you had a point, but he would then come up with exactly the same assertion a week or two later, without having modified it in any way in the light of the counter-argument.

'Blinkered and 'prejudiced' were words that in consequence tended to come to mind. But I expect they're words which could be applied, at any rate to some extent, to most of us.

[wrightie]

My reasons for lurking are.... On several occasions, useful and serious threads were quickly derailed. Others were littered with inappropriate and unsympathetic responses (the cat mauling springs to mind). Prejudice was often pushed as fact, facts and evidence ignored. I don’t recall Eagle ever backing his arguments with anything but opinion. Recent debates on immigration have had a tone bordering on racist, often crossing that line IMO. We’re all entitled to have opinions, and I believe when posting that should stated. That aside, it often feels less like a forum and more like private chat room between a few very vocal individuals. With the retirement of the most inflammatory poster, here’s hoping others will feel brave enough to post, until he returns that is!

[somerandombloke]

His flounse also means that people now get the chance to say what there problems with his posts were without him coming back with childish abuse and right wing opinion disguised as fact. I know hes logged out but assuming hes readin this while hes havin his huff it might mean that if and wehn he comes bak hell be a little bit more open to proper raesonable debate rather than just tell someone there DUM...

[Rachael]

Here's the thing, for me (others may, and certainly will, disagree):

Eagle has been around on this forum forever. However, threads involving Eagle have only really become problematic in the last year or so, because of the way some posters have taken him to task.

In the past, one of two things would happen:
1. Eagle would start a thread with one of his usual statements along the lines of: Surely X must be true because I say it is, am bemused anyone thinks otherwise. The response was usually a heavy sigh and some gentle attempts at rational debate which petered out when it became clear that, as I often say, arguing with Eagle is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. When he said something truly unforgivable (his attitude to the investigations into Jimmy Savile stand out in this regard), many forum posters would strongly voice their objections then withdraw from the relevant thread.

2. Eagle would interject something infuriatingly random, unsubstantiated or entirely thread-derailing into another thread. This would usually be ignored, and we'd all carry on as normal.

However, in more recent times, the reaction to Eagle from some posters has been to attack him personally. This rarely happened in the past. His ideas were attacked, but generally no one called him (or anyone else) names. He actually has a case for feeling personally attacked, and I suspect (although I could be wrong) that his personal attacks have only really taken off since the tone of response to him because both personal and aggressive.

In summary, while I disagree with 99% of what Eagle says, I have also found the baiting and sniping at him in the last year or so equally objectionable and bordering on trolling, even though I agree with the substance of the argument being made against Eagle's posts. It is that tone rather than Eagle's presence that has made me personally shy away at times from this forum (although a glance at my posting stats might suggest otherwise).

[somerandombloke]

While Eagle was let get away with being one of the Fathers of the House (and Im thinking more Heath than Skinner!!!!) he felt like he was untouchable and godlike and always always right and how dare anyone call him wrong. Then people like HB and me andone or two others came along and woulnt let him get away with his withering replies to people what disagreed with him. We came up with reasonable debate as to his take on the subject and because hed often not done any research on the subject and didn’t nessaserily know what he was talking about he would reply with personal abuse to which the answer was often more abuse. He lashed out and we lashed back. Bare in mind that teh first time he ever addressed me on this board he called me a disgrace cos he thought I was one of his benefit scroungers and when I perfecrtly reasonably called him for making racist remarks he called me Dum Bloke (I’ve been called dumb all my life because I have certain mental problems so you can imagine how impressed I was with that!!!!). And quite quickly he came to displike those he saw as challenging a postion of authority he previously hadnt had challenged. This happens on forums all the time see my example about Davo above. An the more it happens the better it make room for proper debate and not ad hominem abus.

Thats all im going to say on the subject of Eagle. Im glad hes gone an I hope he only come back with a bit more of a enlightened atitude

[Rachael]

Let's be very clear: Eagle was NEVER handled with kid gloves as the Father of the House. Never.

Of course you must defend yourself when attacked. But some people are attacking first, going straight to personal vitriol (not necessarily you, somerandombloke).

No approach - ignoring, attacking, reasoning - has made any difference to the sort of thing Eagle posts or how he does (or doesn't) defend his position. The dilemma is we can't be seen to do nothing, yet doing nothing (or at least the minimum) is often the best choice for the forum overall.

I don't agree that a more robust approach will clear the way for a 'better' forum because there is a danger you'll raze the forum to the ground along the way.

[Smiffy]

Flouncing when you freely dish it out but can't take it is an absolute disgrace. Maybe Admin could place an ad in newsagents' windows for a replacement... hopefully someone outside of the 95% foreign applicants would be up to the task.

[Robin Orton]

I know hes logged out but assuming hes readin this while hes havin his huff it might mean that if and wehn he comes bak hell be a little bit more open to proper raesonable debate rather than just tell someone there DUM...

I think the Bloke's assumption is right. I note that, despite his expressed resolution not to, Eagle logged into the forum at 2.25 pm today!

[_HB]

I think the Bloke's assumption is right. I note that, despite his expressed resolution not to, Eagle logged into the forum at 2.25 pm today!

An absolute textbook flounce so far then. He'll be back. I give it a week.

As one of the 'culprits' here I should say I occasionally regret ending up diverting threads in exasperation with the TAFKAE (The Artist Formerly Known As Eagle). I'll find it far easier to stay on the straight and narrow now he has gone.

A very good evening.
Your pal, Half Baked.