Not a warranted reaction to that vid, Bob.
Itās not that disgusting. My only conclusion is that you āimaginedā this action, liked it much more than you should and are throwing this vomity chaff our way to get us off your scent.
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Youād probably be surprised.
I probably would be if I saw it 
Barry has just appeared on the Ugly!
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I wonder how long Nick will put up with him 
He will fit right in with some of the posters over there. Maybe he has found his spiritual home?
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I see heās playing the āI wasnāt dumped, I dumped them!ā card.
Nice work if you can get away with it 
However, it appears that the thing that really fucked him off was not being able to post on all the topics he usually infested.
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I actually feel sorry for him, bless him. Perhaps it worked as some kind of cathartic release for him? It will be interesting to see how he operates in a different environment. He will find a few more sympathetic posters over there so might have found a supportive audience for his frequent rants. Itās been a bit quiet there since the last spate of bannings so perhaps he will shake the forum up a bit, which will be right up his street.
I still donāt feel great about banning him. I think heāll actually generate less crap over there because, as you say, the place is a lot more sympathetic to some of his rants. I think he prefers being in opposition to people.
I think the problem over here is that people usually played the poster and not the post when it came to Barryās contributions. It was almost automatically āOh itās Barry, heās wrongā without actually taking in the context.
Granted, he did infest a number of threads with gibberish, but adults should be able to jsut ignore those sorts of things and heād settle down eventually. Everyone loved jumping on him though, so Iām not surprised he was a bit defensive and ranty.
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He did get jumped on for a reason though to be fair. He often had a rant at people who were agreeing with him! When you have certain posters who cause others to leave then you have a problem. Barry was warned often enough but chose not to temper his style. Itās easy to say ignore someone if you donāt like their posting style, but when you have a relatively small base it doesnāt take much for just one person to be destructively divisive. You can even see it on Fiverweb. It has a much bigger base but there are a few WUMs there who managed to infect many of the threads and you end up with pointless personal spats. Itās a shame to see anyone get banned, but if their behaviour causes concern, they are warned but donāt rein it in, what else can you do?
That was factored in long ago, before he joined, really.
What we didnāt count on was every bloody thread somehow managing to involve Russia, China, Iran or anyone else he didnāt like. When people pulled him on it, heād accuse them of working for the Kremlin or whatever.
That all said, I do take just a dim view of folks trying to drum others off the site through mod pressure and DM whispering groups, especially given the average age of the forum. Iāve been asked on more than one occasion to get rid of Barry to placate one other poster and I always told them it wasnāt happening.
What really did it for me was two weeks of silence and the return. I think we all got so used to said gibberish that we didnāt notice how bad it was getting. After two weeks of NOT seeing barely-veiled borderline racism, seeing him unload on that Begum thread, all in one day, brought it home.
Itās a shame. Still donāt feel great about it. I donāt think I ever will, but Iām really not missing the majority of his contributions.
I do think thereās validity in what you say though, so if the site doesnāt want another Barry, donāt create one.
Uhmā¦ more that he was not so subtle in his āmore shittyā agendas - Now I am all for freedoms of speech etc (although on such communities, if we let folks spout racist or other shite, it reflects on the site for allowing it, as opposed to just the posterā¦ I would not stick around on a site that let such folks spread vile etc no matter how good the counter argumentation)ā¦ but Barry seemed to have an online persona that was deliberately, infecting threads to wind up. Not just a few which is normal in these forums, but on everyone he touchedā¦ I dont think he was banned for his views, but for his behaviour which was putting posters offā¦ Other forums might not mind which is fair enough, but you have to have rules that reflect what your memberships wants or folks just leave and forum dies.
He got jumped on for āreasonsā.
Not all of them were the same.
I often like to think what this community would be like if we were in a pub instead of online, if that were the case then I think Barry would have been offered outside on more than one occasion.
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Then again there are time when it would be a full on bundleā¦
I give you the āBrexit Barā
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Discourse is supposed to be a community driven forum, where the community set the agenda, as @Donkey_Schlong said there is always the report feature that if used enough then a poster will get a sense that they are doing something wrong.
There a poster levels and you move up and down levels depending on how much you contribute to the forum, higher levels and you can do greater things.
Part of @papās steps of restricting Barry to certain topics was a good move, unfortunately he still managed to infest thoseā¦
What reflects badly on the site is:-
- Someone saying it is racist
- Someone else backing him up
- One of the leaders of the site fucking off that day, without returning
Whatās done is done, but letās not forget how it went down. I presume that the site was not as Stormfront as advertised, because one of those people that agreed with those claims is back and posting.
Or we are racist and that person doesnāt give a fuck.
Difference between a site allowing stuff and the site being active in its promotion. I dont believe the site has ever actively promoted anything unsavoury, but there have been plenty of times where posters have posted stuff that would be considered as suchā¦ how do you think all your stereotypical views of the Germans are viewed?
On the whole this is a football/fan site for folks who wanted to meet up on match days and chew the fatā¦ that naturally includes all topics and controversies, but as with any āpubā if someone at my table started spouted racist shit, I would call them up and and tell them to fuck off, even if that was heard by others on neighbouring tablesā¦ simply asking them to sit down and keep quite, reflects far worse IMHO.
Of course, some will argue a forum such as this simply reflects the diverse views of society. Thing is we cant escape our āsocietyā we have two live and work within it, hoping that with effort we can improve itā¦ but wed not have to accept all its ills on a web forum that we āchoseā to participate in or not. In a nutshell the forum owners/leaders can decide on where the bar is set, but its the posters who will determine if its high/ow enough for their needs