You should look at yourselves from my POV

I'm afraid I have little time for the arguments (sorry, points of view) that say this is free speech, its the real world, etc etc, as if that somehow legitimised abuse and denigration. Yes of course you get that in the real worl, but it isn't THE real world, it's a part of it, a tiny tiny part. You also get kindness, tolerance, measured discussion. Yes you get that here too, but there is way too much abuse. Way too much. This site does not reflect the real world, it is lopsided, weighted down with the negative aspects which many people find objectionable and would like to see less of. And it's not a question of 'can't take it', it's a question of 'don't see why the hell we should'. How dare anyone perpetrate abuse, then throw it in the court of the villified and say 'you deal with it, I'll say what I like and you just deal with it.' How about you just don't do it in the first place? Have some manners, some respect for others? And the response of management, to say, oh dear, and leave it at that. If you tolerate abuse, you foster it, it's as simple as that. God, even chat rooms have regulation and rules. And true to form, when anyone objects, out come the same ridicules, the same insults, since that is the only response some people seem now to have. They ought to try evolving into higher life forms, and the management should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

(Well i dont know if you class me as management or not, though I do piles of admin and work for Tony and Mark..) but I certainly dont feel in the slightest bit ashamed of myself, I feel proud and happy at this community, made up of wonderfully bizarre, kind, capable, intelligent eloquent, amusing and fabulous people. There are problems of course, but they are miniscule when you hold them next to the support that has been offered, the friendships that have been formed and the great guffaws that we get here. If petty t.wats who wish to post barrages of abuse get their kicks that way, feel sorry for them, dont encourage it.. and stop posting anonymously. Your opinions hold no validity because of it IMO. optimism not pessimism.

Oh, and you get out what you put in. Just my opinion of course. (Please dont say this IS neil the auditor?... I will be disappointed if it is so)

grrr three points in a row but im off out in a mo, and i forgot to say this - the *only* people who are abused, are the ones that offer abuse themselves. So as well as getting out what you put in, you could say that you also get what you deserve. Right... im definitely gone now. enjoy your day all, peace... xxx

Well said, Liana! I agree that there is too much abuse - but, Home Truths, apart from having a full time moderator I can see no way of banning it without killing off the spontaneity and joy of these forums. If you know of one then please let me know!

hometruths, go and have a look at some other forums and then come to a conclusion. and come out from behind the mask too, as liana says, if you're not prepared to identify yourself, it tends to invalidate your criticisms.. check out the international thread at guardiantalk, a much bigger forum and totally insane, full of people who make the main protagonists here, look like their part of a moving love story *has vision of ralph, missi,karl,stewie,greco all coming together in a slow motion big hug* BIG LOVE

But the replies to you haven't attempted to legitamise 'abuse and denigration'. There are 26 replies to your original post before your second post. Go back up and read them all again. They contain a variety of views and are almost entirely friendly toward you. Certainly none are hostile. The only effect this has had is for you to spurn the friendship and to tell others to try and evolve into higher life forms. Before you bang on about others evolving maybe you should consider why, instead of reading the replies and then responding to what is actually said, you prefer to fictionalise and generalise. You bang on about respect but you're the one who finds it easier to address people as caricatures instead of individuals. Let's try and be fair about this. Imagine a distinguished panel were to examine in detail the above thread. A medical doctor, a lawyer, a philosopher, with help from Noam Chomsky, Donald Rumsfeld and the Dalai Lama. What conclusion would they come to about you upon which they could all agree. There is no doubt in my mind that their unanimous and shared conclusion would be that you are a big girls blouse.

Don't care about the number of dull/repetitive threads - the beauty of a forum like this is that you can easily sift through such things. What knackers me out is when an interesting thread is hijacked by people having a one-to-one personal discussion - usually with underlying sexual or aggressive tones - and you end up scrolling down for however many posts with no ideas as to the meaning behind the quips.

well, if only the management would take note, but alas, I don't think so. Before long the site will contain only 6 members, all slagging each other off for eternity.........

Oh dear! The problem with an open forum like this one is that it is open! A tautology you may say but nevertheless true. These forums inevitably go through good times and bad times - sometimes at the same time! The key is to avoid the silly posts and go into the threads that interest you. If you hang around you will find that the vast majority of people on here are open, welcoming and funny. We love to discuss all manner of topics and there are times when I roar with laughter, discover some serious stuff or get involved in an interesting and informative debate. I just miss out the rubbish - that way it tends to shrivel on its own lack of food.

I am fairly new here but IMO, which I am sure you could care less about, but are going to get anyway, is that you must enjoy it or you would not have stayed to discuss it at all. I come here everyday just to read this particular forum because these are real people with real opinions and actually are quite interesting in their supposed dislike of each other but seem to seek each other out daily for the so-called abuse. I find it amusing as I came from a site where everyone was so politically correct all the time that I wondered if it was just fabricated. I was also referred to this site and have thanked the person that recommended it to me over and over because it provides daily enjoyment and the company of real people who are willing to accept a stranger, even a foreigner who doesn't understand half of what they are talking about, and take the time to go out of their way to see you fit in and help in any way possible. I love this site and I think you owe everyone on this particular forum an apology and then find one that suits your taste better and leave these nice people to their enjoyable abuse of each other. You didn't accomplish a thing here but make yourself look like the type of person you are trying to portray them as. You need to realize your truths do not apply to everyone. Thank you for your time.

I just looked at this forum for the first time today - What a bunch of dark and dismal characters you all are! Where is the positive messages? Where are the kind words? If any of you bring this sort of approach to your writing, only depressives would want to read it!! Come on fellow writers. This is supposed to be a "community Forum", in other words we are not 'in competition' with each other here, (or shouldn't be!) Let's stop the bad-mouthing and try to resurrect the spirit of encouragement and hope. The former stifles and kills creativity, the latter may just help to provide the spark which leads to your work being published!!

Well said, Jim! Take a look at the 'Writing from ABCtales' forum where you will find far more of what you seek!

I'm not sure what this forum is or isn't 'supposed' to be other than forum for people who use this site. ABCtales is an online community. An online community, much like an offline community is bound to have it's good and bad points. I respect the fact that some people want forums where everyone is nice to each other and most people agree most of the time. I'm sure those forums exist elsewhere on the net, I suppose they would be the online equivalent of a gated community. These forums, like the more interesting offline communities, display humanity in all it's goodness, badness and ugliness. I'm happy with that.

me too.

**** off stormy :-) *did is just say that out loud?*

bugger, even when i try to be nasty, i **** up... happy xmas stormy that's better

Damn. Got 'its' wrong again.

on a serious note there are some interesting debates to be had, look just a few days ago to the one on student fees... i think forums do take on a life of their own, no one sets the style or the content, on other forums i post on, it gets really nasty, this is light comedy in comparison...

or, in your case marty, heavy comedy.

Seems to me a lot of the abuse is like professional wrestling, i.e. more showmanship than reality. I mean take our two most famous antagonists. They have been verbally nuking each other for months and months. I maintain no one can genuinely keep up that level of hatred for so long. If they can, they must be mentally ill, and I should know about these things. So it has to be mostly just a bit of theatre. Fact is it simply isn't normal or healthy to hate someone over an extended period like that. I could understand it if we were talking about war criminals or child murderers, but the main offence seems to be a piece of malicious trolling followed by over-zealous name-dropping. Not nice I grant you, in fact the first bit is very unpleasant, and deserving of strong condemnation, but surely after a year, there comes a moment when you need to shut the book and move on to loftier things. Because they haven't done that I have formed the view that the feud is now 98% playing to the gallery and 2% residual anger.

it's a shame you feel like that home truths but i am afraid to say i can see why ... and i am also feeling a bit uncomfortable about how much i must be one of those blah blah opinionated etc. ... never mind ... i am bored STIFF with the repetitive missi ralph karl arguments ... i like the witty silly threads as i am shallow ... and i admit i DID like the idea of Lizzie washing her smalls in public but that means admitting to being interested a bit in that car crash type of way ... it IS a community with all that entails ... there are people here that enjoy winding others up ... there are people that everyone seems to like ... and people that nobody seems to like ... it is no different from any office or playground or group of any kind i guess ... i am guilty of nostalgia for The Old Days and am probably misguided but i think the threads were more often like you describe then ... not sure what my point is ... but i know i wouldn't want a saccharine environment ... not that that is necessarily the opposite of what's here ... i know one thing ... i am glad i am not responsible for it all ... but i also know there are people on here who make me laugh on a daily basis ... hox, freda, liana, stormy, and they are the ones who keep me interested really ... here ends the wittering scrambled nonsense ...

Partly true but I don't know about it not being normal. How many people never speak to each other again, including family, after some incident which to everyone else is a storm in a teacup.

i've read some of the archived threads and my quick impression as that it was frequently more hostile in days past.

interesting flash ... i don't feel like it was ...but am quite happy to be wrong as usual ... i expect i have a rose tinted rear view mirror ...

I think it depends how far back you look flash. certainly in the first months I don't recall any hostility apart from the famous aj/liana row and missi going off in a huff. the main hostility and nastiness came about after every had an ip of whoc and some real evil shite was spilled then. After that its probably been much the same, ebbing and flowing as TC says. and as for the gang in the playground thing that remark is usually made by those who, shall we say, are a bit different. normal people like deswetherwick, gummerson, goat, shacks, to name just a few people that are recently new (to me anyway) get on perfectly well with everyone.

Yes you and fishy were there and i wasn't, so i bow to your experience, but there are some real gems hidden away in the archive library. Not just vitriol but some hilarious threads well worth visting or re-visiting.

Not being funny stormy, but what is an ip of whoc?

long story but for some reason the site went through a server of a diff host company or something (called whoc.theplanet) and all IP addys showed as whoc. hilarious for a while as most people thought hackers were at work.

Hack the planet...

If I ever get to write the history of ABC it will be a very funny book - but the thread that's made me laugh more than any for a while was the Deserving Expecting one that's still there - even if I was the butt of the jokes. It was crazy in its own ridiculous ABC way and I know for sure that there will be many, many more of these along the way. Bless you all however crazy/drunken/drugged/deranged you may be - at least, in some tiny way, you are all human.

But more importantly, everyone could post anonymously and we had no idea who was saying what. There were some genuinely evil posts at that time, including threats of physical violence. Some of the stuff around the Torturing Tanya debate (not all from one side of the debate either) was quite nasty. The ability to post anonymously still seems to me to be responsible for a lot of ills. How many tedious posts have we seen with someone accusing Karl, Stormy, Ralph, Stuart or Missi of being responsible for an anonymous post and more often than not, they are wrong? And not only wrong, but dull. However, the easy solution is to post on the other forums on the site, which genuinely are about writing and constructive feedback. I know I fended off a lot of the whinges about the forum when I was staff by saying that I loved it warts and all in preference to a moderated forum where you have to wait twenty minutes for a post to be vetted and approved. I love it sometimes in the evenings when you can get a ten-way conversation going. And of course, Hometruths, one way of having an interesting conversation is to start one / participate in one. You seem smart enough to do so. Don't know what the solution is to tedious personal squabbles and trollers, but I suspect it is to just let them get on with it and don't get too worked up. But to those involved, we all pretty much know by now who doesn't like who and we can take that as a given without being reminded quite so frequently.

you see Home Truths, you are using the wrong vehicle in town. try climbing on the bus. *doubts anyone will have noticed thread title change if it weren't for this aside*

Here, here, andrew!

pesonally, I find this place to be totally addictive....couldn't leave if I wanted to... There's a lot to be said for being able to talk about any little thing that crops up in our wierd and wonderful minds.... god knows I've started a few strange (and yes dull) threads 'cause I just felt like it. freedom of speech at it's best generally allows for freedom of speech at it's worst...in fact the only censoring we really get is the poobum filter and even that's been used as an exercise in hilarity from time to time Mmmmm yeah. I'm pretty happy with the way things are thanx. Now if only Elf can sort out the instant genius button when we post our work which makes each and every piece an award winning number I'll be exstatic....

Exactly. And anyway home truths. If someone from the ABC forum had lured you into their SUV then severed your willy and flambeed it and eaten it with you, then you'd be in a right pickle. Or, is it the case that you really are the German cannibal and that is why you refuse to reveal your true identity. You condemn people on this forum in order to feel better about your own foul gastronomic practices. If that is true then shame on you Herr home truths. You should face up to your own flesh eating shortcomings before you come on here condemning literary vegetarians. The fact that you've carefully edited your posts to hide the tell tale Germanic split infinitives is fooling no one you sausage savager.

Interesting that you should assume I am male, Kevin....... Am v proud that I have managed to provoke the sort of discussion that I wanted to see when I first started browsing this forum.

I find it amusing that those that slag the forums most are either trolls or those that never started a decent thread themselves. I don't give a s.hit whether anyone is bored with me as it happens. I've often posted comments in haste and lived to cringe. So what! There's not a single regular poster here that hasn't been boring at one time or another, but those that start threads on a regular basis are the people that have held this forum together over two and a half years. And I include ALL the regulars in that. The casual 'starter' obviously also makes an important contribution and I often smile when a new 'face' appears that is witty or clever. Those that want sterile forums should go to a sterile forum, those that can handle 'reality' will find at least some here. The 'missi, ralph, karl, greco' wars are a part of what real life is about, nobody is universally liked or otherwise, there are four other forums here that are relatively trouble free but THIS is the one EVERYBODY comes to now and again. I wonder why? (No Stormy, I didn't 'go off in a huff', though it may have appeared so. I left for a while after some ****** who had my home address threatened to come to my house and rape my wife and murder my kids.)

I find contributions like that from home truths to be shallow and lazy. This is a public forum, true. It's quite easy to think of it as a virtual pub where it's possible to come talk and moan and laugh about whatever takes your fancy. The advantage of it being a virtual pub is that it's possible to make as much space as your creativity and energy makes possible. So home truths could add his own virtual lounge to the abc arms. If his efforts attract a group of like minded folk then they can talk about what they like till the cows come home. They might say 'we'd love to do this but the oiks from the bar keep shouting comments through and spoiling things' Yeah well, those in the bar who just want to smoke their roll ups and take the p.iss have to put up with knobbers telling them they are every kind of t.wat and bully and should be stop their wicked naughtiness and make up new words instead (sure to attract a big audience?). Then they run off. Don't get too caught up in new words home truths. First go and check out 'humour' in the dictionary. You big girls blouse. Kevin.

To be honest when I started here I found it elitist. But I was wrong. It's because I have a habit of feeling like an outsider and I think, especially as you used that very word, you're probably doing that. Why not start the threads you want to see or expected?