He *was* rude. Almost constantly. Yes, that also made people be rude right back. He didn't seem to mind it, but I'm sure many other readers were annoyed by the many exchanges. On a scale of 1-10: Degree to which I was bothered by his negativity: 2 Degree to which I was bothered by his fact-bending and horrible logic: 3 Degree to which I was bothered by his habit of rarely engaging in true discussing and instead trying to start fights: 6 Degree to which I was bothered by his hijacking every single thread and starting others repeating the same things: 10++++ To keep the pub analogy, he's the loudmouthed drunk at the end of the bar who no one wants to talk to. On some level, I suppose he has the right to drink at the bar if he wishes. At the same time, it's not surprising that many people disliked his presence and perhaps opted to leave the establishment. At some point, the bouncer is going to throw you out because you are annoying the customers. I think it is funny that he actually conned a few people into believing that somehow it was only because he posted negative comments on the Saints that he was disliked. At any rate, if he would just stop spamming up the boards I wouldn't have a problem with him. But I see no problem with throwing a guy out of a discussion board temporarily for refusing to engage in discussion.
His first few posts were punctuated in the normal gmi way . Then he changed it to try and blend in. Look at his Location if you don't believe me. 'Location , Location .'
The problem with GMI was that he had absolutely no interest in or respect for other people's opinions, which is what caused people to have the same lack of respect for his. I had no problem with his opinions, despite them being largely contrary to mine, and every now and then I read some garbled mess that I actually found quite interesting and valid once I translated it. But the main problem is that he refused to ever explain or back up his frequently controversial opinions, he would just repeatedly restate them in abrasive ways, then when you questioned him, he seemed to pay no attention to anything you had written and would just restate himself again. It was like talking to a two year old "DADDY I'M HUNNNNGRRYYYY" "Ok sweetie you can have some lunch in a minute." "HUUUNNNNNGGGRRRYYYYY" "Ok what do you want?" "HUUNNNNNGGGGGGRRRYYYYY?" "Do you want a sandwich?" "HUUUUUNNNGGGGGRRRYYYYYYY". If he had of stated his opinions in suitable ways on suitable threads, it may continue to be annoying at times but not the end of the world, but the fact that he would post on almost every thread, frequently not even on the topic of the thread, with the same nonsense as usual, just disrupted and derailed the forum to a large degree. The fact that summed this up for me, is when on another thread to do with our tough start and the much nicer road ahead, I posted a spreadsheet listing all our fixtures and our nearest rivals' fixtures so far along with other things taken away from that, and he made 9 or 10 posts of nonsense calling my spreadsheet speculation and saying I was an idiot for making a spreadsheet about wins. When pressed on what he was going on about, he revealed he couldn't actually see the spreadsheet as the hosting site I used to upload it was firewalled for him, so he had actually made 9 or 10 posts disrupting a thread and using his same amount of certainty as always despite literally not having any idea what he was talking about. All those things and others is what made him an obnoxious and frustrating individual, but I don't think he particularly did anything deserving of a ban in the classic sense. But this isn't a court of law, it's an internet forum, we don't need evidence and for him to be judged fairly and justly. There needs to be a rough outline of rules and a general process to make sure that as a whole the forum is fairly moderated and that people aren't just randomly banned left right and centre, but at the end of the day anyone can be banned for any reason, if that happened 5 times a week it might be an issue, but one occurence in extreme circumstances is not the end of the world. Was the ban fair? Probably not at all. Is the ban good for the forum? Definitely. And at the end of the day the mods are here to keep the forums running smoothly and happily and removing GMI, no matter how unfair it is on him, does that. But anyway all of this is probably irrelevent as I would expect his ban was a short one and he will be back in a few days, but if it was permanent, good!
Good summation Mikey. Yeah you're right, I saw another couple of posts from him with the tell-tale signs.
On this note, whatever happened to Joey B? Seems as if GMI took the King of Controversy title off him. Was Joey B banned, or just stopped posting, or on here under another profile...?
I believe he was banned. He came back for a while as Gordon Gecko or something like that and then got banned for good. To be fair to him, he hasn't felt the need to try to come back under a different name, I guess he is too busy banking.
Pardon me for butting in on a Saints thread about Saints posters, but I thought I'd just remind every-one of the ignore function on not606. If a particular poster is getting on your Bristols, go to their member page and click on the 'add to ignore list' option. That person's posts will no longer appear on your screen when you are reading through comments.
No pardon needed pal. The problem is that whilst many people, including myself, have him on the ignore list, the majority don't, and because of him being such a controversial character many people will still bite and reply to him in an attempt to have a discussion with him, which will almost inevitably turn into an argument, which derails threads. So even if you have him on your ignore list, it gets to the point where you click on a thread, there's an interesting OP and you decide to continue reading as you want to contribute to the thread, and all you get is 3 pages of alternating posts of 'This post is hidden due to this user being on your ignore list' and then another person quoting and arguing with him, and then so on and so forth until the thread is completely dead and miles away from where it started and there is no point contributing to the original discussion. It got to a point a couple of days ago, where I logged on in the evening, and there were about 15 new/bumped unread threads, and at least 10 of them when I scrolled through was exactly what I just described.
There lies the problem to be fair.......how do you deal with trolls? It could be argued could it not that they are entitled to an opinion? They are entitled to post even though perhaps most of the time it is attention seeking. It is a difficult one for the mods.
Of course, I don't think there is a definitive right way to deal with it. However I think the thing people get caught up in is about him having his right to an opinion etc., because of course he has the right to his opinion, but it's not his opinions, despite them being largely controversial and disagreeable to many that is the main problem, it is the way in which he presents these opinions. He is obnoxious, repetitive, disrespectful and belligerent in the way he posts, and the large scale spam of this across the board is what crosses the line for me.
Joey B was far more tolerable. He put his views across aggressively and was certainly rude, but he was open to debate and discussion with well thought out rationalised views. Can't say the same for GMI. That's why people are suggesting to follow a pub analogy of "throw out the noisy drunk who everyone hates" rather than the "letter of the law" Police State analogy.
I had no problem with gomarchingin, I just gave him as much back as he gave to us, he is a rare phenomenon, laughed at some of my jokes! He, I admit is a bit one track minded and very often didn't answer questions which can be anoying, having fired a bullet, he goes off at tangent before it has hit the target. I kept forgetting that people had him on their ignor list, as if you use the Reply with Quote function they get to see the posts that they don't actually want to. As far as I am concerned as long as he doesn't resort to abuse, he hasn't done anything wrong.
His ban is the best thing to happen to this board in the last 4 months. Hopefully, now we can have some sensible constructive discussion about everybody's favourite passion without every read being spammed.
He's been banned?! Excuse me but I'm a bit behind having just been discharged from hospital in time for the game!!
