"They have lost out"?

[joglynne]

I read the Phorm thread from day one when it was started by one of the CF team but as the tread progressed any descenting voices or any attempts at debate were met by name calling or personal attacks. Most attempts to moderate the thread in the latter weeks seemed, to the reader, to be either ignored or argued with.

IMO CF provided a very large audience to the subject of DPI and also, because of CF's standing, provided the anti-Phormers with a good platform for launching their views into the public eye.

I do not see how it can argued that CF has lost any credibility when the forum can patently still be seen to be drawing new members and functioning as normal.

Finally, I would like to put on record that I was proud of the way the CF team handled the main Phorm thread and was only surprised that it carried on for so long once the prime movers decided that their thread was more important than the forum it was on.

[peanutkp]

Originally Posted by Toto

LOL.

I for one don't miss that thread, I really lost track about 50% in, and could barely keep with with the legitimate discussions, once I was able to remove all the smack talk.


All-in-all I think the mods dealt with the situation with aplomb, particularly the newer guys, hats off to 'em I say.

Saying that, there was a thread a while ago saying there will be a discussion here again soon, as at the moment everything about Phorm is just speculation etc. That's ok and I can't disagree with that, but it seems like CF will only be willing to talk about it when a decision has been made by the powers that be. Which for a major cable / ISP discussion forum to some might seem a little too late and it would leave a sour taste which I must admit is understandable.

And I can't disagree with closing the original thread either, it was impossible to follow let alone moderate and I don't think I gained anything from it personally, and I see there's no way you can have a quiet discussion here either as it'll end up like the first one. So it seem CF can't win this time.

As for people leave this site, then I haven't noticed anything different, the same old usual posters are posting, it feels like nothing has changed. But even if they have lost a few new posters I'm sure there are more lurkers now than ever before so that's a good thing.

If I've got it wrong then I apologise. I hope that was constructive enough.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by cadire

So you think it was the anti-phorm campaigners that 'lost out' ...

Yes, they lost out. They had a big audience due to a popular thread on a well visited site. Now they have virtually no audience on a little visited site.

Originally Posted by cadire

... when they were baited, banned, and effectively silenced by CF moderators?

Baited ? - what planet is that on ? Banned ? - only one was banned I think, for sending an abusive PM. The rest (about 3 or 4) were deleted when they decided to leave permanantly.

All by the Administrators btw, not the moderators.

Originally Posted by cadire

I'd say CF 'lost' a huge amount of credibility, especially a couple of the moderators. Look at your clumsy attempts to rewrite history by locking any thread that mentions Phorm (while stating that you are 'working hard' to bring the subject back on to the boards... yeah right).

Lost a huge amount ? - I dont think so - we have had as many members congratulate us on our stance as we have had moaners. The site continues as it always has.

Id love to know how closing a thread "re-writes" history. Surely we would have to edit the thread to do that ......

Originally Posted by cadire

The only people who made it a fight between the anti-phorm brigade and CF were the moderatos who finally killed the thread off.

Nope, the members who chose to ignore our rules and warnings finally killed it off. Sadly they were a very small minority who spoiled it for the rest.

Originally Posted by cadire

I am very disappointed with CF.

Well you are entitled to feel as you wish.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by cadire

So you think it was the anti-phorm campaigners that 'lost out' when they were baited, banned, and effectively silenced by CF moderators? I'd say CF 'lost' a huge amount of credibility, especially a couple of the moderators. Look at your clumsy attempts to rewrite history by locking any thread that mentions Phorm (while stating that you are 'working hard' to bring the subject back on to the boards... yeah right). The only people who made it a fight between the anti-phorm brigade and CF were the moderatos who finally killed the thread off. I am very disappointed with CF.

Oh, another one of the hat3rz.

If you lot despise this place so much, why do so many of you keep coming over here and starting threads to bleat about how rubbish CF is for locking your pet topic?

Ah, hang on, could it be because you don't have anywhere to go grandstanding any more? Alex's blog is hardly alive with posters, is it.

Do run along there's a good chap, we will cover Phorm in our own way and in our own time, not in yours. If some of you had borne that in mind from the start, the Phorm thread would probably still be open.

[JackSon]

The arguments aside, it seemed appropriate for the topic to be closed/postponed on here because it became apparent that Phrom is currently a political issue rather than a technical one. Should Webwise be introduced across VM's network then I would presume a topic to appear/continue on here for the then relevant discussion.

For now, as a political issue, the campaign is being held in a more appropriate place, and should have migrated there a bit sooner really (it's lengthy stay was in part due to hard work behind the scenes at CF as well as by the campaigners I am aware; but I suppose it got there in the end. And, it is easy enough for me to read and dabble on both sites still I not feel as if I lost anything (apart from all the time following it which I won't get back - will have to bill Kent for that ).

[R Jones]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Yes, they lost out. They had a big audience due to a popular thread on a well visited site. Now they have virtually no audience on a little visited site.

Some figures just to keep it factual.
the forum [Link removed] in question has been open for 21 days, with 1133 posts, averaging out at about 55 posts per day. Membership is currently 131. Page rank using www.top25web.com is 4

Checking the locked Webwise/Phorm thread it had about 14,211 posts, averaging about 71 posts per day over the 199 days since it opened. Using the same page rank tool, the VM locked thread also has a page rank of 4.

Best wishes to all.

Admin edit (Chris T): The 'forum' in question will not be linked to from this website, as you are very well aware. Please DO NOT attempt to circumvent this by using alias URLs or any other means. Post edited.

[zinglebarb]

But you have lost thousands of views and thousands of people seeing the news and it is down to posters in that thread as to why

come back in 178 days and see if its the same

just noticed your figures are flawed . Your 1133 posts are spread over 126 topics . The 14000+ in the monster thread was just one topic how can you say that relates? and 189 of them posts were slagging off cableforum

[Chris]

Originally Posted by R Jones

Some figures just to keep it factual.
the forum [Link removed] in question has been open for 21 days, with 1133 posts, averaging out at about 55 posts per day. Membership is currently 131. Page rank using www.top25web.com is 4

If we're keeping it factual, why don't you mention that most of those posts, and members, were carried over from the previous version of Alex's 'forum', which was open for considerably longer than 21 days. What does that do to your batting average, eh?

And once you discount the 200-odd posts in a single thread devoted to bitching about this website, the stats look even less rosy.

I gave up on the phorm thread too many pages

[R Jones]

Originally Posted by Chris T

If we're keeping it factual, why don't you mention that most of those posts, and members, were carried over from the previous version of Alex's 'forum', which was open for considerably longer than 21 days. What does that do to your batting average, eh?

And once you discount the 200-odd posts in a single thread devoted to bitching about this website, the stats look even less rosy.

Thank you for that additional information. On the forum you mention above, the CF discussion died down pretty quickly (and took place in an Off Topic thread last posted to on August 20th). Yet here it's still going on even though the original thread was closed to avoid that sort of hassle. I am genuinely confused to see a discussion like this still raging HERE after about three weeks which you seem to be keeping going all by yourselves. I've leave it there.

[Wild Oscar]

It was a monster thread and I a bit of a nightmare to mod I'm sure, but I thought things were mostly OK .. till christ put the boot in! That spoilt things for everybody.

[Maggy J]

Christ???

I don't remember seeing any deities on CF...

[Rob M]

Originally Posted by Wild Oscar

It was a monster thread and I a bit of a nightmare to mod I'm sure, but I thought things were mostly OK .. till christ put the boot in! That spoilt things for everybody.

So, in your opinion what 'spoiled things for everybody' was one person (and the son of God at that ) having a valid opinion (which they were entitled to) and then sharing it?

Wrong.....

What actually spoiled things for everybody was as follows:

1. A topic that was almost impossible to follow, constantly dragged off topic and diluted as it was by those people who supposedly had the best interests of the Anti Phorm Movement (I'll call it APM) at heart.

2. A thread where anybody with a contrary opinion to the APM was harrassed, on the receiving end of abusive PMs and Rep points, and generally barracked to the point where they didn't bother to post any more.

3. A thread where, because of 2. above, people with contrary views were afraid to post, even people that were essentially within the APM have expressed the fact that they are happy that the thread within its current Phorm (see what I did there?) closed. Where people within the APM have found it necessary to communicate their opinions to us behind the scenes because they were obviously worried about the harassment they would get if they were to post publicly.

4. A thread where some of the main posters, the vocal minority if you will, frequently felt the need to try to tell the owners of this forum how it should be run and who (when the thread was finally shut) proceeded to cry foul at every opportunity, claiming the closure of the thread as 'proof' that they were whiter than white and that CF was somehow biased, whilst they proceeded to send harassing, bullying, and abusive messages, full of foul language and crazy theories, behind the scenes to such an extent that there was no choice but to ban them.

5. A thread that continued to generate discussion with seemingly no other purpose than to drive down the share prices of organisations concerned with Phorm, which thereby put this forum at some legal jeopordy - especially galling as that same topic of conversation was banned at at least one of the APM's own forums.

6. A thread which was aimed at raising awareness of, and putting a stop to, invasions of people's privacy via the Internet, but which continued to encourage people to harass named individuals within Phorm - publishing email addresses, reposting copyrighted WhoIs information for domains, piecing together great webs of information on individuals and corporations the only purpose for which was to make life as difficult and miserable for those people as was possible.

That's my opinion, I don't expect you to agree and frankly I don't care if you do or not.

On a personal level I would love to see an informed and appropriate discussion of Phorm develop on this site. When it does I will be there to support it, moderate it as necessary, and to help those with a genuine interest to get the very most out of the discussion.

What I won't be party to, and what I will do my very best to stop happening, is for that discussion to become the uncontrollable wasteground of CF that the last one did: a discussion where people were afraid to post their true opinions; a discussion that had no direction and (seemingly) no limitations; a discussion where a minority of posters thought that they were all that mattered, that they were beyond the rules and terms of use of this forum, that their egos were more important than debate, and that they had the ultimate say in all matters and that anybody who didn't agree and capitulate was fair game for abuse, accusations, and torment.

[foreverwar]

Very true - it appeared that if one wasn't in total agreement with some posters, one was "against" them, and then guilt by association seemed to arise, so if one was "against" them, then one was "for" Phorm and all kinds of nasty stuff, therefore one was "fair game" for abuse and invective.

btw, I was a bystander in the Phorm thread, as I have seen the way strong emotion can sometimes overwhelm reason, so decided to view, not participate, so was not on the rx'ing end of any of the diatribes.

It was a shame (imho), as a lot of valuable information was published and it raised awareness - unfortunately, fanaticism overtook discussion (again, imho).

[Horace]

Phorm was always going to produce emotive and contentious debate, there's too much at stake, financially to the companies involved and personally to the clients but forums live and die by how they handle difficult subject matter. Unfortunately CF has got it wrong on this occasion. Better luck next time.