A missing man

[glennokc]

Token Aussie here :-) We still think of americans as seppos :-) but its all good...


I love everyone!

[Triple_7]

7 years and 3 months...SimV has pretty much been my main home when it comes to forums, always enjoyed this place, had many good laughs...seen these forums go through many ups and downs.

[glennokc]

I read the thread in question, and didnt find anything offensive at all about it.

[BigTruck]

It wasn't a single post that got Fozz banned folks.  It was years and years of his posts.  Yes he was a big contribution to the threads in his own way, and we took that into consideration, but we also warned him over and over again about his outspoken nature.


Some of you might not have found his posts offensive, but other members did, and we heard it about it.  There were quite a few that made my hair stand on end as a U.S. Marine.  We had to act on behalf of all the members.  Our goal is to keep SimV the friendliest forums on the net.  If it means banning a long term member who can't keep his political beliefs to himself, then so be it.  And if that means we lose a few more members because they can't see past that, then so be it. 

This is a flight sim forum folks.  You want to complain about country politics and such, go to another forum.  We aren't here to Police anyone as mods or admins.  We are here to help as much as we can and keep the flight sim community just that, a flight sim community.

If you feel the urge to bash someone's country or criticize their gov, there are plenty of forums out there for that.  There is no room for that here. 

SimV is here for the flightsim community, and some of our members seem to forget that.  Overall we are still the friendliest forums and we intend to keep it that way. 


We gave Fozz plenty of room, and he kept taking advantage of it.  We warned him over and over, and he just turned a blind eye.  If he wasn't bashing your country then he was bashing mine.  We spoke to him over and over again about it, trying to remind him what we are as SimV.  It didn't stick, and we had to ban him. 

Like I said, we aren't here to police and ban and be Bruce Almighty.  But there is a place on the internets for political controversy, and SimV is not the place for that.

[Layne.]

I have to admit, i haven't been around much at all.
But from what I've read it seems like it was a very good action to ban Fozzer.
So he may have been help to some, i'm sure a LOT of people have been a help to you or anyone else but that does not warrant them to be able to break policies and rules within the forums.
If he was indeed a racist bigot, then i say good riddance. We do not need people such as that in these forums. If like some of you 'nay sayers' believe, that these are the friendliest forums around, that would not be true if racist bigots are posting their unfriendly comments here.
To the supporters who were also banned, or left, good riddance to you too. The less bad influence and nasty comments here the better.

[ozzy72]

There have been many changes over the years here at SimV and every so often a Darwinian moment comes over.
I've been a mod here a looong time now (only Pete and Felix have been at it longer! I've been a mod for 8 of my 9 years here) and every now and again we have this happen, some member has an issue and things get hecked up and do or say things that are inappropriate (even I've done it a couple of times, once nearly got me kicked off the planet).
I think there are people taking the hobby and the forum far too seriously of late, I still treat this as my fun escape from reality, hence why I only post funny "news" stories and the like and try to compete with Rom for daft jokes (I'm still losing that battle of the giggles).
If we all lightened up a little and stopped to laugh at the ridiculousness of the world a little more I reckon the forums would be exactly like they were many moons ago. If you want to see a change, you have to make the change.
Meanwhile I'm going to go and clean my bike and go for a blat in the sunshine to remind me how awesome it is to be alive! Then tonight I'll be having another attempt at my maddest stunt EVER

Ozzy (still having fun after nearly a decade) 8-)

[patchz]

There have been many changes over the years here at SimV and every so often a Darwinian moment comes over.
I've been a mod here a looong time now (only Pete and Felix have been at it longer! I've been a mod for 8 of my 9 years here) and every now and again we have this happen, some member has an issue and things get hecked up and do or say things that are inappropriate (even I've done it a couple of times, once nearly got me kicked off the planet).
I think there are people taking the hobby and the forum far too seriously of late, I still treat this as my fun escape from reality, hence why I only post funny "news" stories and the like and try to compete with Rom for daft jokes (I'm still losing that battle of the giggles).
If we all lightened up a little and stopped to laugh at the ridiculousness of the world a little more I reckon the forums would be exactly like they were many moons ago. If you want to see a change, you have to make the change.
Meanwhile I'm going to go and clean my bike and go for a blat in the sunshine to remind me how awesome it is to be alive! Then tonight I'll be having another attempt at my maddest stunt EVER

Ozzy (still having fun after nearly a decade) 8-)

Well said Mark.
As to the stunt, have you completely forgotten how to post screenshots?

[B-Valvs]

[quote]As much time as I spend on this forum, I must have missed the tension between certain members.

[aussiewannabe]

Token Aussie here :-) We still think of americans as seppos :-) but its all good...


I love everyone!

Strange, I was never called a seppo while living in Oz. Called "mate" several times though

[alrot]

There have been many changes over the years here at SimV and every so often a Darwinian moment comes over.
I've been a mod here a looong time now (only Pete and Felix have been at it longer! I've been a mod for 8 of my 9 years here) and every now and again we have this happen, some member has an issue and things get hecked up and do or say things that are inappropriate (even I've done it a couple of times, once nearly got me kicked off the planet).
I think there are people taking the hobby and the forum far too seriously of late, I still treat this as my fun escape from reality, hence why I only post funny "news" stories and the like and try to compete with Rom for daft jokes (I'm still losing that battle of the giggles).
If we all lightened up a little and stopped to laugh at the ridiculousness of the world a little more I reckon the forums would be exactly like they were many moons ago. If you want to see a change, you have to make the change.
Meanwhile I'm going to go and clean my bike and go for a blat in the sunshine to remind me how awesome it is to be alive! Then tonight I'll be having another attempt at my maddest stunt EVER

Ozzy (still having fun after nearly a decade) 8-)

I must say ,well said Mark ,I'm so agree ,YES these types of things are meant to be fun , we can't take our hobbies too serious, I will confess myself, I have left Simv countless times , then came back with my tail between my legs ,I have become Mad I have cry and get full stress and more because of the airplane making .
this is a place to scape from the real words which have to be taken more serious , the reason the real reason why I do spend a lot of time ,eyes, and head in the making airplanes its because I really enjoy the making of them .

few days ago a pirate site took one plane ,and that was to me the end otf the world ,when it doesn't supposed to be [glow=yellow,2,300]I'm putting my self as and example [/glow]

I try to told a guy which I though he was having the same addition to a forum in the best way to get his life back ,I was wrong I misunderstood the guy

I'll quote myself
[quote]

[Steve M]

My curiosity got the the best of me over the last couple of weeks. I wanted to know what happened, I asked and got no response untill this thread. It isn't any of my business anyway, but I was wondering about the well being of a member. If someone had taken a few seconds to explain the situation to me I would have never replied to this thread and I doubt so many others would have been taken by surprise. I respect the decisions of the Admin here and would like to continue on as a member. This thread has become so depressing I would love to see it locked and let it roll quietly off the page.
                                      Best wishes for the future..

[ApplePie]

I am astounded by this thread. And while I am saddened from the loss of all of these members, I think people took/are taking this forum a little too seriously.


Pax vobiscum!
Christian

[JBaymore]

I wanted to add in my $0.02 here.

There were many aspects about Fozzer's postings that I also truly enjoyed.  And I will really miss those aspects of his presence here.  If many of his postings were in private email conversations between just the two of us, I would have little issue with many of them.  Not that I would agree with all that he said, nor find all his jokes funny, nor agree with all his political and racial views, ...... but in that private setting... he could say what he wanted and I could decide if I wanted to continue the conversation if I wanted to.

What this came down to was looking at the balance between the positive aspects and the negative aspects of Fozzer's postings in a public venue.  The negative finally won out.

Fozzer's posting issues here revolved around his constant and overt "bucking of the rules" over many, many years.  And also after many, many discussions with him via PM/email.   He knew exactly where he stood on this, and he chose to not comply with the site management's desires for the operation of the forums.  He CHOSE to do that; we decided not to allow him to do it.  It is that simple.  But please remember, not following the forum rules and "culture" was his decision.  He knew for a long time that he had 9 toes out the door.

This was not in any way a sudden and unconsidered decision.  In the Moderators private forum section there were countless discussion about how to deal with many of his postings.  I want to state here publically that Pete often was Fozzer's staunchest defender in these various discussions.  If it was up to the rest of the moderators..... Fozzer would likely have been gone a long time ago.

Maybe our real mistake was not doing that a log time ago.  By so doing, we sent the message to some others that what he was doing was OK.  It was not.

The aspect of "political correctness" is important from a management point of view for a public venue.  This is an international venue.  We want it to be a comfortable place to be for people from all countries.  We want it to be a comfortable place to be for people from different political views within the same country.  The best way to assure this is to keep general content from deliberately veering too deeply into the known "hot button" areas like religion, politics, sexual orientation, and so on. 

We even are pretty easygoing on this aspect here; sometimes we mods debate a long time before deciding a thread is heading into "dangerous ground" and making a posting in it that sends it back on track.  Locking such threads happens only rarely.   Fully deleting them is almost never the case.

We must keep in mind that this place is also frequented by CHILDREN as young as 13 years of age (or younger if they lie about their ages at signup).  So the content here is being read by them and they are picking up ideas and impressions from what they find here.  We take their "education" seriously too.

We are sorry if some people feel that Fozzer was treated unfairly.  That is not the case.  If I thought it was, I'd be outta' here too.

best,

..............john