Cycling UK Forum

Until such time that I am asked to act as a moderator on the subject I have no problems with making contributions to any thread as a normal forum member. If I am asked to, or feel the need to, act as a moderator on a particular thread I shall then attempt to put aside personal feelings, and will toe the party line. If my personal oppinion differs dramatically from the CTC party line then I will resign as a moderator, but in this case it does not seem to.

As my initial responce indicated I was wearing my forum member hat, having not been asked to moderate the thread or to give official oppinion on the thread.

My second responce was to TC's comments, rather than to yours, and attempted to clear up a miss-understanding. As such it shouldn't have any impact upon your complaint, and was not on the subject of the censorship of your previous posts.

As the thread is now locked, I cannot lift a quote, so from memoery it says,

"Help is now needed with Issue 2. Ladies please send copy, with £1-40"

Obviously, I can only comment on what is openly posted, not what is passed confidentially. The meaning seems pretty clear to me and the only conceivable other meaning (IMO) would be that it was intended to be "Ladies please send for a copy" which seems unlikely in view of the earlier call for help.

One fact of life with this medium is that, in common with emails, there is a well known tendency to reply spontaneously, rather than reflect. It's there the world over, greater people than us have slipped up by doing it. The originator of something like that has all the time in the world to prepare, what was, after all, an advert.

When I saw the post, I thought, "She is not interested in me. Fair enough. I will ignore her." I never gave it another thought until I saw Dai's new thread and then I had to search to find the old one.

I think I have been on the receiving end of enough of the acrimony on the old forum to qualify me to reiterate that censorship, especially of this sort of thing, is wrong and in any case ineffective. The "offensive" comment has now been much more widely publicised than in would have been.

(On a much lighter note, I have not been taken to task on my use of the word 'offside' widely considered (by sexists) to be incomprehensible to women. )

Obviously, I can only comment on what is openly posted, not what is passed confidentially. The

Indeed, I was not suggesting that you had misread it, but that Diane had maybe not explained her meaning fully.

Si wrote:Until such time that I am asked to act as a moderator on the subject I have no problems with making contributions to any thread as a normal forum member. If I am asked to, or feel the need to, act as a moderator on a particular thread I shall then attempt to put aside personal feelings, and will toe the party line. If my personal oppinion differs dramatically from the CTC party line then I will resign as a moderator, but in this case it does not seem to.

As my initial responce indicated I was wearing my forum member hat, having not been asked to moderate the thread or to give official oppinion on the thread.Ce

My second responce was to TC's comments, rather than to yours, and attempted to clear up a miss-understanding. As such it shouldn't have any impact upon your complaint, and was not on the subject of the censorship of your previous posts.

That's a bit strange on a thread with a huge blue headline saying 'Censored?' at the top of it.
If only I could have got away with that in my newspaper.

Thank you all for your opinions.

I'm glad to note that the majority of you agree that I was censored and that the moderator went over the top. He can have no real complaint about that as it was he that suggested I put this thread in the Tea Shop.

Some of you have suggested that my comment regarding the possible sexism of this magazine was 'Terse' or an attack on the person whose thread it was.
This was not the case - just because I make a point using few words does not make it an attack. In any case being terse is not a crime and there is nothing in the rules of this forum which forbids it.

The reason I was given for the censorship was that the CTC is trying to encourage more women cyclists. Quite right that they should do so but that is not an excuse for heavy handed censorship by a moderator and the locking of a topic which I had a perfect right to air my views about. Nor is it a good reason to deny me my democratic rights.

It strikes me as strange that anyone uses this board to try and promote cycling - that's a bit like promoting Christianity in a nunnery.

I still hold to my view that the magazine is sexist but if I upset anyone in the manner I did it then I apologise.

Some of you said 'Niche' magazines are ok - sorry but 51% of the population of planet Earth is not a niche.

I will leave you with a question to ponder. If I started a thread on this forum saying that I had set up a magazine called Cycling the Reich asking for contributions. from blonde blue eyed Aryans would you be willing to contribute?

The magazine might be sexist in the strictest sense of the word, but it's targetted at a minority in the cycling world who maybe deterred or find it difficult because it is so male orientated, thus I see it as a sincere form of positive discrimination.

The only way I could possibly object to it is if the magazine explicitly discriminated against people who aren't women (i.e. men!) in a way that was really was detrimental to them. For example, demanding that cycle manufacters stopped producing equipment for men. Or campaigning for political power so they could make men second class citizens. (As oppose to compaigning for political power because women are under-represented)

In the UK regular cyclists are a minority group and one could argue that a magazine catering for them discriminates against non-cyclists.

Also, don't be surprised if there are a number of new comers to cycling frequenting these boards. It was the Cycling Plus boards that got me started.

I think for the sake of this forum it is best to let this thread lie down.

Dai wrote:Some of you have suggested that my comment regarding the possible sexism of this magazine was 'Terse' or an attack on the person whose thread it was.

This was not the case

Sadly terse often sounds aggressive in written form, such as forum posts or e-mails.

Dai wrote:It strikes me as strange that anyone uses this board to try and promote cycling - that's a bit like promoting Christianity in a nunnery.

If you were interested in becoming a nun, a nunnery might well be the first place you asked for advice

Dai wrote:If I started a thread on this forum saying that I had set up a magazine called Cycling the Reich asking for contributions. from blonde blue eyed Aryans would you be willing to contribute?

No, because I've got brown eyes

Are you comparing women to nazis? <- joke, in case anyone takes that seriously!

Brian wrote:For what its worth I am with Dai 100% 0n this thread, but don’t completely agree with him on the original thread. If that makes sense?
Dai passed an opinion without resorting to personal abuse, others are free to disagree with that opinion. It seems a tad over the top to lock the thread..

it makes sense to me, and i agree entirely

I suggest that the overriding issue concerns the difficult role of a moderator.

When SimonL6(?) canvassed for volunteers last year I tentatively replied to him. Fortunately, the posted link failed and my message bounced.

It then occurred to me that the ideal moderator must:-

Be a frequent reader of the forum
Never post anything controversial, ideally never post their own stuff at all.
Have the wisdom of Solomon.

I realised that I could offer only the first requirement. I doubt if anybody alive could offer more than two of them. So it is not an easy task and it is probably a thankless one. I would urge them to soft pedal.

As a post script, I now see that a censored version of the thread has been unlocked. I think there should at least be some sort of indication when bits have been missed out.

I am making these points for very selfish reasons. I try to be meticulous about my postings on here but it is notoriously easy to offend people unintentionally. Is the blue pencil coming out every time somebody's feathers are ruffled?

The original post has now been unlocked - a partial climb down but like most things in life a compromise in that my comments have been removed from it and put into to a separate thread.

I have been asked to 'tread carefully' with new posters though how one is supposed to know the difference between a new poster and an old poster who is returning following the revamp or even a long established forum member who doesn't post very often is beyond me

I remain concerned about the original censorship and I stand by my views. I am also concerned that this forum is being used to place thinly disguised adverts for subscription magazines.

For Diane to backtrack in private messages to the moderators and say that she didn't say what she meant does not bode well for her career as a magazine editor but I wish her well with the venture and hope it achieves its aims.

for the record
1. The topic has now been split
2. I didn't get any private messages.

Dai

You got good support. Don't milk it.

Are you comparing women to nazis?

Try that one after a women's rugby match and see what u get!


If you are also good looking and with good body tone that will also help.

Thanks to everybody here, I've enjoyed your company - it's time to leave - the moderation is too OTT