To me, that is a reasonable thing to do not to mention helpful. As far as the editing of the threads goes, it is my understanding that the clones took lengthy posts that were posted in several threads and consolidated them into one.

I think your understanding in this case is wrong. It may now be the wish of our anonymous volunteer fellow posters to control every aspect of what their fellow posters contribute. And this form of imposed editing may have been undertaken elsewhere and other subjects – but as far as I am aware none of the PEL threads have been subject to this form of imposed editing action.

Lumping individual threads together may appeal to a tidy mind who does not appreciate the subtle differences but the originators should perhaps been consulted first. It may be understandable to you that every thread title be subject to imposed change - to enable you to clearly understand their contents. It may be understandable – but is it very practical to do this for every thread? And if it is not – is it fair or effective to selectively to only do this to certain contributors and not others – which may be equally unclear?

This is also reasonable in my opinion because if someone was going to read all of the PEL threads why would they want to read the message over and over.

They may not want to but there are many things we may prefer not to have to read on our forum? Is the rather remote possibility of reading a message twice really the worst and worth such fuss, judgement and imposition? From the list of justification - you may consider the result of such imposition to be understandable but would you really consider it to be proportionate?   

Abusive personal attacks and name-calling are supposed to be what our anonymous volunteer fellow posters are protecting us from. But you will see many such examples of this in this thread alone (and the following threads) – many of them being posted by those who are supposed to be protecting us from this.
Censorship on Mudcat
Max what about Shambles requests
In the UK
Closing threads


Look everyone. You have to understand that I am talking about behavior that is carefully controlled borderline crime. Unless you are used to making threats and using the information and technology within the Mudcat to stalk, hurt or scare people you have no fear of crossing a line.
Max22 Jul 99

Yes, I think you may well be first on the list, my friend. It's time for you either to shut up, or to use a name and take responsibility for what you have to say. If you continue to refuse to use a name, you will be come a non-person around here, and every single message you post will be deleted.
Free speech is fine, but you're just a pain in the ass.
-Joe Offer-

Do you think it understandable if our forum's posters are not sure if our anonymous volunteer fellow posters were now singing from the same hymn book as our site's owner?

what is the purpose behind putting it in so many threads?

I fear you have been given and accepted a rather false and exaggerated picture from the justifications given.
If you specify what particular message and in exactly how many threads – I may be able to provide a further answer to the one I have already given? But even if there were no purpose to this – in the grand scale of things – why on earth make such assumptions and judgements about such small things? For example what is the purpose on our forum of a thread with 10,000 posts about nothing?

It is about all posters being encouraged to accept what others post on our forum – not the futile attempt to judge and control the postings of others and shape our forum by this vain attempt. Our forum has traditionally been shaped by the needs, wishes, talents, knowledge, opinions etc of ALL it posters – perhaps you can help ensure that it continues to be?

No post was deleted unless it was a duplicate of a post in another thread. He explained that it was due to the duplication and always left one post in there. If he was editing out your opinions, wouldn't he have deleted them all?

You have to be careful when repeating such claims in this list of justifications - as if they were true. It is now quite obvious from the following that Joe Offer has no idea how many or whether my words have been deleted or not. But he is still not prepare to apologise for wrongly and emphatically informing our forum – not once but twice – that not one word of mine has been deleted.

So, I'm sorry that Shambles takes this personally. It isn't meant to be that way. It's all just housekeeping, not a power struggle. It's just trying to make some sense out of the chaos. And we will continue to welcome Shambles to say whatever he wants in every message he posts. He may not get the "front page" coverage he wants for his every word, but his comments are easily found. Just click on his name in any message he's posted, and you will receive a complete collection of everything Shambles has said on Mudcat. And not one word of it has been deleted, except for some of his more glaring duplications.
-Joe Offer-

No, Roger. I see no need to apologize. I haven't found any of your words that were deleted, although I concede that one or two of your 8,362 posts may have been deleted, if they were in a thread that was deleted. I did a quick check, and found none. It's not an all-encompassing check, but a quick check shows nothing. You're back to quoting out-of-context remarks from 2003 - comments that make very good sense when read in context. You've gone looney again. It's time to go back into your hole. Goodbye, Roger. Maybe you just don't get it. It's worthwhile to respond to you when you're reasonably rational, when you address an actual issue. When you resort to two-year-old, out-of-context quotations and ad hominem attacks and one-in-a-million situations, you've gone too far, and there's no reasoning with you. Then it's not fun any more. Go hibernate, and come back when you're ready to be rational.
-Joe Offer-

This list of assumptions was given by the Chief of the Mudcat Editing Staff - to justify the continuing special treatment that my postings have selectively been subject to in the last four years. I will leave our forum to judge if this special treatment is really proportionate to my supposed terrible 'transgressions' or whether this special treatment is simply personally motivated. Or indeed whether any poster should receive special treatment.

The only telling words in the list of justifications are the following. His PEL campaign was a very worthy cause. A worthy cause that was not helped on our forum - by the identification of this worthy cause with personal judgements of an individual poster.