Just out of curiosity, if Mudcat was able to ban Martin Gibson why doesn't it have the ability to ban Shambles?

I am sure that Max has the ability.

The question is why would he feel he had to ban a valued long-term posters and one of his and our forum's biggest supporters?

For anyone with even half a brain can see that what is at the core of this is two posters who both consider they have our forum's best interests at heart - but who have totally different views on how this is best achieved and one who thinks that being seen to abuse his editing powers to win this dispute at any cost - is acceptable.

That this personal difference has become the public battle that is now evidenced - is regrettable. For important issues are being overlooked and posters confused and inhibited in the process.

As far as this personal dispute goes - the question is how and why did one of our forum's biggest supporters become labelled as the current 'public enemy number one' be seen to be subjected to and encouraged to be subjected to abusive personal attacks by our 'moderators' and certain favoured posters and what does this say about our forum?

How can our forum ensure that all posters are seen to be treated openly and equally - that they are encouraged to post and not inhibited from posting in any way and that any 'moderators' are not seen to place the interests of all on our forum secondary and abuse their powers in personally motivated but publicly conducted witch-hunts against individual named posters?

Simply banning (or talking about banning) individual posters who do not agree with the views of the current Chief of the Mudcat Editing Team and are not prepared to be forced into agreement with him - will not address any of the above.