You may be a moderator, Joe Offer, and you may think what a great idea it is to calm things down with your cod-moderate posts, but this sort of Aunt-Sally stuff is not only fake news but it is also highly inflammatory:

I fully realize that the Carroll/Shaw faction thinks all this is the fault of Mudcat, that we should control anyone that Carroll/Shaw deems to be objectionable. And for the most part, they are correct in thinking that such people and posts are objectionable. I won't argue with them on that - but yet they claim that Mudcat is "supporting" these objectionable people, which is certainly not true.

There is no "Shaw/Carroll faction." We do not ask you to control people on the basis of our finding them "objectionable." The objectionable nature of posts is generally self-evident and those posts don't need any "deeming" by me or Jim or anyone else. I for one have not accused you of "supporting" objectionable posters, though your arbitrary treatment of the people here who you don't like is positively eyebrow-raising at times when set alongside the indulged horrid behaviour of trolls who call people Jew-haters, bog-trotters, Abbottamus and the rest, and yes, I've raised that with you a number of times. You are rather good at excusing yourself from taking the awkward actions you should be taking (in m'humble - it's never my gig) and you do it by shoving the blame on to victims. As for Jim, I and a number of others have pleaded with him, in the forum and by private message in many occasions, to ignore troll posts, so I have no idea as to what you mean by "faction." I absolutely agree that the best policy is to blank these people out. But by blaming the victims of trolling, which appears to be your only modus operandi, you are simply inflaming the situation. I've got very good in recent weeks at ignoring Iains, but it still irks me to see moderators having a go at Jim and not him when Jim, ill-advisedly in my opinion (and Jim is fully conversant with my opinion, be assured), chooses to respond. Even if you can't see it, I can plainly see which of the two of them is infinitely worse.

Quite right, I haven't posted anything much at all about Walter Pardon but I've read the thread. But I would ask anyone who thinks that this somehow disqualifies me from posting to the thread, let me just remind them that I've been a signed-up member of this forum for many years and I unfailingly post under my one and only real name. So save your criticisms, please, for the anonymous non-member who opened this thread in the first place. Thanks. I'm off out of the thread but I shall continue to follow it with interest, as long as it's about Walter, and there's much constructive comment about him to be made in spite of this thread's bastard nativity.