Something has happened that disturbs.  An icon has disppeared from our midst with very little said.  A few weeks ago, remarks indicated that 'Fozzer' had a parting of the ways with 'management'.  It seems to me, regardless of the difficulty, some acknowledgement of this gent's contributions over the years would  have been appropriate.  Personally, Paul's remarks were one of the highlights of this forum already sorely missed.  If, by posting this, I'm violating some rule then so be it and take your best shot - it may well be your only one.

Steve M wrote on Dec 9^th, 2010 at 10:02pm:


With the management I meant the mods and admins of this very website. Paul made a comment about something and that got him banned.

Carlo.

It's also one of the reasons why I'm thinking about leaving soon. Simviation isn't Simviation anymore. Not only because of Paul, there are more things going on here.

Carlo.

Quote:


This isn't the only place where things like this are happening.
Many of the Flight Sim Forums are locking threads whenever there's the slightest appearance that a flame war is going to occur; trying to be 'politically correct', I guess. 

It's too bad that happened to Paul; I always found his comments to be humorous and never confrontational.

Alan

I'll try to keep my distance from this as much as possible since I don't know the facts or reasoning behind it, but I simply can't believe this has happened. He's always extremely helpful and kind to me and everyone else as far as I know.

@ Rom: Whenever you leave there are multiple threads asking what happened to you. 

Romulus111VADT wrote on Dec 10^th, 2010 at 4:25pm:


Well, you're always gone! 

ShaneG wrote on Dec 10^th, 2010 at 5:38pm:


I know.

Carlo

Souichiro wrote on Dec 11^th, 2010 at 4:41am:



SimV is now a business that Pete has worked hard to promote, he now even has a SimV shop linked to Amazon. As with all businesses, it has to have a certain standard. Regardless of what you all think, it is Pete's train set, and he can play as he wishes. Saying that, Fozzers whit and repartee is something that I also miss, but like many good businesses, if you know where and when to look, you will find the re-branded product

Matt

expat wrote on Dec 11^th, 2010 at 5:50am:



Yep I realise that and I respect it as well.

ShaneG wrote on Dec 10^th, 2010 at 5:38pm:


I also know where to look, and in all honesty I do agree with the comment he made in that thread. If this gets me a ban then so be it.

Quote:


Sorry to see you go Rob.

     

Fozzer was, by his own admission, a bigot and a racist. (his own quotes available) Anyone that supports bigotry and racism can follow him into the ether. (& have  )

I remember the 1st storm like this -- ... back in 1999. Then people were saying 'simviation isn't like it used to be'

I held off banning Fozzer for years (mods will support me in this). He was warned for a long time but took no notice. He was constantly anti US, racist against black people, etc  - despite requests from many for his removal - probably over 100 members here over years, including contributors to this very thread (quotes available again) .. Probably 30 or 40 people have left because of him (probably MANY more silently) --

Simviation does not stand racist bigots - no matter how many 'tee hee's or  they throw into their remarks. Period.

Anyone that follows a racist bigot and leaves is helping to clean the forums. It's organic.

We've moved on. 

It is abundantly clear that there a strong anti-European sentiment on Simviation.

Sounds like it's now simply a case of grasping at straws in order to ban those who you don't like, even if that means ignoring obviously joking statements, and purposely taking attitudes and actions far out of context.

I already know that a number of our European members here realize that the Simviation Forums have become increasingly hostile to their presence.

Oh, beyond the above, there ARE other flightsim websites around, and I find it needless to censor the locations of interesting addons even if SimV does not have the file. I have yet to run across another forum that has policies like this.

There are a few other issues that I have but that would involve naming names to provide context, and while it would be beneficial for those that want a clear picture of where they stand in the various Admin's eyes, I'll let them figure it out themselves.

I'm sure this post will be either deleted entirely, or censored/modified to a great extent.

I'm done here.

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


I love everyone!

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

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 wrote on Dec 12^th, 2010 at 6:41am:

glennokc wrote on Dec 11^th, 2010 at 10:13pm:

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

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..

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