Castle Bromwich Community Website

It is true to say that the contributers to the forums on this site, perhaps do submit items that are, shall I say,could be better put.

Never the less, these are feelings that people have, and are genuinly concerned about.

If the basic message can be gleaned from the posting, we can all learn.

Reading between the lines, is a good way to gauge the populace.  

There is absolutely nothing wrong with people posting about things that concern them, it's important that concerns are identified and dealt with, but over the past few days the Administrators of the site have received a number of complaints from people who have found some recent posts offensive and potentially libelous and the whole tone of the forums to be depressing and griping with posters deviating from anything positive to complain about an unrelated matter. We acted swiftly to remove these posts and in the light of what happened felt it wise to introduce a few guidelines.

We also closed the forum for a while earlier today to remove a large number of posts that one poster had spent half an hour flooding the boards with.

We do have a responsibility to ensure that individuals or organisations  are not unfairly accused of things that have not been proved, so if somebody posts for instance that a specific shop provided faulty goods and will not refund the money paid; the name of the shop will be removed, but the message will remain so that advice can still be given. It's not about censorship, it's about ensuring that the posts are responsible and do not cause offense or upset to others or affect the business or official enquiries of any shops or organisations. I'm sure that you will find that most of the posts remain in place and show the feelings that the posters have, however, as has been pointed out to us in the emails, a number of people have been reluctant to post in case they are attacked for having a view contrary to others as the posts have been heavily weighted in one direction and they lacked the confidence to go against the flow. We would hope to be able to create a sense of balance where posts about concerns are balanced with posts about some of the good things that are happening in the community.

We also have to remember that this website is open to all ages and over the last few days a number of posts have been made that were really not suitable for children to read. Yes, they were a  good way to gauge the feelings of the posters, but the tone of the postings were not suitable for a public forum.

I think that there do have to be guidelines so that we all know where we stand and what is acceptable and what is not. I belong to a number of forums and people do tend to get passionate about their opinions and things soon get out of hand. In my experience there are usually a vociferous few whose views predominate and the posts do not always reflect majority opinion. It's up to the management of the forum to dictate the direction it is to take. A number of forums that I belong to have now banned any posts that are political or religious because they always turn too negative or leave the site owners open to potential legal actions. Some have tried a password protected membership section for difficult or contentious subjects but have soon abandoned them as the same difficulties arise and it's difficult to vet members.

if anyone cannot post in a responsble manner , without offending members or management , then they should not be here at all ....bottom line