Aviation Forum standards

Situation review
The standard of behaviour on these boards is among the lowest on the web. Only the boards at **edited – this is not a place to discuss other forums – Frank** approach the sleaze and abuse present here. Bad language, personal attacks, unfounded gossip, head kicking, slander and unattributed images make frequent appearances here. More frequently, threads are quickly dragged off-topic by a blizzard of nonsense one liners, and endless beer and fart jokes.

The boards, for the last several years (before and after moderation) have run many deeply offensive, potentially actionable items. The Williams affair, the Germaine Greer affair, and the Aviation Artist affair are past examples. Current examples include the potentially slanderous and at best ill-informed speculation about the engineering and financial soundness of the Vulcan project, peddled from a position of ignorance by a number of regulars. Then there is the repeated personal abuse dished out by the frequently suspended Mark9 and others.

Generally, the culprits are regulars, often operating in close harmony. New arrivals can expect a thorough flogging at an early date if they take a position that differs materially from that of regulars.

The belated introduction of moderation (introduced after the lamentable Williams affair) has done little to improve matters on General Discussion, General Aviation, Historic Aviation or Modern Military.

While the standards of the posts is the responsibility of individual posters, some responsibility lies at the door of Key Publishing (for allowing such a facility to continue at this standard despite repeated complaint) and with the moderators, who are either too involved, too slow, too few or too inactive to remedy a continuing and declining situation.

As they stand, the boards reflect no credit on Key Publishing or the aviation community. A responsible adult would have difficulty inviting their school-age children, or their mothers and grandmothers, to come here seeking information about, for example, the war-time efforts of their spouses or grandparents.

Solutions
Bad posts: It is not good enough to suggest that reporting bad posts is “running to the teacher”. As regular users, the right to free speech comes with responsibility: to keep the boards clean, informative, helpful and suitable for minors and adult enthusiasts alike, free of personal attacks, bad language, and slander. Report all bad posts: there is a function to do this. Use it.

Off topic drivel: Time wasting, and unfunny. Delete them, promptly. Continue until the slowest of the offenders gets the message.

Bad language and cute keyboard tr!cks: These do not mitigate appalling language in signatures and in text. There is no call for it. Children play here. Delete all such posts and signatures. Ban the offenders.

Rumours and innuendo: Instead of posting unfounded rumours here, take another moment or two to look for an answer on the web: often you will quickly find a clearly sound answer. The same applies to purloined pics: post your source, thanks – images without info are a useless for any serious work.

Slander at the high end and carping at the low end: instead of posting ill-tempered, ill-informed and pointless gripes here first, take them up with the agency involved. Use the power of the web to email the agency. Check out who their Minister is, or who their regulator is and write to them too. Once you’ve done your homework and got an answer of some sort, you have a case to post here.

Moderation: Key Publishing, the Webmaster, the moderators and the posters have to take this seriously. It is clearly time to seek out a new larger group of moderators. Moderators must be willing and able to actively monitor and moderate heavily, consistently and very promptly. Posters who repeatedly abuse the board rules only do so because other users and the moderators let them.

Warnings: Clearly not working. First offence: 3 month ban. Second offence: 3 month ban. Third offence: life ban. Apply this firmly and consistently to every case, including those who like cute keyboard tricks to void the rules.

Rules: Groom the rules to utmost simplicity. No personal attacks. No bad language, disguised or not. No unsourced pictures. No slander, no innuendo. Stay on topic. If you wouldn’t want your Mum to read what you are about to post, don’t post it. Report ALL bad posts.

General Discussion: Now beyond saving: close it down.

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Copied to: Editor, Flypast; Webmaster, Aviation Forums
While I appreciate that Key Publishing has been more responsive of late in attempting to improve the quality of the various Discussion Boards that it hosts, it is clear from recent posts that the situation remains deeply disturbing and that further firm remedial action is required.

Accordingly, I’m about to register once more, solely to make the following post to suggest some solutions. Given the state of the boards, the chance of improvement seems scant, and I do not expect to make any further posts.
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