I was due to get up at 05:00 yesterday morning; an 06:00 departure from home, for an 08:30 arrival in Milton Keynes, setting up for a course starting at 09:30. "Why didn't you go a day earlier" you may ask. But with a whole load of equipment to cart around, it's a lot of hassle to have to get a trolley (or wheelchair) accessible room and move the kit in there in the evening, and out in the morning. Besides, the roads are a lot quieter at dawn on Monday that at dusk on a Sunday which I am told by my contacts who know a bit aboout travel has now become the busiest time of the week for long distance journeys.

I was due to get up at 05:00 ... but I ended up undersleeping and getting up at 03:30, when a brief online check alerted me to the fact that perhaps I should stay up and sort out a "spam poster" on the FGW Coffee Shop Forum where I'm one of the admins. It never ceases to amaze me how the occasional poster to a forum can sometimes go a bit "odd" - and in this case it was actually a poster who's put up nearly 300 posts in the past and who (I understand) is an employee of the FGW train company that the forum's about. A ripe selection of personal insults against three members, a selection of other links including some that were broken and at least one others that lead to sites of a sexual nature ... and a clear case of an account that had to be suspended with immediate effect, and a cleanup instigated.


What causes people to go "off the rails" like this? An emailed message from another member suggested that our friend might have been under the influence of some sort of substance, but I've nothing but the character of the posts to confirm that. I do prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I have invited the member to get in touch if he would care to offer an explanation, but I haven't heard (yet) and I suspect I might not do so.

Oddly enough, although I had not planned to be spending 2 hours at this task, I came out of it with a feeling of some satisfaction. Some of the posts, though perhaps blurred by the influence of alcohol were also uninhibited by by the lack of restraint that alcohol can induce, and it gave me a chance both to see the real views and personality of the guy, and also to answer some very good questions which were worth answering again, and has lead - over the following 36 hours - to some excellent clarifications of the TransWilts case, and to support shown from a far wider audience than a single sad lone Cornishman.
(written 2008-08-19, updated 2008-08-21)

 G903 - Well House Consultants - Running and moderating forums and social media sites
  [22] Falling out over the silliest things - (2004-08-21)
  [29] Silence is Golden - (2004-08-26)
  [115] Expiration dates or times on web pages - (2004-11-12)
  [130] Spelling and grammar - (2004-11-25)
  [204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
  [231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
  [248] Use me, but use me effectively - (2005-03-16)
  [424] How not to run a forum - (2005-08-24)
  [516] Open source questions? Anyone can ask. - (2005-12-03)
  [651] Please Register with Opentalk - but just once! - (2006-03-19)
  [806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
  [828] Freedom of speech and freedom to post - (2006-08-10)
  [841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
  [919] Freedom for X is denial of privacy for Y - (2006-11-09)
  [923] Why shouldn't I spam? - (2006-11-13)
  [948] Running an on line campaign - (2006-11-27)
  [1088] Why use BBC code not HTML? - (2007-02-21)
  [1190] Save the Forum - A regular clean sweep - (2007-05-17)
  [1362] No Thank You - (2007-09-23)
  [1472] The Horse goes on and on - (2007-12-15)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
  [1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
  [1539] A forum is not always the best vehicle - (2008-02-14)
  [1563] Guidlines for posting on a forum - (2008-03-04)
  [1569] I dont care - goodbye - (2008-03-09)
  [1578] Please don't shout at me! - (2008-03-16)
  [1595] First Great Western Weekend - (2008-03-30)
  [1678] Software - changes and delays. But courses must run on time! - (2008-06-15)
  [1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
  [1972] Pettifog and forum boards away from public view - (2009-01-03)
  [2103] Ask the Tutor - Open Source forum - (2009-03-25)
  [2116] Why do we delay new forum members through authorisation? - (2009-04-03)
  [2156] Stopping forum spam - control of the signup process - (2009-05-04)
  [2162] Admins thoughts on banning a member from a forum - (2009-05-09)
  [2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
  [2254] Forum membership - a privilege not a right - (2009-06-22)
  [2386] Computing under the influence of alcohol - (2009-08-29)
  [2526] A reluctance to move from old shoes to new - (2009-12-05)
  [2527] Flying tonight - (2009-12-05)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2781] The 500 pound question to get you started - (2010-05-26)
  [2820] Netiquette for forum newcomers - (2010-06-20)
  [3479] Practical Extraction and Reporting - using Python and Extreme Programming - (2011-10-14)
  [3910] Identifying your real customers and keeping them well informed fast - (2012-11-02)
  [4017] Acceptable User Policy / vexatious interacter - (2013-02-24)
  [4025] Backups, Codebase, Strategy and more - dealing with forum incidents - (2013-03-03)
  [4065] Handling requests to a forum - the background process - (2013-04-17)
  [4234] Change to Libel and Defamation laws from 1st January 2014 - (2013-12-31)
  [4239] Facebook marketing - early experiences - (2014-01-19)
  [4283] Can a legitimate forum post become illegal a year later? - (2014-07-11)
  [4307] Identifying and clearing denial of service attacks on your Apache server - (2014-09-27)
  [4315] Welcoming genuine forum posters quickly - but turning away off topic advertisers - (2014-11-16)
  [4403] The unbalanced relationship between customer and provider - (2015-01-21)
  [4492] Almost so wrong, but perhaps it's right for some? - (2015-05-11)

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