What am I on about? Well, I pop onto the Betfair forum every now and then, even though it is serious decline and is seemingly about to become completely moribund. Anyway, when I did have a look recently, I saw there was the usual break-out of spats between the various childish people on there - with one long-running argument between a couple of people who seem to have nothing better to do than spend all their time on the forum. Jesus, do these people even have time for betting?
I think I signed up for the Betfair forum at the beginning of 2008, and in those five years I think I've made less than 200 posts. But there are posters on the BF forum who have only signed-up a few months and yet have thousands of posts, and appear to have opinions on absolutely everything.
Don't ask me why, but I did revisit the forum again recently, and noticed that one of these individuals, a particularly sad specimen who used to trawl any running thread to see where he could make trouble, had managed to get himself banned from the forum.
Swearbox from the blog The Expat Punter, and someone who also managed to get himself banned from the Betfair forum, posted an entry on this individual (HERE) - and it duly sparked a running flame war in the comments section of that post that continues even now. There are now over 800 comments for Swearbox's post, including multiple comments from the subject of the post, who of course has nowhere else to peddle his poisonous views.
So now that blog has seemingly turned into a mini-forum of some description - although I do warn you. Don't spend more than three or four minutes reading the absolute shite in there as it will surely melt you brain. Talk about old women, it's unbelievable. Backwards and forwards, going over the same ground time upon time. It's breathtaking how much time some people are willing to dedicate to absolutely nothing.
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Yes, we were all greeted with this familiar page again today, and on this occasion the timing could not have been better (or worse). Three O'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Oh dear oh dear.
Luckily I only had a few straight bets on (some dutch's) that I had no intention of changing, so I wasn't affected, but I do know a great many were as they were locked-out of open positions for the whole of the first half of matches.
Yes another PR disaster for the greatest betting exchange in the world.
"Don't spend more than three or four minutes reading the absolute shite in there as it will surely melt you brain. "
ReplyDeleteHmmmm...I can't make up my mind whether you are referring to my blog posts or the comments that follow some of them. Hopefully it's the latter but clarification would be great.
As far as it becoming a 'mini-forum' then that's fairly accurate. As you pointed out in your piece above I am currently banned from the forums and have been for the best part of a year now. So if I have something to say that I would have said on the forums I say it on my blog. If others want to comment then I welcome that and it's fair to say that I don't spend too much time on moderating comments though I did go through a period where I had to censor a bunch of posts due to repetitive stupid remarks aimed at mr Bob Vegas that were uncalled for.
My own moderation policy has led to a tremendous amount of 'same old same old' crappy flame wars and my advice is if you don't want to read that then don't read it. In between the insults the comments also serve as a place where pleasantry is exchanged too (shock horror)! Having said that the meat of the blog is the posts and not the comments and I try to make it an interesting read and I've had many folk tell me they enjoyed reading it.
I'll conclude by saying thanks for putting me in the spotlight...I'm not sure what sort of a readership you have but I suspect it's not huge as my stats don't show a tremendous influx of traffic coming from your site...nevertheless your post did generate some interest so thank you. If you really do find my blog distasteful then you always have the option of removing me from your blogroll which is entirely up to you but I would say that we're in the business of helping each other not obstructing each other. Anyway I'll shut up for now and end by wishing you the best for 2013 and beyond.
Swearbox