Biggus

"It's about not being mean and ganging up. Ganging up requires a majority, and a bit of mob mentality. That's what we had and it's not good for the site." It's about nothing of the sort. What we've had is a shit-stirrer, stirring some shit. I don't believe you're any more interested in Biggus as a writer than anyone else is. You manufactured a situation where this kind of discussion would take place and have enjoyed it very much. Congratulations, you're very clever. It's just like the old days. Blah, blah, blah.

How disappointing. I thought Sean Playfair was a top notch new writer to the site. Perhaps his next username can be King Grudge.

"It's about not being mean and ganging up. Ganging up requires a majority, and a bit of mob mentality." It doesn't follow, however, that any majority is 'ganging up' and displaying a 'mob mentality'. Every person who has commented negatively on Biggus in this thread has been someone who has expressed, previously, if not here, a genuine response to his work, arrived at through their own judgment. It is not a case of people piling in just because they see an easy victim, or an opportunity for a joke. You have misinterpreted the situation.

"Dear, oh dear. You credit me with WAY too much machiavellian intelligence." Who said anything about intelligence? Just a shit-stirrer. Nothing more. Cheers.

"contemptuous of your peers, contemptuous of the idea of improving your work and contemptuous of your audience" Whoever Buggus is, I'm really starting to like him

"ABCtales.com will not discriminate on the grounds of age, colour, disability, ethnic origin, gender, marital status, nationality or national origins, race, religious beliefs, responsibility for dependents, sexuality or unrelated criminal conviction. Similarly it will not allow anyone to use the site to discriminate against or abuse individuals or groups of people on these grounds. ABCtales.com supports the principle of freedom of speech and makes every effort to maintain as open a society as possible within its community of users. However, it will not publish written work that contains abuse on the ground listed above and the management will remove from the website any such work it discovers has been published. Automatic processes are in place to try to prevent the publication of such abusive material." Interesting. This is probably the most open website I know, but if we took the above guidelines stringently we could exclude a huge amount of work, so I take it that it's a sort of managerial statement which is mandatory nowadays, but hopefully only invoked if someone is persistently targeting one section of society in a way which is poorly-written and not funny or clever. In my local writing group I've learnt that you can abuse right-wing politicians, the Royal family, religion and spew out explicit sexual or violent content, but if you make mild fun of black or gay people you're skating on thin ice; censorship's stil alive and kicking, just the goalposts change. White middle-aged middle-class male straight writers have to be very careful, we can offend just about everyone!

Double-post

"In my local writing group I've learnt that you can abuse right-wing politicians, the Royal family, religion and spew out explicit sexual or violent content, but if you make mild fun of black or gay people you're skating on thin ice..." I don't think this comparison is very pertinent. I'm sure you could equally abuse left-wing politicians, Hollywood and atheism - it would make people uncomfortable because they probably wouldn't share your views (if you're in a book club), but other than that? The reason you're 'skating on thin ice' if you make fun of black or gay people is that you're discriminating against people because for things that are their own business and have no impact on their morality*, rather than behaviour and lifestyle choices that can be seen as unethical or thoughtless, affecting others in a negative way. I don't think the fact that people find that offensive counts as censorship. After all, sexual or violent content is still skating on thing ice in some contexts. I wouldn't read such a piece out to my parents, for instance, but I wouldn't say I've been censored. * (I've tried to find a better way of phrasing it than this, but my brain isn't working too well today. Tis Sunday.)

"In my local writing group I've learnt that you can abuse right-wing politicians, the Royal family, religion and spew out explicit sexual or violent content, but if you make mild fun of black or gay people you're skating on thin ice;" I don't know about your writing group but there's no shortage comic portrayals of black and gay people in modern British culture. For example, Little Britain, Catherine Tate and imitators would be very short of material without them. What is now less popular than it used to be, is mocking people specifically for being black or gay. I agree with Jack that this is a different thing to mocking or criticising people specifically for being right-wing or religious or for choosing to participate in the monarchy. "censorship's stil alive and kicking, just the goalposts change." Well, people will always be offended by things and will say so. That's not censorship, though, that's people expressing an opinion. I think the balance on ABC is usually about right. People are free to post writing that some people are offended by and people are free to post on the forums explaining that they are offended and why.

Fair point, I'm just a bit worried that easily-offended people might get writing removed from the site if they quote the site's guidelines. I wouldn't miss the Biggus stuff because, in my opinion, it's poorly-written and neither original nor funny, but I wouldn't want to see good writing rejected if it becomes very edgy in any way, as ABC has a good record compared to most writing sites I've visited.

Thankyou Neil - but I also want to be as inclusive as I possibly can and that means not discriminating (in terms of allowing it on the site) between good and bad writing. Good writing is rewarded with that most cherished of items, a subjective cherry! I think that the inclusive nature of the site does frighten some people away - and I loathe the back biting and stupid nature of some threads. I am becoming less tolerant of them.

Sometimes I note that Biggus comes up with a lot of ideas but what is frustrating is that the ideas are always dealt with in the same funny rhyming way.It would be interesting if he could explore and experiment,take risks.