Another one bites the dust (part 2)

It's the end of an era for internet-using fans of the Glovers with the news that the green room has been shut down by its owner, almost certainly for good. The end came quite suddenly yesterday afternoon when owner/admin Hoagy tired of paying what I'm sure was a considerable sum every year to give a platform to a small but vocal minority of users who seem to think their 'right' to say what they like as aggressively and obnoxiously as possible superseded everyone else's 'right' to enjoy discussing what we all supposedly have in common - Yeovil Town FC.

We've been here before of course. Before the green room came along we had the Ciderspace Forum, which Badger, HHH and yours truly moderated. We ran the Ciderspace Forum for 6 years from 1999 to 2005 and by the end of those 6 years we couldn't wait to close it down, for dare I say it much the same sort of reasons that Hoagy has now closed the green room. There comes a time that one tires of kicking against the pricks (to coin a phrase), especially when you are the one shelling out the bucks to keep the forum open.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, free speech is a privilege, not a right. With free speech comes responsibility, the responsibility to treat others opinions with respect and not to take disagreement as an excuse to start throwing around insults or threats. Some people think that 'because it's the internet' they can say things and behave in a manner which they wouldn't dream of doing if they were talking face-to-face with the person they're disagreeing with. And they are the ones that spoil it for the reasonable majority, because eventually the users who make a good forum worth reading and contributing to realise they've got better things to do with their time than plough through reams of self-serving crap. And then when the moderator tries to winnow out the idiots and the ones who are killing the forum with their moronic one-line 'banter', you get accused of censorship or playing god and that's when the threatening emails start, and you realise that the game isn't worth the candle.

This being the internet two new forums have sprung up overnight to replace the green room, let's hope that at least one of them has the staying power to prove an adequate replacement. You pays your money (well, you probably don't) and you makes your choice: Town Talk; or Yeovil True. For what it's worth I prefer the look and feel of the first option, but will happily use either. What's important is that at least one forum succeeds. The only people I can think of who will be delighted by the green room's demise currently work at Huish Park!

Just read: Martyr by Rory Clements. After the never-ending Sarum it was a relief to get back to an ordinary sized book - a mere 300-odd pages from start to finish. Martyr, the author's debut novel, is set in Elizabethan London and does a good job in bringing that period to life. A murder mystery, it's obviously meant to appeal to fans of the excellent Shardlake series of novels by CJ Sansom, and does a decent enough job of that. It's the first of a series and despite it's (minor) flaws I enjoyed it enough to look forward to reading the next when it's released later in the year.