I was surprised by the hostility and apparent fear of the forum moderators at any mention of Daniel’s name. For example, another forum member posted an excerpt from a BBC report about the case, and this brought rapid closure of the discussion, even though the forum posting only repeated material already in the public domain.
On 13 July I made another comment on the forum about Daniel’s wish for a Court Martial. I was invited into the ARRSE Chat Room, where I was left in no doubt what other forum members were thinking: “hang the c*nt” and other insults were hurled at me. Within minutes of this dialogue finishing all the chat comments and my non-controversial posts were removed from the forum.
ARRSE Moderators are trained to be biased
I was surprised when the thread suddenly disappeared, apparently censored by the moderator. Within minutes I received an email:
from British Army Rumour Service <noreply@arrse.co.uk>
to parellic [at] googlemail.com
date Aug 11, 2007 12:24 AM
subject Account Suspended
Your account at British Army Rumour Service has been suspended.
A short while later I left a message on the ARRSE website for the forum administrator:
‘I have received an email informing me that my account at the British Army Rumour Service has been suspended.
Can you please tell me for what reason my account was suspended, as I do not believe I have infringed any of your rules.’
from The Army Rumour Service <admin@arrse.co.uk>
to Mike Smith
date Aug 12, 2007 8:32 AM
subject Re: [Ticket#2007081110001503] British Army Rumour Service Feedback
Hi Mike,
Could you tell me your username and I'll look at it. Usual reasons are prolonged pain behaviour (but you should have been warned about this) or ‘spamming’ the forums with advertising (you wouldn't have got a warning about this). If neither of those fit then it could well be a mistake.
Regards,
Rob
Good CO
Site Admin
The Army Rumour Service
www.arrse.co.uk
from Mike Smith
to The Army Rumour Service <admin@arrse.co.uk>
date Aug 12, 2007 12:27 PM
subject Re: [Ticket#2007081110001503] British Army Rumour Service Feedback
Hi Rob,
Thank you for getting back to me.
My username on ARRSE is Gunner-smiff
I thought my behaviour was quite tame compared to some of the posts I have read on ARRSE, but perhaps I have been too honest in telling the truth.
Regards,
Mike
I didn’t receive any decision about my request and so I sent another email to ARRSE:
from Mike Smith
to The Army Rumour Service <admin@arrse.co.uk>
date Aug 16, 2007 4:58 PM
subject Re: [Ticket#2007081110001503] British Army Rumour Service Feedback
Hi again Rob,
I still seem to be suspended. It looks like my membership No. is 27559 if that helps.
Regards,
Mike
from The Army Rumour Service <admin@arrse.co.uk>
to Mike Smith
date Aug 17, 2007 5:09 PM
subject Re: [Ticket#2007081110001503] British Army Rumour Service Feedback
Mike,
I've just had a look at your posts on the site and also visited your blog, your wikipedia entry and a few other pages that I’ve found on google. I have to say that I wasn’t previously aware of your case but it makes interesting reading.
Anyway you have clearly come onto the site to further your own agenda and I’m afraid that this isn’t acceptable. One of our moderator team spotted this and removed your posts and asked us to suspend your username which is what we’ve done. I’m afraid that we will not be re-activating it.
Regards
Bad CO
from The Army Rumour Service <admin@arrse.co.uk>
to Mike Smith
date Aug 17, 2007 5:13 PM
subject Re: [Ticket#2007081110001503] British Army Rumour Service Feedback
Hopefully my last cleared that up but just in case it didn’t:
Suspended as you have no real Army link and are using the site to push your own agenda.
Account will not be reactivated.
Regards
Bad CO
Site Admin
The Army Rumour Service
www.arrse.co.uk
Well, that seems fairly blunt; I don’t feel this approach is really justified because there are other forum members getting away with bigoted and unacceptable behaviour on ARRSE. And doesn’t everyone push their own agenda - it’s calling voicing your opinions.
As it says on the ARRSE Homepage:
‘ARRSE users include serving, ex and future members of the British Army, their family and friends, and an ever increasing and very welcome number of users from the wider military community; the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Air Force and non-British armies and military.’
The fact that I have friends who have been members of the Army leads me to believe that I fall within the scope of the above statement - at least that is how I interpret the rules.
Apart from my basic qualification to be a forum member, I have also worked on projects in the past that benefited British armed forces, including the Army. I was involved with a submarine listening device that was used in the Falklands War, as well as various pressure transducers that were widely deployed in military equipment, and I played an important role in improving the anti-stall valves used in aircraft that would have carried British troops. I could list a lot more, but I suppose this is not seen as relevant to supporting our armed forces.
In 1977 I worked on the fuze system for Britain’s free-fall nuclear bomb, and due to my vigilance I discovered a design fault that caused unwanted spikes in the timing waveforms on one of the circuit boards. Nobody else had spotted this problem, and my discovery eventually led to the re-design of the earthing system on the board, which was not adequate. If I had not found this fault, then it would have been far more costly if it had been discovered later, and this could even have resulted in unacceptable risks to our servicemen had that fault remained in the equipment.
Apparently the ARRSE moderators take no notice of the real world. They are extremely sensitive people, who are afraid of criticism and any offence they may cause to the MoD. However, while ARRSE moderators are happy to censor fair comment, they have not shown themselves to be as conscientious when bigoted and biased comments are published on their forums.
Posts
