What Secret Leeds subject surprised you the most?

[jim]

It's only Leeds culture if the jokes have a Leeds connection!

[dsco]

Did you hear the one about the self-entitled old bigot and the snowflake?

The snowflake designed, built and maintained a local history discussion forum for over 14 years, securing initial funding, seeding the content, rebuilding the site architecture once, redesigning the frontend twice, and then hosting and maintaining it independently for eight years after the council abandoned it, purely because he thought it was an important resource about Leeds' built environment and culture.

The self-entitled old bigot was politely asked to stop posting crap jokes about minorities because this is 2020 and most ordinary people are genuinely sick of it. He ignored that because he thinks he's special and other people's rules don't apply to him. So he was politely asked again. Inevitably he threw his dummy out of the pram and flounced out like 'a big girl's blouse' because he's the most sensitive, delicate, special little flower in the entire world. Then he came back because he's got literally nothing else to do with his life. Then he flounced out again. Then came back again.

Then eventually he got banned because the snowflake was so sick of listening to the self-entitled old bigot's whinging and moaning when he couldn't get EVERYTHING his own way ALL the time. No one really gave a toss though because the bigot never contributed anything of relevance or interest anyway. Several people actually clapped.

Badumptish.

TL;DR - VolvoJack is permanently banned because I'm sick of him and his nonsense. I'll be keeping an eye on various other folks as well. If anyone else wants kicking out, please feel free to whinge on about 'free speech' in the usual self-entitled old bigot manner and I'll get that sorted for you directly. If you don't like the rules here, build your own bloody website

For clarity:
- WarringtonRhino, your cartoons are excellent and always very welcome, as are your other many and varied contributions
- for anyone with jokes that aren't based on mocking or humiliating other people, especially women, non-white people, religions other than CofE, people who aren't straight, Irish people, gypsies/travellers, and basically anyone else who's not a white British old man: please feel free, knock yourself out

[dsco]

What ever way you look at it it has at times kept the site active 64 pages and over 200,000 views so what is the problem.

The problem Tilly (and I say this knowing you've been a valued and active member of the site for many years with lots of useful contributions) is that the joke thread frequently contained content that mocked and humiliated minorities and people who are not white straight old British men. That sort of thing makes people feel excluded from contributing. Ultimately it's just rude and inconsiderate of other people.

If you don't like it I'm sorry, but those are the rules. I don't take a heavy-handed approach to moderation by any means, but equally I'm not paying to host Paddy and Mick jokes on my servers.

It must also be said that fair warning was given on more than one occasion, by more than one person - it was consistently ignored and so here we are.

[warringtonrhino]

I am going to remove all the posts in the garden, in case they cause a fence.
I have just completed one of my cartoons which is a Leeds theme. where does it go now?

[buffaloskinner]

Start a new thread in General Chat, and call it Cartoons

[jma]

There's always a lot more going on than meets the eye and mine have been opened today.

Leaving the joke thread completely aside, I'll be sorry to lose volvojack, even though I now understand it was inevitable.

I like hearing other people's reminiscences and he certainly had some. I also ramble on, but declaring an interest as a 75 year-old man, that's how it is. It's not easy to judge how what you write online affects others; the golden rule is to err on the side of caution. Another is that when there is feedback, heed it.

[chemimike]

What ever way you look at it it has at times kept the site active 64 pages and over 200,000 views so what is the problem.

The problem Tilly (and I say this knowing you've been a valued and active member of the site for many years with lots of useful contributions) is that the joke thread frequently contained content that mocked and humiliated minorities and people who are not white straight old British men. That sort of thing makes people feel excluded from contributing. Ultimately it's just rude and inconsiderate of other people.

If you don't like it I'm sorry, but those are the rules. I don't take a heavy-handed approach to moderation by any means, but equally I'm not paying to host Paddy and Mick jokes on my servers.

It must also be said that fair warning was given on more than one occasion, by more than one person - it was consistently ignored and so here we are.

Speaking as a bit of an outsider (neither born, nor now living, in Leeds) who is a moderator on another (birmingham) locally-based forum and who has to deal regularly with some who think it is a dumping ground for useless, sometimes racist or bigoted, posts with no real relationship to Birmingham history or present day events, I have a great deal of sympathy with the mods here. This sort of behavior seems to be much more evident recently , and while it may (?) be appropriate in the deeper sewers of Facebook, are surely not suitable for places such as this.