As a result of recent posts on the forum, the Forum Team had a discussion this evening as to what action should be taken, following feedback from the community on the original "What's annoying you today?" thread. We mutually agreed that the most important thing would be to make a statement to the community, describing the action we've decided to take.

First and foremost, the "What's annoying you today?" thread has been removed from the off-topic section, and is now only visible to moderators and administrators in a private section of the forum. It has been replaced by this thread.

I have also taken this opportunity to review our Policies & Procedures, which can be found at the bottom of this page.

On all forums I have moderated, I have brought one rule with me, and it is as follows:

When posting on the forum it is also beneficial to yourself if you use self moderation. Ensure that you review your replies/posts before posting them on the forum. If you feel that the post could come across in the wrong manner try to re-word it to ensure other users do not feel offended/outraged by your post.

In short: don't do something to someone, if you wouldn't like it done to you.

I certainly feel that tonight's posts could have been easily avoided, and very much like falling dominoes, one post led to another. Due to friendship circles within the enthusiast community, I feel it's very easy to see the story from one side and not the other - this was briefly touched upon by another user in the posts made earlier tonight, too.

No users have been banned on this occasion. Whilst the majority of members were in favour of disciplining one user in particular, I certainly feel that said user did not do anything on this site to merit that particular action. We have put this user on posting moderation, which means that said user's posts have to be approved by a moderator before they hit the public domain. This is not a permanent arrangement, and should last no longer than a week (i.e until we are satisfied that no slanderous remarks are going to be thrown around, and that the events which have happened today have blown over). We cannot and do not condone the actions of said member which were originally discussed, but we do not feel it would be appropriate for us to ban said user, and it would be more appropriate for the individual bus operators to take their own action if they feel that they have received false complaints.

If you would not like to see posts from a specific member of this forum, go to their profile and click "Ignore". You would do this in real life if you did not want to associate with someone, and the same can be applied (to an extent) on this forum too.

For anyone that was worried that this user making posts on NEB could tarnish the relationship between enthusiasts and bus operators, I can assure you that this is not so. Management of these companies are not dim-witted, and know that the behaviour of one enthusiast does not reflect the behaviour of every enthusiast in the community. Our Terms of Use states:

The opinions contained in the forum are those of the author and do not represent those of North East Buses.

That's all for tonight, folks, and let's put this to bed. If anyone has any issues with this decision, please do not hesitate to PM me.