patrick... i respect your long reply and the fact you obviously care alot about what happens on here. i do totally see that what's happened here over the last few days is bad for this board. i'm sure many of us have seen ALOT worse on other places but the fact is that with 500 members this type of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. and it has to be dealt with right now. hence the long, long, long topic!!!!!

i didn't take notice of ryan's icons on that original post but to be honest it's words that matter - not icons. and the fact is he was well arrogant with a good, genuine person from the trance board and called his music 'shoddy trance' blatently disregarded the rules of the board. like it or not, he broke a rule. i created that rule becuase of years and years of checking out message forums and realising that that, along with slagging off dj's without good reason, this was the single most distructive factor in message board communities. i'm sticking to that rule because i believe i'm right. i want a friendly community that discusses issues within music, get's a little bit hot under the collar, but never gets into territory that is absolutely getting us nowhere and works you up to the fact that you're thinking all night about what to say to a pointless non-musical argument.

sure miromiric brought up the subject of rape, but i'm looking in at that from the outside and it was obvious it was a joke. why bring up all this rape shit?

i've always said i don't want pointless arguements and bitching on here and i remember when i first created the board a member said - if you control that, you're going to make this board different than any other board out there. and what a great point that is. stop the bitching and pointless slagging and you've got a great little positive community. that's what i thought the majority of you liked about this board.

so i have to look when stuff like this comes up and think who has been the instigator of the pointless arguements. some of you may say it was me for having a go at ryan for telling corbzy that his music was 'shoddy trance'. but like i say, he broke a rule. i spotted it immediately and asked him nicely not to do it. but then he goes and argues with me. and now he's arguing with miromiric (a loyal follower of the board who's been here since day one and never starts arguments with anyone!!!). it just seems like he's a toch too arrogant for my liking and would rather start an arguement than a genuine discussion.

patrick, i see what you're saying. ryan seems like a perfectly nice bloke when he's being nice, but i have to uphold the rules of the board and he's broken several of them along the way....

anyway ppl, give me a few more thoughts and then i'll close the topic.