An Announcement.

[Mr Erickson]

This Morgan troll sounds like an idiot to me so why give into someone like that. If you shut down the forum Morgan will think his won. My suggestion delete Morgan's new account and get Mods in place along with other safe guards because if you close the forum down then you are cutting off a really good avenue of useful information/data and feed back.
From a research position this is a poor decision and one I hope you reverse.

[SM Kovalinsky]

This Morgan troll sounds like an idiot to me so why give into someone like that. If you shut down the forum Morgan will think his won. My suggestion delete Morgan's new account and get Mods in place along with other safe guards because if you close the forum down then you are cutting off a really good avenue of useful information/data and feed back.
From a research position this is a poor decision and one I hope you reverse.

You are absolutely right. Morgan sounds like a stalking fan who got his feelings hurt. And yes, these people can be weeded out, and very easily. I pray Tony will listen to your words of wisdom. You are 100% right.
Tony, The Morgans, Viators, Winterguys and Ecosurfers are the chaff you must rid yourself. But do not set fire to the wheat, the overwhelming ones, whose name are legion, who love your work, admire you without resenting you, and above all--- those of us who feel blessed to have encountered such fine work as your CTF series, and the man behind that work.

[SM Kovalinsky]

Guys,
Thanks for your comments of support. This is not a decision I have taken lightly but one that I have considered long and hard.

I had hoped that this Forum would really take off and that each posting would engender a whole series of comments and counter comments. This has simply not happened. Take a look down the list of recent postings. On average there are one or two responses then the thread simply dies. This is not what happens on other Forums with over a thousand members.

What happens is that a person joins, places a few postings expecting responses, and then goes away because nobody has responded to their own comments. I can understand this feeling but if all we expect is responses to our own contributions and never respond to other people's this is what happens.

I guess that in the early days we all knew each other so their was a dynamic of people who know each other personally responding. Over the last year or so the original crew have disappeared leaving a much larger number of members who only know each other by their pseudonyms. We lose in one way and gain in another. ...........



Yes, it is great being a writer .... Particularly when after doing all this your work is attacked and sneered at from people who hide behind psuedonyms

You are right, Tony. Back in 2007-08, we were like a little family : You, Martin, Jez, me, Ruth, Ed, and perhaps 7 other regular posters. Everyone who posted got a slew of responses, because we were all personally invested. On a big, impersonal forum, this is not going to happen.

Everyone gets offended, and flounces off.

I wonder if you were to get rid of all the subsections, and make them just informative intro posts, and just have once section for posting, if this might help? Perugia Murder File, a very successful and famous forum, has thousands of members but only one posting section with perhaps a dozen people who actually post. Restructuring is not a bad option.

[SM Kovalinsky]

@Cam:

Your courage...hearts quote is beautiful, and beautifully applied to Tony.

I have edited my post on Morgan ( a few posts up) as some alarms went off in the basement in the brain .....Morgan's post is very suspicious and hinky.......

Here is my edited post on it:

If what you were saying about Tony were true (your opening remarks above, bolded and red by me), then I could see your feeling this way. But please clearly describe what led you to view him this way? How do you know he has done this to many people? Where could you have gotten that information? Be specific.

Odd, that you barely know Tony - and yet, you speak with passionate resentment about his selfish ways, as though he is a person you once loved, and have come to resent. How odd! How unlike someone who was only recently invited to join his forum.....

Could some of this resentment stem from your own expectations or need for attention? Please be honest with yourself.

I find it peculiar, to say the least, that you have such emotion invested in Peake (scorn is most definitely the flip side of admiration - most readers of theorists are aloof, and would not feel so insulted by his so-called using of their stories.) Your description of Tony as a little boy hogging a ball, makes you sound boyish and sad yourself - perhaps your feelings have been deeply hurt. Did you see him in person, and think he might become a close friend? Because that is not a realistic expectation. He has enough friends. His reading public know this. How can he befriend thousands and thousands? No one can, nor should be expected to.
ALSO: I do NOT think Tony meant YOU in terms of making negative comments. I think he meant the trolls, people who open an account to start trouble, then vanish. He may not have had the time to ponder on your particular dilemma, which is so full of emotional resentment, as to stand out as quite strange....Yes indeed, you sound absolutely star-struck and invested.....Even your view of Tony as having "taken the ball home, so no one can play" resonates as almost deeply disturbing.....

Two more RED FLAGS:
1.You claim that you found Peake ludicrous, and asked him to kindly delete you from his forum. OK, a. why did you not just leave, in a dignified way? Why did you want him to know? and WHY did you continue to lurk here, so that you not only knew about today's development, but chose to comment at length on it? You sound a bit over invested....

2.It is something the way you say, nagrom = morgan, just like someone once said "l lemarcs" = "scramell". (Cam and Tony: I do not believe in psychological coincidences. Can you see why I am taking aback by this?)
( I would weed this one out, Tony. And if that sounds cruel, so be it.)

[Derkein]

Got to agree with the folks above. Why let a single troll with multiple accounts control your life? Many people have been targeted in this way in the past, and many more will be in the future.

If you want to shut the forum, then do so and thank you for hosting it as long as you have,
... but if you are doing it because of one nuts actions, or even the actions of half a dozen folk who want the forum shut down (or simply cause mischief), then your endeavors for the test of your life will meet similar ends.
It almost certainly won't end here whatever you do.

Regards whatever you choose to do
Derkein

addendum
LOL Freudian slip there which I will leave in place.

[Anthony Peake]

I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the responses I have received both here, on Facebook and by private emails and messages in regard to my announcement about closing this Forum yesterday. Of course the Trolls will argue this was simply a cynical ploy by me to get attention. Quite frankly they can think what they like ....they do anyway .... but this was not true. It was literally a response to a series of personal attacks on my credibility that I found intolerable. Indeed if somebody had made such comments to me in a pub they would have ended up with smashed teeth and a broken nose .... and those of you who have known me over the years (before "Tony" the working-class"scouser" - scouser defined as born within the Sound of the Bidston gun by the way, which makes Wirralians technically more "scouse" than Liverpudlians - Tranmere Rovers fanatic and all-round "guy-down-the-pub morphed into "Anthony" the writer who has to be sooo careful of what he says and does in case it upsets some "billy-no-mates" sad, no-mark Troll, sitting in front of his PC in Nowheresville) will know that this is not simple posturing but a statement of fact. I have a hair-trigger temper and will react suddenly and without warning, as my associates when I used to play football know only too well.

This irritation has to find an outlet somewhere. I cannot physically sort out the problem and I find that dealing with unknown individuals hiding behind pseudonyms on a Forum quite difficult. Whatever approach I take will be attacked; if I try to be friendly I am accused of being condescending and possibly showing weakness, if I go on the attack they have won, if I ignore them they will simply come back at me accusing me of "cowardice" etc etc. These curious individuals clearly get their rocks off by causing the maximum amount of damage. What has really got to me is the level of PERSONAL attacks I have to simply take - attacks that are simply not true by the way. For example I do not have an American Agent. Wish I had but the fact of the matter is that this is a lie, a provable lie. This is the level of patent untruths that these social rejects peddle - and when you are dealing with anonymous attackers who are happy to lie to get their points across on a public forum you have a real problem. What is it with these people .... is it jealousy or something more insidious?

I could go on and on about this issue but, quite frankly, it is a waste of time and effort. These strange individuals are a reality in the lawless lands of Cyberspace and they will not go away unless radical action is taken. My next posting will present a possible solution that will allow this Forum to continue and not be lost to the many hundreds of people from across the world who have contributed directly to its development, and the thousands that read it but do not join in .....

[Mr Erickson]

Well your metnoia Tony is great news this is a fantastic forum and I hope to contribute more in the coming months.
You know when I first joined the forum I made some comments and other posters who are strong supporters of your work jumped on me. Since then I have been won around by your research and how well you put it all together. I still do not like the idea that we keep having to come back and do it all again, although paradoxically if someone asked me would you change anything in your life I would say no unequivocally. And the reason for that is the so-called Butterfly effect from chaos theory. If I changed just one thing in the past my life would be totally different and I could be in a worse place without the people I love like the grandchildren, whom I adore.

[Anthony Peake]

Thanks Mr Erickson.

I am pleased to say that you are not alone in this. Over the years most, if not all, posters who have joined with reservations have been, to a certain extent, won round by they way in which this Forum really is open minded. I have no axe to grin with regard to my hypotheses and I have no idea if they are in any way true reflections of the way things are, but they do present a framework in which other propositions can be attached and other elements demolished. As I have stated many times the ITLAD/CTF thing no longer belongs to me ... it is out there in the noosphere for others to take forward, amend or deconstruct. This is the way I want it to be. This is way negative attacks get under my skin. Wrong assumptions are made about my motivations and intentions. What this is NOT is a cult-in-the-making. It is simply a place for people to reasonably and fairly discuss and debate the BIG ISSUES regarding life, death and the nature of reality. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am hopeful that the new, non-Anthony Peake Forum will continue on this path .... who knows, we may come up with something of real worth .....

Cheers

Tony.

p.s. I am now signing off as I am about to start work .....

[SM Kovalinsky]

I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the responses I have received both here, on Facebook and by private emails and messages in regard to my announcement about closing this Forum yesterday. Of course the Trolls will argue this was simply a cynical ploy by me to get attention. Quite frankly they can think what they like ....they do anyway .... but this was not true. It was literally a response to a series of personal attacks on my credibility that I found intolerable. Indeed if somebody had made such comments to me in a pub they would have ended up with smashed teeth and a broken nose .... and those of you who have known me over the years (before "Tony" the working-class"scouser" - scouser defined as born within the Sound of the Bidston gun by the way, which makes Wirralians technically more "scouse" than Liverpudlians - Tranmere Rovers fanatic and all-round "guy-down-the-pub morphed into "Anthony" the writer who has to be sooo careful of what he says and does in case it upsets some "billy-no-mates" sad, no-mark Troll, sitting in front of his PC in Nowheresville) will know that this is not simple posturing but a statement of fact. I have a hair-trigger temper and will react suddenly and without warning, as my associates when I used to play football know only too well.

This irritation has to find an outlet somewhere. I cannot physically sort out the problem and I find that dealing with unknown individuals hiding behind pseudonyms on a Forum quite difficult. Whatever approach I take will be attacked; if I try to be friendly I am accused of being condescending and possibly showing weakness, if I go on the attack they have won, if I ignore them they will simply come back at me accusing me of "cowardice" etc etc. These curious individuals clearly get their rocks off by causing the maximum amount of damage. What has really got to me is the level of PERSONAL attacks I have to simply take - attacks that are simply not true by the way. For example I do not have an American Agent. Wish I had but the fact of the matter is that this is a lie, a provable lie. This is the level of patent untruths that these social rejects peddle - and when you are dealing with anonymous attackers who are happy to lie to get their points across on a public forum you have a real problem. What is it with these people .... is it jealousy or something more insidious?

I could go on and on about this issue but, quite frankly, it is a waste of time and effort. These strange individuals are a reality in the lawless lands of Cyberspace and they will not go away unless radical action is taken. My next posting will present a possible solution that will allow this Forum to continue and not be lost to the many hundreds of people from across the world who have contributed directly to its development, and the thousands that read it but do not join in .....

Tony, it is great news indeed that you are open to possible solutions, and I think that simply ignoring some of the troll activity will help. As for the parts that are too bad, rules about one account/one name only can be put into place, and certain IPs could be banned. Remember, the more your popularity grows, the more likely that certain over-sensitive individuals will take offense where none was intended, but no human being can possibly expect to please everyone nor be responsible for their feelings. You do not owe constant ego support of others. Just keep on with your great work and know that your supporters vastly outweigh the resentful. I am convinced all will be well.

[Sisyphus]

Its good news that the forums arent closing. Why not do what other forums do? Have a dedicated moderator team. Suspend and ban members for infractions of the rules (have the rules in a sticky or on the registration page that users must agree to abide by)

I did notice that there was some stuff going on on Amazon between someone called "Winterguy/Ecosurfer" and someone called B.Decicco.

If someone doesnt like the books then ok everyone has their opinion. There are plenty of people who do like them and get something out of your books (well ive read "The Daemon", havent finished "Is there Life after Death.." yet My review is up there as well

Havent read your book on astral projection yet..should be interesting read as ive read quite a few books on this..interested to read your take on it