Worlingworth - Deleted Comments

How many of these dots
were placed on the map only after
 their veracity was documented?

Metal detectorists like to think that I select comments which they send for publication, they allege that when they send something which challenges what I say, I will not publish it. That is their excuse. As we can see, most of the merry men with metal detectors are distinguished from the rest of society by the fact that they cannot write three consecutive coherent sentences in English to save their lives. As a result, very few of them actually do try to articulate their thoughts about where I am "wrong" about their exploitive hobby. When they do, I generally post up the ones that follow the guidelines I have for commenters here. It's mostly a sorry collection of stereotypical thinking, straw man arguments, special pleading and downright ignorance. But that is what anyone - like the PAS - who wants to "educate" that lot and use the material they produce as some kind of archaeological evidence are up against.

A few weeks ago I wrote a fairly routine vanilla post on a "local history group" that has again organized a commercial artefact hunting grabfest in a Suffolk village. All was quiet there until a couple of days ago when a "Rob" and a "Bob" decided they would join forces to give me some aggro, with the help of a "Bill". Have a look at the way these "ambassadors of the hobby" go about it, and what that too says about the sort of people that take part in metal detecting in the commuter shadow of the Capital no less. What is interesting is that one of them ("Bob") decided he was going to have a go at another post of mine where I questioned a rather unusual coin which the coin dealer selling it claims had been found in Suffolk. Interestingly, the sender after contacting the FLO decided to delete the short text he had earlier decided to post in the public domain. However, in the Internet, nothing is lost and the text can be retrieved from the cache. Here's what he said and now wishes he had not:

bob has left a new comment on your post "Worlingworth Local History Wreckers" (1 October 2015 at 10:57):
Mr Barford I understand you are a archaeologist and have vast knowledge on the subject but you unsavoury comments regarding the byzantine coin found in Suffolk are unfounded and not correct . Firstly the finder had full permission to detect the land and full permission to sell it as it was found on land owned by his partner .I can independently confirm that it did come from land in Suffolk I saw it come out ! Further more all the necessary steps were taken with regards to reporting it it was handed in to the f.l.o. at Ipswich detecting club a record of the location was recorded and the coin was taken to be identified at bury St edmonds by p.a.s team who returned it to him with the relevant information . The next issue I want to bring to your attention is the yet again Unfair and unnecessary comments you made about the rally held in my home village of Worlingworth . You are correct the organisers didn't ask about insurance but I can say with the upmost confidence that all the people that attended belong to a club in Suffolk for which you must have insurance .I no not all detectorist are honest but on the whole we all enjoy history and like to show our finds via a museum or a forum so please don't insinuate that we are all artifact theives .

Now, you can take a guess why he might now have deleted that post. Is it because he found out that not "everyone" had insurance? Hmmm.

Rob O'Brian too had second thoughts about one of his comments sent there, he deleted the flow-of-consciousness comment he posted on 1 October 2015 at 13:14:

I agree with with my learned friend Bob If you check the finds database for worlingworth I have no doubt I'm personally responsible for at least 50 % of the finds on there I always get my finds recorded I have donated finds of local interest to local museums and history groups and recently found a small Bronze Age hoard that is now in the process with the FLO , now most of my land is farm land that gets ploughed up every year so I'm not messing with any untouched soil mound you may want to scratch at a millimetre per day or similar I think Paul you may have had some bad experience with rouge detectorists but please don't tar us all with that brush , and if as I suspect you are just against detectorists full stop then please carry on with your blog if that's what u call it Thanks and to all good defectorists out there Happy Hunting] 1 October 2015 at 13:16

Again, you can guess why he decided to delete that, maybe he had second thoughts about calling somebody who thinks "utmost" is spelt with a "p" learned is a bit much before in his own mis-punctuated  re-iteration of the "we are not all nighthawks" argument mistaking the word "rogues" for a cosmetic.