Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Who Wrecks Forums

More than eighteen hours ago Heritage Action's Nigel Swift, having noted that John Winter had refused to publish my comment (responding to the points he made about a twenty-year old newspaper article he was attempting to use as proof of something-or-other), he sent his own comment - with a copy to me. Mr Winter has done Nigel the courtesy neither of acknowledging he'd received it, nor of publishing it. I've therefore been told I can make it public so that readers can see the point of view these people are rejecting (the bold, and imperial purple colour are mine).

"heritageaction 18 August 2013 at 5:20 pm  Your comment will appear after being approved.

"Mr Barford’s is the first I have ever removed.”

And what about mine? Will I be similarly silenced? I’ll make it easy for you. The Journal has started to restrict contributions so you can just go tit for tat regarding both me and Paul and get cheered from the gallery. Before you do, this is WHY the Journal does it….

We are disinclined to provide a platform for those British detectorists who oppose comprehensive regulation of artefact hunting to ensure maximum public benefit so unless they say they support it they won’t get their voice heard on the Heritage Journal.

This has been called “an attack on free speech”. On one level it is. If you report all your finds and act ethically, you’re not going to object to legal regulation of the activity to ensure maximum public benefit as it isn’t going to affect what you do. If you don’t, you are - because it will. So the effect of our proviso is that it still allows ethical detectorists to post while excluding unethical ones.

Our justification for doing it is twofold:
Practical grounds: unethical detectorists include those who tend to be incomprehending, abusive, foul mouthed or threatening and who often indulge in multiple sockpuppetry. They have previously wrecked our forum and others. So they add nothing but noise and a bad image of themselves and others and we have better things to do than deal with a steady stream of such postings.

Philosophical grounds: The British portable antiquities policy is a victim of its own dialogue. Not all detectorists are worth engaging with yet policy has not changed since the time when there was a charitable hope they all were. 15 years is long enough to have established that co-operation is never going to be forthcoming from some. It is those who are excluded, for ours is a conservation website concerned with the public’s interest and those that have demonstrated they are not interested in the public’s interest have no role.

Now, if you can construct a case to suggest there is any sort of equivalence between those people and Paul Barford (or any Heritage Action member) on any level I’d be surprised. You’re excluding the wrong person and including a lot of the wrong people as I suspect you know, Mr Winter".

I will admit that there was a bet on, as to whether Winter would be swayed by that argument, one of us still thought that there was enough reason in his head to see that Nigel has good arguments here and is right. The other was more pessimistic, and won the bet. Have another read and ask yourself, what adjectives would best describe somebody who, after reading, and presumably thinking about, that would not see the sense in it?

Then consider that individuals like this are precisely the sort of people the PAS wants to grab more and more millions of public quid to make into the "partners" of the British Museum, archaeological heritage professionals - and to whom they want us all to entrust the exploitation of the archaeological record. Take a good look and decide what you think about that as a sustainable heritage management "policy". 

Still, that is PRECISELY the sort of reasoning the PAS itself rejected on its forum, calling Nigel a "Troll" for making such points on their public outreach forum. This is a typical example of what the PAS calls "vexatious blogging". Who, actually, would find such points vexations and why?  [And if the PAS wish to contest that this is typical of that "aggressively archaeological" stuff the people they label "trolls" were contributing to what should have been an open public discussion, let them re-open the full archives of that forum for everyone to see what these people and their partners consider "vexatious", and how their "partners" react to it. Go on. Do it. 

UPDATE 19th Aug 2013
TBR (Tekkie Brain Rot) has taken hold, there really must be something in those harmful nanovibrations given out by those machines or some toxins in the corrosion products. The formerly astute Mr Winter now proclaims the above comments "meaningless" to him. Have another read and ask yourself, what adjectives would best describe somebody who, after reading, and presumably thinking about, that would not see the sense in it?