bakofoil

Fear on a message board? I don't get it.

BOO!

Edit: "To checkout you have to purchase at least:$89.00"

noway!

He tried to make me eat Haggis. That's all I'm saying.

haha! Haggis is preferable to black pudding, marginally.

I really don't think treehugger is trying to one-up anyone. That's all.

I think this is an overall great idea and a good way to stop a lot of the issues going on from my thread. No information lost, and hopefully less need to shut down threads. I'm excited to see how this turns out! Kudos to the OP!

It's all very well if someone is posting and continually and obviously violating the TOS then yes, I agree that keeping the thread open for others to enjoy and excluding the disruptive element from both sides of the argument is a more positive way to go. However, when it's used to stop one person engaged in polite disagreement with the OP or another poster in that thread then it's biased and heavy-handed moderation in the same way that thread locks have been.

Some people seem to feel that even respectful disagreement with their point of view is ruining their enjoyment of the site and they are all too quick to cry about being picked on or press the report button. I have seen this attitude many times of late. If you are that thin-skinned that you can't accept an alternate point of view then you really shouldn't be posting on an internet forum.

I think what's nice about it is the uniting factor. People start out on VJ in their global CSC or VSC K1 threads, or CR1, DCF, K3 threads and finally unite here as a generic UK visa filing crowd, encouraging each other's progress. Those who do and have kept the list are valuable contributors to this community.

I am such a beacon that Julez had to say it twice, yo.

I think it's more that the sentence didn't trip off the tongue so easily and she stammered it out.

It is REALLY hard! I took it over for about 2 weeks last year, and made so many mistakes that someone else started posting competing updates and I was sooooo relieved!

I guess it's a thankless task, so well done you for taking it on even for a relatively short period.

Congratulations to you Melissa! Good to see the Interview list is being updated again, so thanks also to amykathleen.

Good luck all who are waiting for interviews or final clearance on your visas. Especially those of you in AP, hope you get some good news very soon.

Julez does indeed have superior powers. Like seeing the RUB forum from Alaska.

Ok, not that I don't love you all, but is there any way we can get this back on topic before Kathryn comes in here and locks this too?

Someone start another thread for mod noms

did you say nom-noms?

Exacto. She protects her own. She also tells the rest of us cubs to STFU in the UK forum.

Precisely. She's not scared to tell ANYONE to STFU when they are being unreasonable. Whether you are prolifically worthy of being told to STFU, like umm, Charles and Gary. Or whether you're just being an occasional upstart and you need to be reminded to calm the heck down. Isn't that what we need more of here? Someone who is not scared to deal with an individual and not take it personally, rather than close threads down completely so that no one else can continue the discussion.

Hey, that's effective moderation! We don't want a mouse for a mod

I remember thinking Mags was always being snarky with me when communicating as a moderator via PM

She probably was. She's English and we snark with love. It's context

Get the right kind of mod, someone who doesn't flinch at the little stuff and understands things on a contextual level, and there isn't too much unnecessary moderation anyway. We've seen this work in the past; Mags and Lal.

I agree. Julez would be an excellent choice. She's a very well-respected member of the UK forum.

That was not all that abrasive

Yeah, you're losing your touch.

Welcome to Gen Y

You've always been my most favourite abrasive Legacy Member.

I remember when I started my own 'Visajourney' my NOA1 never looked like arriving. My petition, along with thousands of others, was caught up in a semi-truck outside CSC for an indeterminate length of time. Some of you 'n00bs' have received your NOA2's in less time than it took for my cheque to be cashed never mind receipt of the NOA1. Many of us in that particular thread sat and waited patiently for news from each other that there was movement at CSC finally. There was NO ONE to call because our petitions hadn't even been received.

I'm not telling you this because I think you should be sympathetic, or that waaaah! my petition took longer to approve than yours. I'm telling you because I got reminded that things would be ok, that there was little I could do about it, but that it would work out in the end. I was told this in a way more abrasive way, by some very famously abrasive VJ 'legacy members', than you guys are currently experiencing. And you know what? They were right. It was ok and thank goodness they stepped in to assure us that we wouldn't be forgotten, however detached from our experience they may have seemed to be.

I skim through the UK forums now and again and feel a little perspective might be in order sometimes. For the past year or so there has been an atmosphere of panic and immediacy and a lot of ME! ME! ME! One thing I noted about the invisibilised thread started by Dodi is that it was politely suggested to the OP that calling DOS fairly frequently for her own purposes may impact adversely on others who have more urgent need for that line. Particularly people in AP/AR. The response from the OP to this suggestion was fairly abrasive in itself and I, and countless others probably, lost sympathy for her argument at that point.

Please stop by and read the AP thread one of these days when you feel the urge to obsess over your own petition. It's very sobering and humbling and it will kill an awful lot of time. And that's just London, probably one of the easiest consulates to obtain a visa through.

The more I think about it, the more Gary seems to me an automaton, randomly generating rants on American women (fat/shrewish/deluded), Vermont (guns/white people/better than Illinois) and guns (good/big/fun).

Think about it. A guy proclaims he has married the most beautiful woman in the world, and she's naked in his bed and he's one of the most prolific and long-winded posters on this forum. There's something wrong with that picture. Methinks he protests too much.

Velveeta moulded ####### of course!

One learns how to appreciate fondue having grown up in a slum and enduring sexual slavery at such a ripe young age.

What's not to like about Alan Alda and Gin and Tonic every time you load a web page?

BIG HUGS TO ALL THE UK LADIES! esp those with errant pregnancy hormones.

Yep, it's all good. Hugs to all

It's just some fake profile that has a really funny/pathetic blog.

Maven is a good friend of mine and has already stated openly that she met up with Melissa in person. By association are you suggesting that Maven is a fake too?

Me too. I have a thing about guys with only one good eye and raffishly mussy hair, which explains my crush on mid-90s Gordon Brown.

That explains my crush on Thom Yorke.