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Welcome to B&B dalton.

Enjoy your stay, dalton, Philsophers' Ball, and RobDudley.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

I'd also suggest that if the problem had simply been confined to people such as Mrs.Aural Sects, Righty007 or myself, you probably wouldn't be seeing people coming over from CBn to take a look because they'd be glad we were gone. GS is like the ozone layer...you never miss it until it's gone.

I would agree with this statement. The problem at CBn isn't confined to one or two things, but there are a series of problems, most of which have been discussed in the various threads over on that site. Mainly it is due to the fact that there is only one moderator left on the site, which is no doubt an unenviable task to take on solo. Also, while I will say that there have been some issues on the site for a while, they were kept very well in check by the moderators. Once the reputation system was added, though, things started to change very quickly and it help speed up a decline in the site. I've really only used the site for its personal messenger system to keep in touch with some of the people that I regularly conversed with on the site but haven't posted much in the last few months outside of a small handful of posts here and there. If CBn had kept a full staff of moderators and had not implemented the reputation system, I have no doubt that it would still be a running quite strong even if it didn't get back to the heights it experienced back in 2005-2006 when the recent Bondmania was at its peak.

I think that this site is in a much better position to be successful at this point in time, if for no other reason than there is a full staff of moderators to keep things from getting out of control should things venture in that direction. With that said, though, it does seem as though there is a lot less drama here (I haven't noticed any at all in the short time I've been here), which is quite refreshing.

Although not a n00bie, I've got to welcome back Harms after going AWOL a few months ago. You're always been the lifeblood of any film talk on these boards.

Glad you're back mate. :)

Sharky wrote:

Although not a n00bie, I've got to welcome back Harms after going AWOL a few months ago. You're always been the lifeblood of any film talk on these boards.

Glad you're back mate. :)

Yes, welcome back, Harms. Don't go and do an Ambler on us, will you?

I'll try not to.

My hiatus hasn't changed me much. Mostly allowed for me to grow a luxurious, snow-white beard.



I'm going to be such a hit at Christmas parties.

I am also a nu-beard. I now look like Dr House only twice as grouchy.

Avarice wrote:

I am also a nu-beard. I now look like Dr House only twice as grouchy.

You've gone from William Petersen to Hugh Laurie? :shock:

In colouring - my beard is a fetching pepper-grey. Apparently this happens if you spend too much time in forums.

It's a good job you shave, Oppers.

Louis Armstrong wrote:

Lots of ex-pats here.
I propose a new name & banner for the board:

Excellent.

And a very warm welcome to all of the new members registered in the last few days. If the last few pages are anything to go by, things are really looking up.

PS. Nobody need worry about "problem members" here. In response to Mrs Sects' enquiry, the possibility of giving new members with "bad reputations" a clean slate on their arrival here is a very real option, as there'd be no real mileage in re-igniting old feuds except to just fill the boards with crap which could make decent members here walk if they become tired of it.

On the subject of "problem members", I think many here already know the drill regarding what happens to them, and we don't even let it get to the third step before it's "enemy action". Put simply, if someone's here to piss about or cause trouble, they get booted. No point beating about the bush on that. We've a good group of members here who are loyal to this place and make an effort to contribute. If someone just waltzes in here trying to screw that up, they're gone the moment I get wind of it. We don't have terms and conditions or rules here, and I'd like to think we don't need them. Hopefully that can continue.

Hi I'm a cbn refugee as well. Hope things are more chill here.

I'm glad to see Gravity's Silhouette has a nice reception here. He's a fine chap who's opinions differ greatly from mine but I always enjoy reading what he has to say. And, I'm the lucky bloke who received his extremely gracious gift of Bond posters a few months back. They're sitting at a friend's house now and I will pick them up over Labor Day weekend, I can't wait to get them! Righty007 is a good guy too, he's an easy target sometimes but his passion for Bond is amazing.

As for the other refugees, I may not remember everyone's name but I wish you all the best.

Welcome to B&B, clublos. Enjoy!

M wrote:

We don't have terms and conditions or rules here, and I'd like to think we don't need them.

You could have told Harmsway that before he hiked all the way down Mount Sinai with 'em.....

Harmsway wrote:

My hiatus hasn't changed me much. Mostly allowed for me to grow a luxurious, snow-white beard.

Great to have you back here though Harms, I can but only echo what the esteemed Lord Shark said earlier.

And a picture leaked tonight on Twitter would suggest that CASINOROYALE has tried to steal a march on us by laying down the Ten Commandments over at MI6.....



;)

I'll also echo the hearty welcomes to the latest batch of new members "parachuting in" from CB.n. Hopefully B&B can really thrive and make it's presence felt in the next few months now that word of mouth seems to be getting around. Some great new members here by the looks of it, along with some quality posting and high post counts already. Good times.

M wrote:

Put simply, if someone's here to piss about or cause trouble, they get booted.

Yeah, there's an understatement if ever I heard one. Far bigger fish than a possible ex-CB.n "troublecauser" have left this place with a big fat bootmark on their arse. I've got the mental scars and the "WTF?" PM collection to prove it. ;)

It's nice to see other CBn-ers coming in. All the good ones and classics are flowing over. Great to have you here guys!

Welcome to Bond and Beyond. Have a pleasant stay.

Are you our new mascot?

Hi there. This is going to be my first and last post here, and... I come in peace. Some of you may remember me as a poster called 'spynovelfan' from CBN and, intermittently, MI6, over the years. Well, I've been banned from both of those! But I recognise a lot of the names here, and one in particular I would like to apologize to, 'danslittlefinger'. (If you don't know who I am, don't waste your time reading this post. And even if you do, it's touch and go, frankly.)

All the way back in April 2010, I started getting annoyed at the direction the CBn forum was taking. Entirely selfishly, I might add - I wanted the same sort of conversation I'd been having there for several years to continue, and that was mostly fairly in-depth stuff about the literary James Bond. Naturally, there had alway been lots of posters discussing other things, and a fair few of them were pretty mindless, and that was fine. I like discussing other things, and I like mindless too, in moderation. But the percentage of mindless threads seemed to be increasing at a rate of knots and as a result intelligent conversation seemed to be fizzling away, drowned out by dozens of threads that discussed every last crazy rumour about the next Bond film. With little or no moderation, a handful of posters (as I saw it) had managed to steer the tone of the forum into a more negative and combative direction, and everyone seemed to be wasting their time either insulting each other or debating the merits or otherwise of daft rumours.

As a journalist, my professional hoity-toity little dander was also up, because some of the rumours were, to me, obviously fake. One of them was provably fake, a blog about Rachel Weisz being the next head of Quantum. After years of posting on CBn as a distraction from work, I was spending far too much time on it. Internet forums, as I suspect most people here know, can be very addictive, and also somewhat claustrophobic. And in this environment, I was a dog with a bone. So I didn't just show how that rumour must be fake, but started rather self-importantly investigating how other rumours originate. (I know, I know.) A lot of what I would term troll-like posters, whose time was mainly spent discussing obviously fake rumours, understandably didn't like me doing this, and tried to get the thread shut down. I shudder to remember how I stayed up one night, all night, in that one thread. Completely bonkers. And in the end I put 2 and 2 together and made about 16,352. One thing I got wrong was I claimed that the rumour that Sam Mendes would direct the next film was probably fake. Well, doh. Another that I didn't so much as get wrong as simply did not have enough evidence for was that a poster called danslittlefinger was behind several fake rumours about the next Bond film in the press. I've apologized to danslittlefinger since, via private message, but didn't get the chance to do it publicly. So I am sorry, dansllittlefinger - I shouldn't have done that. I should just say that I felt at the time that dlf was highly irritating in numerous ways, and it is not impossible that they have planted rumours in the press. But that's beside the point, really. I essentially accused him (or her, perhaps!) of doing this with no evidence for it. I did leave the way open to a reply, but even had the moderators of CBn allowed that, the accusation was in itself pretty damning, and the upshot of it was that dlf couldn't post at CBN and was considered by some people to have done this. I don't know if they did or didn't. I have no idea who did or didn't, or even if anyone did. I think perhaps quite a few people have done it over the years... but I've no hard evidence for it, let alone who has done it, and don't really care enough to find out, either. But I am sorry that I essentially witch-hunted danslittlefinger off CBN. I left CBN when all that happened, because without warning the moderators deleted all the threads about this. I asked for an explanation, and got a crap one, so in a classic internet huff I stormed off, and left a Cassandra-like warning that the forum would deteriorate rapidly unless moderation was firmed up.

Internet forums have, I think, changed a little in the last few years, since they have been running parallel to Facebook and Twitter. It has sometimes broken down the thin barrier of anonymity. Suddenly, it's possible to see every waking moment of what David Arnold thinks. (It turns out he's very funny and quite insane.) A lot of people connected with the Bond world who would never have gone near a geeky 'interweb chatroom thing' were suddenly there on Facebook discussing Bond with fans. One of these was John Cork. (This is one post and then I'm out, promise.) I happened to see a post he made on Facebook, and it was about an article I had written in 2005, on Per Fine Ounce. Cork essentially said that the whole idea that the book was written was BS, meaning my article on it was, too. I called him on his evidence for this - turned out he had none. Someone started a thread on it over at CBN, which I had left. I pointed out to him that his BS was being read by a lot of people, and even being discussed in a Bond forum that I didn't visit anymore. Stupid me. Instead of backing down, Cork took the conversation to CBN. I followed. It all got rather out of hand, mainly because I was right and he was dead wrong, and he sure as hell didn't want to admit that to everyone without leaving some wriggle room, and I didn't want him to have it. Cork partially apologized, but also put in a few carefully (and snidely) aimed blows to suggest that his real mistake had been in stating any of this publicly - he and his crowd knew the real story, even if they couldn't prove it. When this interpretation was given by CBN moderator Charles Helfenstein, and my repeated attempts to show why he was wrong resulted in the thread being deleted again and again, it's fair to say I went ballistic. My wife got worried I was spending too much time on it - as was my agent. I called him and explained the whole thing. I was rather ashamed at my internet forum addiction, and tried to explain how it all worked. 'Is this Commanderbond.net?' my agent interrupted, to my surprise. Well, why? The forum is, after all, public, and my agent does, after all, Google his own clients occasionally. A salutary lesson among many,

Oh, there are other things I have just remembered. The whole inadvertent fooling the Sun bit, not least. Anyway, perhaps this was a bad idea. What I wanted to do, and have failed at spectacularly, was not offer some long self-indulgent justification for my behaviour, but rather try to explain honestly that I'm not a. Some evil monster who likes hounding people b A determined hoaxer c Someone who 'stepped over the line' by threatening to sue CBN... but all three. No, that's wrong. But d, Someone just like you, I expect, who spends far too much time online and can sometimes get rather carried away. I overreacted by a mile to my discovery that some rumours about Bond in the press appeared to originate not, as I'd always presumed, either from a kernel of truth or tabloid journalists' imaginations, but from Bond fans who want their fan fiction ideas to get publicity. I think that may well be the case, in fact, but I overreacted and singled someone out without any proof of it. And I overreacted by quite some way to John Cork's attack on my professional integrity, and CBN's enabling of it. Both were dead wrong, in my view, but I still over-reacted (partly because I was right!). In my mind, it somehow became a potentially career-wrecking event, when in reality, it wasn't anything like that - just a guy who knows a lot about Bond pissed off that someone else found out something he didn't. Add in some pride and a public face-off. Cork apologized to me privately, and even said I could repeat that apology publicly. But then he knew I had been banned from CBN so couldn't where it counted, and of course he never bothered to clear it up there himself. I also think that my comments above about people in the Bond world using social media applies to him, and think he's made more mistakes than I've done, and ones I could prove if I so chose... But let's not go there. You know what I mean if you followed this saga, and can come to your own conclusions on that.

This is my first and last post, and you can choose to ban me or delete the post if you want, but I just wanted to try to explain a little to some people who may remember me from CBN and wonder what the hell happened. Yes, I went a bit bonkers there. I got Forum Fever, if you like. I'm sorry to danslittlefinger. I like the look of this place. My advice, which you may be wise to ignore: Keep the forum unGooglable (as it is now I think?). Kick out troublesome trolls who drop by to mess everything up and start old feuds (oh, damn). Keep some form of moderation if you can. Do what you're already doing. Realize that internet arguments aren't the end of the world, and that in fact internet forums aren't either - you won't regret not having a higher post count when you're on your death bed. Keep cool, kids, and don't do anything I would. :)

Happy to discuss Bond or any of the above with reasonable folks via email - address is on my site.

Cheers,
Jeremy

JeremyDuns wrote:

Hi there. This is going to be my first and last post here, and...[snip]

You joined just to write one post which includes 20 line paragraphs?? I didn't bother to read it after the first line. :suspect:

I only knew a little of this saga, snf, but you've made a very eloquent post. Danslittlefinger does visit here, so I'm sure he'll see it. Pop back round here anytime you like!

Well, that was a heck of an 'only post I'll ever make' entry.

In response to Jeremy's one-and-done post,

1. anyone professionally involved with the media, entertainment industry or especially the Bond world should STAY THE FUCK OUT of online forums

2. internet addiction is a serious problem for a lot of people, and it's not something to be taken lightly

JeremyDuns wrote:

Hi there. This is going to be my first and last post here,

Why?

Quote :

All the way back in April 2010, I started getting annoyed at the direction the CBn forum was taking. Entirely selfishly, I might add -

I don't think it was entirely selfish. Some of the criticisms were probably warranted.

Quote :

One thing I got wrong was I claimed that the rumour that Sam Mendes would direct the next film was probably fake. Well, doh.

Well, you also tried to "expose" the allegedly low journalistic standards of websites such as DenOfGeek.com and ScreenRant.com by sending them false stories about the progress of BOND-23 and, as you may or may not remember, I was the one who emailed ScreenRant and told them not to run your "inside information". I felt at the time, and said as much, that you were potentially harming CBn by using it as your base of operations to outline your entire plot to bring down these fan-run film websites with false information and I guess at some point they agreed because they deleted all of your posts (I can sympathize). However....

While, I can't speak to the rest of your story about DansLittleFinger and John Cork (you have to work that out with them), I don't see why you can't start over here at Bond And Beyond. You're a very knowledgeable and passionate Bond fan and it would be a shame to horde all that knowledge and share it only with people through email. On the other hand, the nature of the Internet and message boards being what it is, you're going to have to show an increased measure of patients towards those who annoy you or you're going to find yourself horribly frustrated all over again.

When it comes to old feuds I believe we should live and let die.

Wow, SNF, I completely missed all of that (and I'm glad about it), had NO idea. I'm stunned. However I will say that your input at CB.n has been missed and I would be very happy to see you stick around here. As you tell it, you had a mad moment, but I always saw you as a very knowledgeable and courteous contributor.

I'm sure you'd be a good addition here, Jeremy! An insightful Bond connoisseur should always be welcome.

GeneralGogol wrote:

I'm sure you'd be a good addition here, Jeremy! An insightful Bond connoisseur should always be welcome.

I agree. I think the boards would benefit from his years of fandom, even though I think I used to disagree with him a lot over at CBn. Besides, I find it hard to believe that a man who can crank out a post as long and thoughtful and introspective as the one Jeremy/SNF put together is only interested in that post being a one-off. Seems like a waste of time not to post here after that introduction.

I stated then on my profile page on CbN as I do now, I had nothing to do with any of that upsetting episode, (I'm not that clever) and appreciate the public apology.
As mentioned, I did accept a private apology of sorts from Jeremy some time ago and since have moved onwards and upwards.
I too would appreciate any 'in depth fan' on here and I'm constantly learning from such people and hopefully not getting on too many people's nerves doing so.
Obviously Jeremy does not need my permission to post, that's up to the chief moderators.
I, as does everyone else I'm sure, appreciate a peaceful friendly forum to visit without unwarranted hassle. :)

As my beloved Dad always said, 'Best foot forward'... :cheers:


If you stay, welcome Jeremy.