General worries about the board

Did George22 delete his account? I can't seem to link to it

Not sure I agree with the age conflict stuff. I am a theatre kid myself and I absolutely love talking to those who are experienced in the theatre world on here. I'd say it's more to the individual person and perhaps a clash of personalities?

Very disappointing George has gone. My opinion is there was a bullying tone on Funny Girl towards George; I'd pm'd him to applaud his enthusiasm and discuss Sheridan's performance I'd seen at Menier Chocolate Factory.

I love this board, I'm grateful beyond measure to those who made the effort and monitor the board, and I think if I see behaviour towards one individual of that same ilk again I'll be contacting the mods privately to voice my concerns.

That really is sad. Does anyone know if he has Twitter or similar so we can try and convince him back.

When I was a lot younger (14ish years ago) I joined a forum for a long running show, I came in with a lot of youthful exuberance about the show, cast etc.

It rattled some cages (of both older and younger members who felt protective over the show and board) and I got some snarky replies which I didn't understand at first but there were also a lot of people offering suggestions on why people were doing this and ways for me to avoid it. I followed their advice and actually ended up making some good friends because of it some who I'm still very close to.

I felt George was given the same advice and I'd imagine was also getting advice over PM too but chose to mainly ignore it, in my opinion. I also want to echo what others have said about this forum. In general, the tone is way more polite, friendly and engaging than any other forum I've been part of or watched over. I don't think anyone's comments including mine overstepped the mark or were malicious. If you put something out there, people are free to engage with it, challenge it etc. If you can't take push back every so often, then perhaps you're not ready to post in an active online community. Age shouldn't matter.

I also want to add my thanks to the moderation team who I think do an excellent job here.

I completely agree with this. I haven't seen any evidence of bullying, just George being occasionally challenged about the value of posting the same thing relentlessly or claiming to have information about shows/casting which he was unable to share. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, especially since in almost all cases it was approached in a constructive, supportive way or in good humour. 

I've thought for a while the Sheridan stuff bordered on attention seeking at times, maybe a desire to be a forum "celebrity" if you like. The more recent posts about meeting producers but not being able to share what was said only affirmed that perception.

That's not to say we should welcome his departure - I said in a post only the other day that I don't think anyone wanted him to stop posting but perhaps take a step back and reflect on why people might be frustrated with the situation. However, it's his choice to leave and I respect that. As Nelly says, this is one of the friendliest, most welcoming forums I've come across. I don't think we should let one person's decision to leave cloud that view or influence how we judge other members of this fantastic online community.

Ok everyone, George decided to leave but let's not have a post mortem about it, especially as he's no longer in a position to respond to comments about him.

People come and go all the time.  Now let's move on please. 

I'll be honest. I think it's really sad that some of you are so pleased he has gone. There is an ignore feature on this forum and you could have used it. It bodes very ill for the health of the forum if the old guard keep scaring off newcomers they don't like. I've seen quite a few forums die that way.