But then that your way, grow a brain and get real its a DG on a internet site where comments and opinions are thrown into the pot. Is this what you are taught in school these days, not to respect freedom of thought and the right to voice it - or does that only apply to you and your friends.
You are the sick ones who want to strip or limit the rights of others. We don't agree wow big deal, but you seem to want to send in the Marines or Lawyers.
As for the topic, as I said I am with Pat
Melvyn
Melvyn,
Here's where I am struggling.
You say you're with Pat, but you're also defending the right to free speech.
Pat's posts on this site have been almost exclusively based on trying to restrict people posting honestly and openly about TEC. His emails behind the scenes are aimed at trying to scare people into not posting their honest opinions if those opinions are not what he wants to read.
Like Mike Whitaker, I think Pat Ruddy's lifetime of knowledge about all things golf would be a great asset to GCA, but Pat has made it clear through his decision to read posts on here and reply abusively in private rather than constructively on the site that he doesn't wish to do so.
I would be riveted - as would all of us, I bet - to a post from Pat addressing the points I and others have made about TEC, or replying to Tony Muldoon's fantastic questions about his approach to design, but I will be very surprised if that ever happens, based on my previous experience with Pat.
IMO, it boils down to this: Anyone on this website should be free to post honestly and frankly about a golf course they've played. Provided they do so constructively, they should be treated with respect by those who reply. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think that's a fair exapectation, and one most GCA members post in line with.
Scott will understand your position better when he has designed and built a golf course in his backyard how much work, time and passion is put into this kind of project.
I'm not sure what to make of that, Ben.
Are you saying The European Club should be treated differently by those who play it when it comes to discussing its merits because the designer owns it?
I've spent the past decade working in a creative job where I have received negative feedback from readers - both constructive and destructive - on a regular basis. I realise what goes into creating, that you put a lot of yourself into your work and expose yourself to your audeince in doing so and you feel it personally when someone says they didn't like it, but there is no excuse for the way Pat has reacted.
When my newspaper shut last year the readers on the Guardian site took great joy in its demise and spent days celebrating the closure of "London Shite (Lite)" in web comments and saying everything under the sun about the staff, who were out of a job a month before Christmas. It hurt to read that, but it's their right to have not liked the publication.
So yes, I understand that it hurts him to see TEC criticised, but I will never understand or respect the way he has handled himself.