Flatters to deceive

Good morning!

Let’s carry on for a moment with how the CMOMM presents itself to new users.  As I pointed out, the home page offers a shop window of seemingly respectable research groups, and the prospective member (PM) may find titles such as ‘The Knutsford Research Group’ and ‘The Madeleine Foundation’ reassuringly highbrow and heavyweight titles of respectability. The ‘tecs’ in ‘The Fund and Private Tecs Research Group’ might even sound, to the naïve, like some kind of acronym of authority, but this is not the case.

If the PM does see through this window dressing, and has conducted previous independent research, he/she will have come across the name Tony Bennett, maybe read one or two of Bennett’s posts in the Forum even. He or she may therefore be aware that ‘The Madeleine Foundation’ is his vehicle of bias and subjectivity.  A cynical PM might even see his lack of status within the Forum, though a founding member, is at odds with the presence of his ‘Madeleine Foundation’ which carries, by way of a green legend, some kind of status within CMOMM.  Two members of the Forum, ‘hentie’ and ‘maebee’ are colour coded green to signify they operate within the auspices of the Madeleine Foundation and must surely be under the control of Bennett. So why does Bennett not associate himself with the Foundation within CMOMM and give himself a ‘green’ persona, after all, it is his Foundation?  Who knows? J.

Look, this is not a rant at the Forum itself, I shall be taking an equally critical look at pro McCann forums and websites too.  It is merely an observation on the disingenuous  way this particular Forum presents itself to the world; something akin to a magician with a deck of cards in my opinion; illusion rules perhaps. So for the PM seeking enlightenment and the chance to share their insights, caveat emptor!! 

I have said in a previous post there is a fundamentalism in Maddie Forums that feed the preconceptions and egos of the Forum owners, and like some 50’s style central European state they are primarily unhealthy and repressive in their outlook. This Forum is not shaping up well to open and honest debate.

Let’s leave all that for a moment though and look at one of the two discussion groups I had mentioned previously, as in my opinion there are effectively only two.  The ‘Latest News’ discussion group is intended to cover all the breaking news associated with Madeleine McCann, however as such news surfaces only 

First off!! I've never heard of The Complete Mystery Of
Madeleine McCann Forum and second!! they must be mistaken

occasionally there is often not much choice other than to recycle old news over and over again.  So what goes on in this group?  I have taken a look at the previous 3 months (Oct-Dec) to see what typically taxes members and prompts them to post.

What makes a dynamic discussion group?  well ideally thoughtful subjects for debate argued with pro's and cons by a wide range of members over a fair period of time.  in the Latest News section there were 90 or so posts by 40 odd members.  Largest contributors were Candyfloss, the site moderator with 9 posts, Petemac with 17, and Tony Bennett with 10. The effective life of a topic of up to 2 days ocurred with 24 posts.  That's to say almost 30% of topics were, effectively duds with little group interest.  Hot topics, say over 10,000 views each numbered 23 of the 90.  By a narrow margin, the most viewed topic was

Former Ullapool teacher struck off for indecent images

viewed 16,773 times at the time I did my analysis.  It was authored by Candyfloss, a site moderator. and has absolutely nothing to do with Madeleine McCann. At it's inception this topic may have been more suited to the 'Have your say: News Topics' discussion group where it would have died a quiet death, but that's just my view, not that of a site moderator.  The topic has been live for 16 days, and my suspicion is that the original subject matter has morphed somehow from a schoolteacher who hordes indecent images of children into recycled news about Madeleine.  It will be interesting to see how this topic has evolved, who got involved etc etc and I'll let you know tomorrow.