On Sun, 29 May 2011 Sacha wrote:

And, more importantly, posts to urg have been altered by someone
malicious to my certain knowledge, especially those relating to the
charter.

Can you give an example?
David

Here it is. I think it shows the mischief that can be done by
malicious postings appearing to emanate from urg or its members but I
have no idea if this is the only example because I haven't gone
hunting. Read the paras from Binaries onwards:
http://www.gardenbanter.co.uk/united...r-uk-rec-garde
ning.html

Ah yes, I see what you're referring to.

I note that the date is October 2007 and (it says) was by an external
usenet poster. I assume that means that it wasn't posted on Garden
Banter itself but was a mischievous attempt to make it look as though it
was by the reference at the bottom to where it can be accessed.

I'm not sure that that is conclusive evidence that Garden Banter was
responsible. According to the top of the message it *was* posted on urg
originally from which Garden Banter harvested it.

By the look of the changes they are a deliberate attempt to welcome the
things that we have deprecated for years, such as:

"The posting of small binaries 500k (for example, pictures of plants)
is
welcome and should begin with "PICTURE" or "PHOTO" in the subject
line."

where the charter categorically forbids it, and

"Participants in discussions may also include references to their
garden-related business in their .sig (max. EIGHTEEN lines)."

which has been changed from FOUR lines.

It looks to me very much like a wind-up by one of our regular readers
receiving it as a newsgroup. I think one might hazard a guess as to the
possible culprit!

But I don't think that anyone has taken it seriously. I haven't seen any
binaries, or complaints that binaries haven't appeared. And people who
run garden-related businesses are usually very good about their SIGs.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK
http://rance.org.uk