to think that the 11plus forum is the scariest forum in the world!

[stillenacht]

anyone agree??

still waiting pigg

oh and welcome to mumsnet

YOu know, I can't even find any thread on there about here! And what are you called on there Ed? Maybe I can help!

QOD - that is the whole point, they deleted it when i went over to invite them to discuss their opinions about us!

Poof it ws gone! Hilarious

Ha - no Ed, infact after I posted I thought "Oh no, I might blow my cover"!

Seriously though, I haven't "spoken" to anyone individually on there, just had a couple of threads and joined in on a couple, but as I say, specific to my area.

Whats up though? I don't have that cat thingy though.

looks like pgg has done a runner

I once said that I didn't agree with the grammar school system and thought it was divisive and unfair and that it undermined the education of the majority....

I also once suggested that maybe not everyone could afford private school fees if they budgetted properly and gave up smoking...

Think lead balloon!

errrummmmmmm - no?
I dunno what that means, I honestly have nothing to do with anyone there and am gonna bow out of this thread! (although I will probably lurk out of interest LOL)

Good luck

I think that I have made it clear that I have used the site and that there are some very helpful people on it. I also find that there are some loons/rather scary obsessives who pop up at every turn, and tend to be more interested in talking about themselves and their children than in giving advice. I also believe that, whilst the grammar school system (and in my county there is no way of escaping it - no comprehensives at all, whether good or bad) provides a great education for some kids, the way the 11 plus operates today tends to mitigate against the very children it is often said to benefit, or who benefitted in the past.

Does saying that make me a hypocrite? I think that I'm just being completely honest.

I also note that it was some of the 'usual suspects' on the site who leapt in to slag off MN at just the mention of some newspaper article or the like. Maybe it is they who should be criticised by their fellow site 'frequent users', and not the posters here.

Ed I agree it?s irritating to be ignored when you have a query and you don?t even get a ?holding? type of reply.

But I think you might be reading too much into it ? the moderators and administrators over there are all volunteers who offer their advice for free ? usually based on their own experiences ? and this is a pretty busy time for them as secondary school allocations in a lot of areas are announced at the start of March.

As for obsessed, well yes some people are, that?s certainly true ? one of the most prominent posters there has children only at private schools, which I find very strange; if you?re going to educate your children privately, why would you regularly visit a forum focusing on the 11+ exam?

But equally you have to remember it?s a single-function forum, not a multi-faceted website like MN. If you went to manutd.com you?d find plenty of people obsessed with Manchester United and not terribly interested in Arsenal, and childrenwithdiabetes.com is largely populated by people whose children have diabetes. So I don?t find it particularly surprising that the 11+ Forum is frequented by people panicking about the 11+, often because they are looking for information that they can?t get anywhere else.

This is getting quite dull though, isn't it each to their own? We can hardly get all high-horsed about another group of internet users' opinion of the site we frequent most...frequently...when a thread is then started labelling 'them' as the 'the scariest forum in the world'?

It all just seems a little childish?

Getting a little anxious there Hardy? Sounding very worried to me!

You obviously expected me to respond immediately to your paranoid demand But some of us have to work and I for one certainly have far more interesting things to keep me occupied.

Even your own members are turning on you now

Hello!

My name is Yoyo and I'm a mod on the 11+ site.

Have been following the thread (apologies it has taken a while to plough through it all in between phone calls from my mum!)

Just would like to let you know that was thread was withdrawn because the criticism of Mumsnet from our Forum members was seen to be unacceptable as the two websites have a mutual link.

We are quite nice really when you get to know us.

Ed, try posting again. mattellie is right that they are really busy. I was posting on there around this time last year and didn't get an answer but when I nudged it they were really quick. I think they just missed it first time round because there were so many questions about schools after the allocations.

Agree with a few people on here - stay away from the weird bits, but a really good site if you have kids doing the 11+. Around here no one talks about it but I found everything I needed on there and we prepared for the exam with no stress over 3 months and for about £100. Can't say that I found that "scary", but maybe I'm weirder than I thought?

Hello yoyo

Welcome to MN

Thank you for clarifying why the thread was deleted.

pig - paranoid? I think not. Glad you have other stuff to keep you occupied, that's lovely

People turning on me here? No, just healthy debate we call it. You see, on MN, we have the freedom to express our views and we can and do disagree with eachother. Stick around and you can see, it is a very different board to yours in that way. Which is why it is so popular. We are not controlled by the mods

I am barely in control of myself Hardy

God, I tried to hide this thread but kept getting sucked back into the vortex.

Hello Yoyo, nice to see you on here too. 11plus has been a valuable source of information to me over the past year, just as Mumsnet has been a valuable source of entertainment.

Pigghills, you sound a little stressed - perhaps you ought to step back from the keyboard for a bit.

Belissima, YouCouldHave and Matellie - well said.

And finally, before I do hide this thread forever, if you don't like a website, don't visit it and then it will stop winding you up.

Hmmm, interesting Hardys how you 'assume' that I'm a member of anywhere else! The lack of 'Mods' on this site is obvious by the contempt with which you treat each other and the use of foul language - very strange indeed.

Which brings me to my point of exactly why I am 'here'. I initially set out to do some research (as a 37 year old, male journalist, but got side-tracked by this fascinating spat ), in the wake of other media coverage this week focussing on the young woman who was raped and murdered by someone posing under an assumed identity on a social network site. You have demonstrated exactly how easy it is for someone to make assumptions of others, and I didn't even try. How easy it must have been for this man to have drawn the young woman in question into his evil net.

I would hope this experience (the dialogue between us all) would serve as a lesson to you all, but I very much doubt it - you are all so wrapped up in your own narrow minded little worlds.