I appealed, got 15 points, and they still want to

Like I said......Kafka-esque

What a stange web site?

Why do I feel so suspicious?

In Gwent wrote:

Like I said......Kafka-esque

What a stange web site?

Why do I feel so suspicious?

Hi IG,

We have to be very careful that we do not allow potentially libellous comments to be published.

As you will see from these two articles in our "Benefits News" section from last year, other sites and forums were being closed down. :

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/benefits-news/story/94

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/benefits-news/story/92

If that happened to B&W, the main people to suffer would be our members.

This is why we must edit out any potentially libellous remarks, as we most certainly do not want this to happen here.

bro58

In Gwent wrote:

Like I said......Kafka-esque

What a stange web site?

Why do I feel so suspicious?

Gwent

I'm not a moderator, just an ordinary member of the site for the last 18 months or so. I've been wrapped over the knuckles for over-long posts, so I hope this will pass muster.

About your suspicions of this website, and what they will let you say.

When you first go on to a new forum - anywhere on the Internet - you will see that they follow one of these 3 policies.

[1] You post something to the site, and it gets put up immediately and you can say anything you like - racial abuse, sexual fantasies, bomb-making instructions - whatever. Nobody will stop you, or report you. These forums are pretty rare, as it lays the forum owners, and others, open to prosecution.

[2] Forums where you can post anything, but where the moderators (the forum's "guards") can remove anything which does not fit forum policy. Frequently moderators (often just called "mods") act when a post is reported to them as being spam, or offensive. These are quite common and are described as "reactively moderated" since the mods react to post that have been made.

[3] Forums where somebody reads every post before it gets shown on the site - these are "pre-moderated". Sites where their are legal considerations are often pre-moderated, which means that every message is read, and checked for acceptability before it is put up on the forum.

The forums on Benefits & Work come into the 3rd category - for the reasons already explained. In fact they are very strictly moderated not only for libel, but also for other issues like "drift". They make sure that all threads stay within the limits of appropriate discussion, and "on topic".

It's a very tough regime, restricting to posters and hard on volunteer moderators, but does keep everything very focussed.

As regards your appeal - you are being mis-treated, but not in quite the way you suppose.

Years ago I got caught up in a very tangled web of appealing and referrals etc, so much so that it took nearly 3 years to disentangle the whole thing.

Now, back in the old days, people usually got benefit for 3 years. This meant that I had no sooner established that I should have had the benefit since 2002, than the 2005 form came through the letterbox.

These days virtually all appeals take many months, and the DWP like to get you to apply at least yearly.

This means that if you put in a claim in (let's say) March 2011, you could be told that your March 2011 claim was granted - but only told that in February 2012.

And if they think you have to prove your entitlement every year, then when March 2012 comes around, there's a whole new claim to be made. And the whole merry-go-round starts all over again.

In many cases this is stupid and money-wasting. Sometimes one suspects that the DWP thinks that if it makes life difficult enough then either you will lose your appeal, or run out of energy, and they will win in the end.

This is why I say that you (like most of the rest of us) are being treated unfairly. But it is not quite as irrational as it seems to you.