The recent post about why ThaiVisa forum works made me think about this.

2001.........

Dial-up connections & the modem went weeee-oooooowww, weeeeee-oooooow for 3 minutes.

Ajarn dot com was the only Thai forum out there.

That was one vicious, hateful, spiteful forum.

I have never been an TEFL teacher, so cannot comment on that, but it was full of HATERS!

Utterly useless.

I had one look at that once.

Some poor newbie fella, completely new to Thailand wrote a very pleasant and well worded piece about his initial reaction and experiences in Bangkok and got ripped to tiny shreds by a bunch of vicious and totally mean spirited teacher types. Absolutely unnecessary and that was the last time I ventured on to it.

Gee I look at it sometimes never see what you guys see but then again I donot read everything there. Seems to me to be a good place for people searching for work as teachers or people who want to evaluate costs of living. I have read it for years even before I came to Thailand retired.Lots of good reading in my opinion. Many people post about experiences I find that enjoyable to read also.I will go take a look today see how it reads today.

I looked at it once a very long time ago. I thought it was awful.

Never went back.

There we have the conundrum of forums. Without strong moderation, hateful posts abound. With strong moderation, all sorts of interesting stuff is deleted or never gets past "post under moderation".

With reference to ajarn dot com and its members, I would say teachers in Thailand are a very mixed bag. There isn't really a bottom floor. Paedos, alcoholics, released from prison overseas, football hooligans, etc are all well-represented in the ajarn community.

After reading this thread I went to check out ajarn.com

The first thing I saw was a good article on Thai food. Read it enjoyed.

I find it a very well laid out site with varied reading. Lots of input from many people. I cannot find the issues you guys seem to find with the site. Could someone be so kind as to direct me to the bad stuff on the site so I can make a better judgement please. I cannot find it myself. Its all good that I read there.

With reference to ajarn dot com and its members, I would say teachers in Thailand are a very mixed bag. There isn't really a bottom floor. Paedos, alcoholics, released from prison overseas, football hooligans, etc are all well-represented in the ajarn community.

I met an English teacher once and he said to me:

So yeah -- I'm like teaching these little <deleted. in the classroom and I figured you need to get them outside.

So I takes them outside into the playing field.

And the head teacher is like doin' her <deleted. head in.

And she's like seriously pissed off.

So I ignores her and starts teaching these little boys and girls how to play football.

At the end of the day I reckon I was quite good. But I admit I weren't the best.

Pattaya-talk was around before that crock of &lt;deleted&gt;.

Pattaya-talk was around before that crock of <deleted>.

That may well be the case but it is not really the same thing.

One focuses on a bunch of "teachers" many of whom could be labelled misfits and the other has a majority membership of middle-aged full-on whoremongers discussing the pros and cons of the firmness of Lek's tits in Dollhouse A Go-Go (and a lot more in terms of vulgarity).

It is important to avoid comparing apples with oranges.