Ian as a mod is out of order expressing an opinion of this sort. Since when was he the arbiter of polite and inpolite. I have seen mods on here be every bit as rude and opionionated and wrong and at times a little bit nutty.(an ex mod posts on here batty as a barn owl)
If the guy had his email address in his profile I would have mailed him direct, as it was, the only way I could comment on his very direct rudeness was to leave a post on the open forum.
When others read it they should also get the message that 'flaming' others in such a way is NOT acceptable forum behavior.
If you check out his back posts, as Tony said, many of them were in a similar vein.
On here many will take the mickey, arguments will occur, as will differences of opinion, but it is usually in the nature of good debate.
"Pathetic get a life you sad idiot" Left like that is blunt and out of order.
"Pathetic! lol get a life you sad idiot
" Is not, although the terminology is to be frowned on, at least all who read it would know that it was meant in a tongue in cheek way.
And of course he has yet to come back on this thread and say something along the lines of, "Oops, sorry guys, was just having a joke, didn't mean it to sound so rude."
Sometimes we write things and they can be taken totally out of context...It's a shame we had to lose the messaging service, that was also a good way of pulling someone up when they had made a mistake or stepped out of line.
Now of course your email address can remain hidden, so a rollocking has to take place on open forum
Ian