Website adopts Stalinist approach to history

AMONGST HARDWARE SITES - and there are plenty of them - one stands like a colossus above the others, or at least, that's what the guys that run it believe. [H]ard OCP has brackets (coo!) as well as the fairly normal selection of news links, reviews and a line in dandy patter.

It also has one Kyle Bennett, a swaggering Texan with an attitude big enough to bust a ten-gallon hat. At least, so it seemed after the Wibbler was lambasted for missing a link to some review or other and linking to other "charlatans" instead.

This Wibbler, then, was amused to find the weekend inbox stuffed with complaints about [H]ardOCP, alleging some Stalinist-style conspiracy to prevent readers from exposing that the site had made a mistake.

Amongst various missives we've been forced to trawl through is this one that gives a decent over view of the brouhaha, since it manages to show the graphs that caused all the trouble.

It seems the site - or someone at the site - messed up in some P4 3.06 benchmarks and posted the wrong scores. Now, these things can happen as indeed we know from a long and extinguished career in magazine journalism. Though of course, in the paper-based medium there's not a lot you can do once you've printed the thing, except maybe apologise next time around. On the wibbly web, however, corrections can be made immediately and apologies posted as and when necessary. And, indeed, this is what the [H]ard nuts seem to have done. Except they forgot the apology.

But what happened next is bizarre indeed.

Any mention of the correction was purged from the forums and its seems that nearly 50 members have been banned from the forum for having mentioned the affair. The folk have simply been disappeared.

One of the banned is JCviggen who says here "I have been banned (but they even chose not to show me as 'banned' under my name)." He was banned, he says, for posting the the thread here which, by the way, isn't worth clicking on because that too has been disappeared...

It seems, further, that Kyle and his merry band deny that the scores were ever changed. But if that's the case why have the postings been removed and the members banned? And why, other than some denials emailed in replies to readers, has the site itself remained so silent on the topic.

We wonder if we'll be told... Say, erm, posted. µ

UPDATE Mr Viggen has posted his full version of the sorry tale on xtremesystems here.

UPFDATE2 It seems Mr Bennett has in fact been moved to address the mounting controversy over here. As Editor in chief he takes full responsibility for the error, he says. Where some may have suggested the error was purposeful, Bennett writes: "I assure you that we do not post lies, and we have never intentionally posted numbers or benchmarks that we have known to be wrong. Doing that is simply not in our character. We do not accept bribes and we do not play favorites."

They do seem to remove posts they don't like and ban users for pointing this out though. Will the 48 banned sheep ever be welcomed back into the fold, we wonder?