I do remember they did have proper forums that were done away with about 5 years ago. The amount of traffic slowed them down massively. My favourite Everton thread was 'Who would win a fight between Mike Tyson and Chuck Norris? Answer - Duncan Ferguson'. It then went on for over a hundred pages giving glowing but ridiculous praise to the big man such as Duncan Ferguson invented whale song.

The quality was so good and funny it could have been made into a stocking filler. But I digress...

I suspect it was ditched for some / all of the reasons alluded to, in much the same way that 606 has gone down the pan.
My feeling is that it didn't fit in with the way that the game, and it's publicists...Sky, the Beeb etc want us to perceive it.
I first got hooked on 606 years ago when Danny Baker did the show. The topics were interesting to say the least....some people would ring in and tell stories of different "firms" and punch-ups etc or would come on and talk of wierd chants their fans used to sing or who was the hardest ever footballer ( Andy Lochead by a country mile btw ). Or really esoteric stuff like the disappearnce of white dog shit from the streets of England )
And then it all changed and the game was repackaged....we had David Mellor ...DAVID MELLOR ffs pontificating.....Christ, one of Maggies foremost cunnilinguists ( sorry about the spelling but wouldn't dare look it up on the works laptop )...telling US about the beautiful game.
All of a sudden it was " and now here is Sven/ Seamus/ Iqbal, who is a MASSIVE Liverpool fan and he wants to tell us why Steven Gerrard is a dead good footballer. Yawn. OR "hi David I've been to the Bridge today I'm a MASSIVE Chelsea fan.
And as for "Greenie"........God in heaven

What name did you post under Kev?

Nick - the online 606 forums that I'm talking about only closed 16 months ago. Not sure if you mean different ones or whether you've lost all track of time!

Once in a while I have a look at other team's fan forums. You sometimes get the odd blue registering with that site so they can shoot the breeze with the 'locals' in the run up to a game. I've never tried it myself, but I think I might one day. I like a bit of banter with the oppo, and here on TW we're all in complete agreement with each other, aren't we? Sorry, I was hallucinating or a few seconds there.

Paul - I posted as "Vanjoh"

Fascinating stuff. I have no experience of the 606 Forum, but I do observe that the BBC has been living in fear for its future given the influence of Murdoch's evil empire during the tenure of the LibCon government. Editorial control tends to tighten in such circumstances.

Nick - I will remember the Big Dunc one and either use it or modify it.

Hola El Guffog de aqui en Roses del sol. I totally agree with your portrayal of 606. I need a spittoon at my side whenever the odious Green is mentioned. I could never call him 'Greenie' because we kept an emergency kit ready for young greenfinches in difficulty back in Fallowfield. We returned a few successfully to the wild. Point is that we affectionately called them 'Greenie 1', 'Greenie 2' and so on. Hell will freeze before he gets any affection from me.

And Kev Johnson, from shrinking violet to superstar. That's one for the ghosted autobiography.

ps Alan - a boring teacher of German (boring?) I used to work with (work?) delighted in calling himself a cunning linguist. No problems with the spellchecker there.

I once had an interesting thread which I started with some Man City fans, when I asked if a money Championship would mean as much as the proper one in the days of Bell and Summerbee. They split unsurprisingly on generational lines, much as I suspect we would do on Toffeeweb.

If Andy Lochhead was the hardest player 'by a country mile' that makes him harder than Johnny Morrisey by a country mile. Don't believe it!

FYI: I've just tracked down a link, including a post or two from me (Vanjoh). It's from Dec 2009. Nothing too earth-shattering, just normal team talk...

click here

They tended to be brief posts, which was OK in its way. Made it all quite snappy.

Anyway, as I said, I was just wondering if any regular posters had found their way on to ToffeeWeb?

When it closed a lot of imitations popped up. Ja606 is by far the best looks the same and has the old posters on. Although crispy seems to have recently banned.

The old 606 had some great debates about the board and Kirkby. It seemed to be last place left for the so called apologists.

The 606 forums as I recall were a bit like the online comments on newspaper sites - overly populated with the Sky-4 supporting types which served to fill the media bias. I think the problem was with the development of the troll, the sites were taking more and more moderation, and at the time the Beeb was taking a root and branch review of all of its output, and one of the objectives was to cut back their Internet output to reduce user-driven content in favour of more output from journalists. I lived overseas at the time and actually took part in some research for the BBC Trust, and I was not in favour of retaining the 606 message boards - partly because independent fan sites offered much better facilities. The standard of debate on the 606 boards when other fans got involved rapidly descended into puerile name-calling, and as costs were rising it was, frankly, a waste of licence payers money (of which there's a lot!)

The radio programme I find is really driven by presenters. Never had much time for Alan Green. No time for Lily Savage, but recently Johnny Vaughan did a 2 week reprise with Savage, and I thought he was excellent - but that's partly because I always thought he was a good presenter, back to his Big Breakfast days. He would've cracked America years ago had it not been for, sniff, an unfortunate episode on his "CV".

Andy - I've never heard of Ja606. I might take a look at it. Have to disagree when you say there were some great debates on the board and DK! A handful of people went on an on about it (Crispy was the worst) and the majority talked about football, which suited me down to the groud. Maybe that's why you say it had a reputation as a last refuge for apologists? If so, that's unjust - just because some people prefer football to boardroom politics that doesn't make them apologists for anything, least of all for "BK's heinous regime, etc, etc, etc".

Matt - it's interesting that you were involved in research on the feasibility of the site. As I said in my OP, trolls were indeed a problem and the moderation was minimal but - and this was my central point - I miss having the opportunity to chat with fans of opposing teams. I thought that was really good. I suppose I'd like to have my cake and eat it (ridiculous saying, that!) by participating in a EFC-only site (such as TW) as well as joining in a general debate. As I live down south, I know lots of fans of other teams and it's good to talk about Chelsea, Charlton or Cheltenham with them. I count myself as a football fan as well as an Everton fan.

Crispy???

Kev, if I'm right in thinking, the 606 forum was listing the latest post first, pushing older post further down, and if a reply was given to one post, the post would still remain in its place, rather than go back to the top? And all posts went on to the same page?

The ones I remember, each club had a dedicated forum, and for every reply to a post, it would send that post back to the top. These became incredibly popular and the traffic was huge and slowed the whole BBC site down.

They then changed to the 606 you speak of on the basis it wouldn't create that amount of traffic... and then we end up with the knowingly rubbish but tokenistic Have Your Say on the website which is the worst for users, but best way to keep traffic at bay. Well done BBC.

I was part of the group who kept a thread running to over a thousand pages until the Beeb closed it as it was killing their storage! I met some great blues through that who I still go to games with to this day. My name was Kingarteta. :)

Kev #043

I recognise alliteration when I see it; but Cheltenham!

You live in West Kent (nearly a bleedin' Eastender now; how the hell do you get to converse with a Cheltenham fan?

I only live about 30 miles away from there, and I don't know a single one!

The 606 sites as I recall them were shut down a long time ago. I remember spending a lot of time on them whilst I was supposedly working, back when I was a trainee. That was 8 years ago. I recall something happened that forced everyone on to one main board or something.

I remember one guy called "Kevin Sheedys left foot" being prolific and a regular on here too.

Brian Denton - can't miss this. GP shook when Mugsy and the 'legendary' Tommy Smith went for the same ball. Both were felled. Mugsy got up and pranced away. Smith had the trainer on.

To be fair to TS, when the light headed Emlyn started his 'tragic' rubbish, an old head took him away and explained, I have been told, in no uncertain terms, that there were Evertonians out there that night, such was their love of the 'City'.

Good old days eh? It'll never happen again.

Where I worked at the time, the BBC site was the only site I could access so I used to read the 606 forum. For the most part, it was utter garbage.

Yeah I used to be on there but can't remember my username

Fun times til I found this site

The Duncan Ferguson thread (on here or there...can't remember) was excellent

COYB!!!

I remember the 606 forum of about 7 or 8 years ago ( Jeez it's been a long time ), it was really good back in them days, then the Beeb started faffing about with it and it was never the same.

Alias - BlueZigZag

A lad who called himself "strikingly handsome" used to post quite a lot on 606, always well observed and really funny comments, crispy duck was a bit of a tit most of the time, a lot of his "thoughts" were usually straight c&p from TW.

Just had a look at ja606 and it looks pretty good if you want to interact with fans of other clubs, I'm also assuming the moderation will be far less puritan than the BBCs was.