Face off

The news that five players from Llandudno's cricket club have been disciplined – with three of them banned for the rest of the season – and Llandudno’s match against Hawarden Park on Saturday cancelled with Llandudno forfeiting points comes as no surprise to those who use Facebook and the internet.

It's tempting to view using the internet a little bit like driving a car. It's been known for years that normally mild-mannered and calm drivers mutate into bile-spewing monsters when behind the wheel, and undergo such transformations, indeed, that intensive research has gone into trying to find out why.

On the internet, a similar phenomenon seems to occur. People who would normally be the soul of pleasantness and discretion seem to undergo a similar change when shrouded by the cloak of anonymity the internet affords. It's only necessary to look at the contributions to local forums and blogs to see that effect in action. But what so many forget is that the internet - apart from being relatively anonymous (it's not total) - is also a world-wide medium, and anything written can theoretically be seen immediately by about 4 billion people. One easy way to avoid the problems is to imagine you're holding a loud hailer in your hand and shouting what you're writing, in the middle of Mostyn street in plain view of everyone on a Saturday morning. If that doesn't work, imagine you're doing it naked.