[TheForge] WHAT THE HELL

[Adam Whiteson]

Yes, I completely agree.   The discussion here should be relaxed and 
informal.  We are friends and people should feel free to mention their 
trucks , dogs,  family news and so on.   And you are quite right in saying 
that if one is not interested then one should ignore or delete the posts.

However,  its one thing to cut people some slack so that they can chat 
comfortably and quite another to use that license to indulge in long, 
strident political/moral/religious rants.  This is, IMO, a complete abuse 
of the forum.  Not only is it inappropriate to take over forum with one's 
soap box  but some of this stuff is quite distasteful and offensive.   I do 
delete these threads mostly unread but unlike stuff that is just not 
interesting, this crap  leaves a  bad feeling even after it is gone.

Nor is it just a matter of not liking the other guy's politics.  In some of 
these rant threads people step up and voice truly ugly sentiments of 
bigotry and xenophobia.  I just wish I didn't have to know that about 
people.  It poisons the whole atmosphere.  It's understandable, but the 
worst of this occurred after Sept 11th.   Some appalling things were said 
and, in consequence, there are now people whose posts I never 
read.   "Sharing"   this kind of thing drives us apart rather than making 
us closer.

A forum like this is a shared facility, like a park and we owe to each 
other and to ourselves to keep it a pleasant place to visit.   This 
requires some  judgement and self restraint.   In particular, certain kinds 
of subjects, like our bowel movements,  the details of our sexual 
perversions, and our ideas for fixing the world  are best left at home.

Well I guess this too has turned into a rant.    :)

Adam


>Adam Whiteson wrote:
>
> > IMO not entirely.  I love to chat and listen to talk about smithing but
> > when I hear people's  politics and half baked ideas for solving the worlds
> > problems, I like this place a whole lot less.
>
>         Adam,
>
>         Over the years I have deleted hundreds of threads that were of
>         no interest to me.  The Delete key is excellent for this and
>         requires not a lot of effort.  You can even set up a mail filter
>         to dump all posts with thread 'X'.
>
>         We usually stick to smithing.  On occasion, such as now, we
>         wander a bit into other things.  I see no problem here.  We
>         also have this discussion about twice a year such that one
>         could set their watch by it.
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