[TheForge] WHAT THE HELL

Sun Jun 23 20:09:01 2002

agree with that!

bob schade
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>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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