Actually, I try (very hard) to watch what I post and do threads on. I think I done a thread talking about threads that could be/are too controversial to do. Then again, some threads and posts could be considered controversial to some and not others. But, I totally agree with Ken about "personal attacks" on a forum.
Hey ! Welcome back again, so good to see you posting here again, @Frank Sanoica . No, this thread has NOTHING to do with you, and like Chrissy said, it was a particularly vile and rude personal attack on another member of the forum. It came from someone who disagreed politically, but instead of producing a rational and intelligent reason for his own beliefs, he just resorted to throwing as much name-calling as he could do. Obviously, it did nothing to either prove his point, or help his credibility with the people who read it. Thankfully, our Fearless Leader was also reading that thread, and deleted the insults immediately. And it goes on....... I had to just remove another slanderous insult from this person. Ken has lots more patience with this guy than I would have !
By the way, we are pretty tolerant here, particularly in the Hot Button Issues area of the forum, but personal attacks will be removed if we come by them. However, neither Yvonne or myself are here all the time and I don't know about her, but I don't read everything that is posted here, so if someone posts something overly offensive, go ahead and report it, but please don't respond to it in kind because yours will be another post that we'll have to remove when we come across it. Thanks.
Definitely , I agree that some topics are just a lot more sensitive for people to talk about, and when our emotions get involved, sometimes, it is hard to keep our thoughts rational; but it is important that we all make the effort. We (for the most part) are able to do that in this forum, and that is one of the reasons that we CAN actually discuss sensitive topics, because we focus on the topic or issue, and not berate other people when they have a different opinion, or even degrade some person being discussed in the topic.
Sorry, I didn't think of sadness or goodness or sweet Georgia Brown, thinking only my lips are sealed (tied together). I'll do better next time.
Intelligent people don't have to resort to calling hateful names to make their point. When a person does that, they show their ignorance.
One note about those monkeys. I don't know when I thought of those monkeys last, but one time I did was in my youth . I was hitch-hiking from from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. I had stopped off in north Georgia to visit for a couple of days. I caught a ride with five women over in Alabama and then I caught a ride with a man who said he was going to Dallas but he said I stop often and conduct little business. At every town of any size he stopped in from of a pool hall or a beer joint, or some place and he would either carry with him his brief case inside or a brown paper sack he would get out of the trunk. In Vicksburg he carried me to the bus station and let me out. He said he thought he'd be back in a couple of hours and gave me a twenry dollar bill and said get yourself a hamburger and a beer. In a couple of hours he wasn't back which was around four pm. I didn't mind the wait but realized my awol bag and a uniform and my orders were inside his car. I had forgotten to get my bag. Couples were coming in the bus station, to drink a beer or cokes. I struck up a conversation with some of them. They all seemed to be going to a party on a river boat some miles up river. Two couples asked me to come along. Of course I declined. The bus station closed at ten pm. I stood outside the bus station waiting. I sat on the fender of a car left in the parking lot. Two couples drove up, the car belonging to one of the couples. They said you still here and again invited me gto go to the party. I did. I rode with the couple whose car I was sitting on. I had a couple beers and left with a young lady who offered me a ride. I awoke on somebody's couch, the wind blowing the curtains. The young lady brought me a cup of coffee and said she would take me to the bus station. I accepted both the coffee and the ride. I walked across the bridge at Vicksport and immediately caught a ride to Shreveport. Walking down the main dtag in Shriveport . I walked for a mile or so coming to this beer joint and pool hall. A big black man was sitting on his shoe shine chair out front. I asked him how long the car parked in front had been there and if he had seen which way the driver had gone. The man said, I don't hear nothing, don't see nothing, and I don't say much. It was then I thought of those three monkeys. I walked to the alley and found a half of a half brick. I picked it up and walked back to the man in the shoeshine chair. I asked, You didn't see this man at all and i pointed to the car. No sir, he said, I don't hear nothing, or see nothing, or say much. I walked to the right rear door and said to him, 'you won't know about this,' and a picture of those monkeys flashed in my mind. I threw the brick through the back window, unlocked the door, and picked up my bag. I said to the man again, If you do deside to say anything, you might add that I'm sorry about the window. I walked to the highway and shortly caught a ride to Dallas and another on up to Wichita Falls, my temporary destination, for a short visit with my parents before shipping over. Several times I have felt bad about breaking the window but at the time didn't feel I had many options. A week later I caught a plane for Oakland, California where three days later I shipped out for Korea where I heard no evil, saw no evil, and said very little except maybe, 'baby, it's cold outside'.
From time to time, you will probably come across someone in the forum who annoys you. Generally, this occurs in real life too, but I don't want to overreach. Sometimes this will be someone who you just find annoying in general, but at other times it will be someone, perhaps even myself, who has pissed you off in a forum thread. That happens. For those who you are usually annoyed with, there is the Ignore feature. Posts from people who you choose to ignore will not be visible to you unless you decide to change that. The downside of the Ignore feature is that you will see posts from people who are responding to the member you are ignoring, and threads may not always make sense to you. A few years ago, I considered turning that feature off because it's not good for the health of the forum when too many people ignore too many people. I left it as an option because it's preferable to open warfare. When you are angered about something that someone has said, consider whether you might be reading something into it that wasn't intended. I know that people have gotten mad at me in forum posts when I was joking, but they were taking me seriously. Sometimes that's hard to read in the digital world. It is also difficult, for both the writer and the reader, to differentiate between a disagreement over an issue and a disagreement between people. I can disagree with you completely over something that's important to me, but still, enjoy your participation in the forum and like you as a person. However, it may not seem like it at the time, to me or to you. We make allowances for brief outbreaks of anger in the Hot Button Issues category, within reason. In fact, I don't usually even interfere, having noted by experience that people generally work these things out for themselves, as they might in real life. Don't forget the within reason part, however. An important thing, however, is to please make a concentrated effort to avoid what I think of as chasing someone around the forum. If you are embroiled in an emotional argument in a Hot Button Issues thread about which is the best color, brown or green, it's fairly easy to understand and to tolerate a flare-up of tempers over such an important issue. Given its political implications, green is clearly not a good color. If someone says something that might be interpreted as unkind, in the heat of an argument, apologizing at some point would be nice, but it's not the end of the world. However, don't bring your anger with that person with you when you're replying to something they say in another part of the forum. When one person is so angry with another that they chase that person around the forum, sniping at everything they say, that certainly doesn't make the other person feel comfortable here, and it tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable, particularly those who may not have read the thread that started it all.
Perfect reasoning ! I wish people would make their feelings known on 'the thread' and leave it at that
@Ken Anderson @Patsy Faye One thing I've often thought about is the "behind the scenes" PM-dedicated back-stabbing and nit-picking of those unknowing of it. I have supported openness among clashing opinions and even suggested in that other seniors forum that the majority concensus, perhaps a vote, be used to decide for or against lethal action upon a member, banning. The option would still be the Admin's own decision, at least with acceptance by most. That suggestion resulted in: BANNED. Length of BAN: Forever Frank