Thread cleaned, remains locked for now--Learning/growth opportunity for participants
Not much to salvage here.
Really, the members of the forum are generally well intentioned, but there is a disturbing trend that I see. When someone offends, there is an immediate dog-pile of denigrating posts. Then, it escalates into a melee and an all out flame war.
That happened in this thread.
I've removed ALL of the posts that crossed the line. So, if you don't see your post here, you know what happened to it. We mods know who the offenders were, and personal attacks, fighting, and general unruliness are not tolerated.
Look, folks, it's simple: be civil to one another.
Regarding forum past forum behavior, let's all try to be positive. I always try to coach in private and praise in public. I generally try not to step in unless things get a bit out of hand. In this case, they did, and I may have to do some coaching if it continues like this.
Now, what I don't want anyone to do is to take these type of flame attacks into PMs. That's not the right way to handle it. If you're going to send someone a Private Message, be just as respectful as you would in public.
If we don't use that same level of mutual respect and courtesy in our PMs, then all that will happen is that the hostility level on the public side of the forum will escalate and blow up, and we won't know why folks are so touchy--we won't know that there's really PM wars going on behind the scenes.
Each of us has to mature, and we will all step out of line and be too harsh, fight, call names, and act like we're on a grade school playground on occasion--it happens, we're human. The mature thing to do is to apologize when you've stepped over the line.
There is a posting history for skyepilot, and I know many of you have been chaffed by past posts, but the reactions here were way too vitriolic for the post at hand. Let's try to look at the merits of recent posts and not paint all of what we see with the black brush of past indiscretions.
Again, opinions are fine, but don't snarl at one another.
We will leave this thread locked for now. In a couple of days, I'll revisit it and consider unlocking it. In the mean time, let's think about the following:
Folks can and do change when they are given the opportunity to learn and grow, so I'm going to consider this a growth opportunity for all those involved in the fighting that occurred in this thread.
