Well stated, my Friend, and welcome (again) to the forum, @Sifu Phil Bonifonte . You will like it here, and can take off the Body Armour, and just enjoy the coffee at Joe's Cafe, and have fun socializing. Even in the political threads, life is safe. We might shred up the topic; but never attack each other, and pretty much anything can be discussed here. We are all careful who we invite to the forum, because everyone enjoys the little haven we have here.
Ah, thank you, m'Lady - this armor IS getting a wee bit heavy ... I'm pretty much apolitical, as you know, but that's good to know. Even though you've probably invited the wolf into the fold with me, I appreciate it and will try my best to be good. ... Yeah, right ...
Ah, Phil. Welcome my friend. I just came from the other "forum" and the same two or three people have shut down another thread. They seriously need to be sent on their way.
Hi Dave, and thank you! Unfortunately Admins walk a fine line between allowing people to express themselves and banning them. Some walk that line with far more grace and ability than others, but I realize that it's a tough job. That's why I turned them down when they offered me the CEO position of the Internet.
Other than spammers, I don't think I've banned more than two people from this forum. There have been those who have gotten angry and left, but it has rarely been necessarily to ban anyone. I'm hoping it stays that way. If there are rules to this forum, they are: Try not to be too offensive. Try not to be too easily offended.
Hi Ken! Congrats on your near-perfect record - I really hope it continues. Problem is, I'm what most people would call a pessimist but I like to think of as a realist. "Too offensive" and "too easily offended" sounds great but how do you enforce that? What are the limits? Isn't it an amorphous thing? This is actually a problem I've had before. I make a post that I think is funny - no foul language, no offensive pictures. Maybe some innuendo. Right away several people are offended by it. Who's right and wrong there? Was I truly offensive? 5 out of 10 say no, they enjoyed my post. The other 5 scream bloody murder. It's a tough call to make, I know. Either way, someone isn't going to be happy, and I see this happening more frequently on forum all over the 'Net. I don't think there IS any solution, because you're dealing with human nature.
It's not just on the Internet. People have made a profession out of being easily offended. So far, we haven't seen a lot of it here. I wish that people would look at it this way. You might live next door to someone who you don't particularly like. In most cases, however, there is no call to bring in the police or to evict someone from their home just because their neighbor isn't comfortable with them. But, in some cases, there might be. In the case of the forum, I suppose I would have to make that decision. Before it got to that point though, I would suggest, to those who are offended, that they simply ignore the member who is offending them. They can do this by just not responding to the offender's posts or by using the forum's ignore feature. In the past, I have had someone leave because I wouldn't ban someone who they wanted me to ban. Sometimes, people who are too easily offended are more offensive than the person they're complaining about. I am unlikely to let myself get into a situation where I think I need a set of rules that could compete with the IRS code, as that wouldn't be any fun for me.
I think it's been mentioned but it warrants repeating, the most effective thing that someone could do for the forum is to recommend it to your eligible friends. Not only would we have new members, but they would already be familiar with at least someone here. Linking to the forum from your web sites, blogs, and social media helps too, but the smoothest way to grow is by word of mouth.
I haven't played them lately but I know that the games can be fun, as can the photo threads. However, I beg you not to let the conversational parts of the forum go fallow, for they are by far the most important part of any forum. When I get a chance I am going to set the game sections so that they don't show when someone click "New Posts" since they are all in one place, so gamers can easily find those with new posts, since they'll still be highlighted when there are new posts. By all means, do play the games if you enjoy them, but please participate in conversations as well.
Thanks Ken that will help as I have missed some threads because of all the pages of game posts that outnumber them, I play games sometimes but as you say they are all in the one section anyway so easy to find.
Thanks Ken....This is one reason I am not as active here...I view the Forum without being logged in and have to scroll through the games threads..
To pop this thread up again (if you haven't read through it, please do), I thought I'd repeat some of what I said before, only using some different words. More than anything, what any forum most needs is words, and not just words, but words that are part of conversations between people. The pictures, the comics, the jokes and the games are fine, in that they entertain people, and I don't have a problem with that. But what the forum really needs is more words. Tell us what's important to you. Tell us about your childhood, your family, church, or the schools you have attended. How different did your life turn out than you imagined it might be when you were younger? Tell us about your home town or other places that you have lived, or about jobs that you have held. Tell us about places you have visited, or those that you would like to visit one day. What do you like to do, and do you often get a chance to do it? What would you like to do, even if you never get a chance to do it? What movies have you seen lately, or in the past, that you have liked? What made you like them? What books have you read? Are you handy around the house? If you dare, you can always weigh in on the news or politics. That section of the forum tends to be US-centric, but there's no reason why you can't discuss the news and politics of whatever country you are living in. Which conspiracy theories make sense to you? On that one, keep in mind that the two words don't necessarily go together, in that not every conspiracy is a theory; many of them are real. Tell us about your dreams. I freely express my opinions in the Hot Button Issues part of the forum, but there is no reason for you to have to agree with me. In the world of search engine optimization, words might be thought of as spider food, and spiders are the bots that visit the forum from Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Although others visit as well, the Russian and Chinese ones probably bring more spammers and hackers than anything else, but the ones from Google, Bing and Yahoo are quite valuable. In short, the spiders index the words that are in the forum, then when someone does a search on words that have been used here, there is always a chance that our forum will come up as one of the results, and we might get a new visitor. Most new visitors never register for an account, but some do. Words are also the way in which we get to know one another.