Freedom of Speech

[Graham D. Wilson]

Barry,

I too was distressed and surprised that the threads in question were closed. The tone of some of the posts was very agressive, but these IMO could have been better dealt with on an individual basis. It's never a good idea to shut down a whole discussion because of the behaviour of one or two posters, particularly if the topic is relevant and interesting, as was the case here.

Thanks for raising this -- it's very important.

Graham
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Moderator's Note to Graham:
Thank you for your opinion. Everybody has one.
I just looked at my PM account here. From 3/29 to 4/24 I have sent 30 messages to, and got about 45 including the "reports" on the subject from members- on that series of flames and threads that you are talking about. Is that not "individual" enough for you? Do we need to hug and swap spit?
That was not just "one or two posters" - "behavior". It spread to 3 or 4 more bad actors and several "experts" who all disagreed.. And I disagree with you: it was NOT an "interesting" topic. It was a useful topic and as far as I can see the people's error was addressed and is supposedly being fixed. It's "interesting"ness faded quickly into a morass of name calling, f-bombing, and insult, mostly from Gier with Fermi a close second.
Except for that recent run of garbage and this new controversy for the sake of controversy here; 8000 members have posted 93,000 times in 10,000 threads with only 17 problems. 12 of that 17 concerned one former member. If that starts up again, we're going to be short some members. I'm sick of the childishness. If you don't like that, complain about me. -db
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