Censorship - or "Why Gandalf took the Fellowship to Moria"

[Walter]

Recently a whole thread has been deleted by one of the moderators because of some messages that contained personal attacks.

Unfortunately all messages that were on topic and did not contain any personal attacks have been deleted as well... IMO - this is one of the worst forms of abuse of moderator-rights I have come across in this forum so far. I hope that this will be undone and all messages, that did not violate any rules of this forum, will be restored as soon as possible...

[Tar-Steve]

So many threads, so little time, it all becomes a blur to me ... meaning I can't remember which threads break out into fights. (It's possible that I never got back to the thread before it became abusive.)

But I do remember liking that thread and the on topic debate therein.

Was that the thread with the "rubbing two thoughts together" comment?

[ReadWryt]

You are of course welcome to your opinion about the quality of service on here, and for that I can and would do nothing, but untill you have some understanding about what is involved in deleting groups of individual posts from a thread, or what a hassle it is in GENERAL when people cannot seem to follow the rules that have been lain out for the use of this FREE SERVICE, I would be apprehensive to leap to conclusions.

The posts cannot be returned, they are gone. Members are of course permitted to repost what they had said, other then the pitifull back biting and finger pointing. Your opinion that this was an "Abuse of Moderator-rights" is inaccurate. Moderators have no "rights", nor do Members. Moderators are responsable to the Webmaster first, and the Members second...Moderators are people who sit and read thread after thread to check for abuses and never get told by the people who are so quick to accuse what a GOOD job they are doing without the benefit of pay for the free service, and in fact untill something happens that annoys some member, their work is almost never even commented on. They do the grunt work that, alas, Artifical Intelegence cannot yet do reasonably like moving threads to the correct locations, delete accounts with objectionable names, remove advertisements and dozens of other things that seem invisible to the members, as well they should, until something happens that offends someone who has no idea about the mechanics of doing what they feel was an injustice and then suddenly it is Abuse of Rights.

[Tar-Steve]

Do you guys (mods) have a function to close threads instead of deleting them? I think sometimes that's a good way to put out a fire without losing good content. The dead thread (for a while at least) also serves the purpose of demonstrating to members where the tolerance ends whereas a deleted thread leaves no trace to learn from. I'm speaking in generalities of course (I never got a last look at the thread in question so I don't know how bad it got.) but I think it's an alternative you should consider in some cases.

Although I KNOW you weren't talking to me ... For the record my willingness to monitor here is still in place (although I don't desire it) ... I think you guys to a great job most of the time and I appreciate the work you do all of the time.

[Eonwe]

my vote is, from here on out, personal attacks should be made with actual weapons.:eek:

[Walter]

ReadWryte,

I can understand that You are upset with me, and I do get Your hints that because this is a free service we have no rights other than to gladly accept whatever the webmaster and the moderators are offering and - if possible - without complaining.

Being a software consultant and programmer myself and having moderated one or two BBSes - even though they were much smaller - myself, I do have an idea about the tough job You and the other mods are doing here, but I also know that there exist such things as backups where data can be restored and I would really be taken by surprise if neither the vBulletin nor the server we are running on have no regular backing-up.

On the other hand the members who are contributing to this forum invest a lot of time and thinking to make this forum a good place with lively and interesting discussions - well mostly anyway. And if it turns out that whenever something gets out of hand there will be "group punishment" in form of deleting interesting and meaningful postings together with - a very few that contained personal attacks, the members will realize that writing a meaningful - and sometimes time-consuming post (because of the researches that have been done) might have been just a waste of time they might as well stop posting at all or - even worse - stop making posts that are meaningful and hence time-consuming. But I do agree, if people stop posting at all Your job as mods will be getting easier.

Furthermore I feel, that from the moment on You offer a free service like this one, You should also feel obligued to some democracy and process so that the members can be sure their postings will under no circumstances be deleted without a good reason.

Respectfully, Walter

[Beorn]

That was sarcasm...I hope...

It's perfectly understandable deleting the thread as opposed to removing the objectionable posts. RW would have to re-read the whole entire thread, and every time he found an objectionable post, he'd have to goto the bottom, select the right function, type in or check off the thread, hit ok. The, read some more. Scroll to the bottom, et al.

Would anyone care to do that?

Locking the thread only shows people that the Mods have authority to stop something, but it still doesn't help keep away what was said. I'm sure in the future it would have been referenced, and have people read it, bringing up the old wounds.

[Grond]

Harad, be glad democracy doesn't exist on this forum or you would be the first voted out.

[ReadWryt]

Actually, democracy does exist. And soon everyone will have a chance to have a say in the Tolkien Forum as they would like it to be. ***Edited by request from the Webmaster***

Until then though, as I have demonstrated with the personal attack from Harad, who's account is about to dissapear, there is, thankfully, no democracy on THIS forum. ***Edited by request from the Webmaster*** (Yes, even I am not impervious to the powerfull command of Mr. Pence!:D )

[Walter]

Originally posted by ReadWryt
Until then though, as I have demonstrated with the personal attack from Harad, who's account is about to dissapear, there is, thankfully, no democracy on THIS forum. ***Edited by request from the Webmaster*** (Yes, even I am not impervious to the powerfull command of Mr. Pence! )

Hmmm... I wonder why these words somehow sound awfully familiar and leave a bad taste in my mouth...

-----

I don't quite understand what to make of the first part of Your message, does it mean we are "invited" to pay a fee, but You guys (webmaster & moderators) will go on with the dictatorship? I wouldn't mind paying a fee for the use of this forum as long as it's a moderate amount, but only if it is made sure that there actually is some defined democratic process...

----
P.S.: As much as I have been annoyed by some postings of Harad as much am I - for the sake of democracy - saddened by the fact that he is removed rather than going of his own free will, I mean after all he was just going for - negative, unfortunately - attention and I feel that he would've realized sooner or later that with his attitude towards others there is not much to gain...

----
P.P.S.: All the BBSs I have seen going down the drain so far, went down because of their lack of democracy and because of a more or less despotic behaviour of the moderators or owners - yes, I have been guilty of that too -, maybe this will give You something to think about, but then again maybe not...
----
ATT.: Some parts of this posting are obsolete because the text-passages of the original posting I was referring to have been removed!

[ReadWryt]

I must admit that I was overly hasty in my posting about any future projects of the Webmaster's, but in the matter of Harad, who has seen the many postings by staff about Personal Attacks, who saw the announcement about the thread that was deleted because of personal attacks and then came into the thread inspired by the fact that a thread was deleted due to personal attacks, for Harad to come in here and start calling people names in a blatant barage of personal attacks seemed more like a plea to be removed then anything else...*Shrug*

Look, if it comes down to a bunch of people complaining that I am overstepping myself repeatedly then I will simply step down...simple. But I really don't see where a free service owes a great deal to the people who elect to use it outside of not abusing any personal information they collect. If Yahoo suddenly made their service harder to use it would be to their folly because they would loose viewers to their advertisements, something that this service has a noticable dearth of. If a Television Network begins airing shows that nobody wants to see, the same thing happens. Free publications like regional "Newspapers" that are fairly common in small communities depend completely on either some person spending money out of pocket to keep them afloat or advertisers to pay for it and once more, no advertising in fact is permitted here.

It is not necessarily the opinion of the Webmaster, so this is just me talking and not as a Moderator I might add, but you do indeed get what you pay for. And it seems that a democracy of people with no practical investment in a service is a practice in eventual anarchy because the few who do vote (See the pitifully small percentage of members that actually bothered to vote in the Moderator Elections) will have total controll over what the MAJORITY have to endour anyways, and so it no longer is really a democracy at all. If you want to come by my house and sit on my yard, enjoy the view and eat your lunch, do not complain of the ants...this seems like a very harsh view of things, and you refer to it as "despotic behaviour", but where it applies to upholding posted rules about the despotic behaviour of members then it seem, to me anyways, not so much horrible an action as it is an unfortunate and sadly avoidable. But I digress, back to Moderator Mode...

Now that there is a way to freeze threads that have become uncontrollable that is going to be the perscribed method for handling these matters, and in fact the Webmaster and I JUST discussed looking into a way for Moderators to be able to "Move" posts to a folder instead of simply deleting them so that they can be reviewed if necessary, so it's not like there is nothing being done to rectify situations from the Staff's end of the bargain.

It is indeed a thin line between scaring everybody away because of cruel and draconian actions and keeping the rules that maintain the enjoyable use of the forum and sustaining a free and open forum, within reason, for the exchange of ideas. But I actually recieved not ONE report on any of the postings in the thread in question, and from what I found there the thing had been going on for a couple of days. I have not the time to read every post made every day on every thread, and I really thought that with four moderators and a "Report this post" button on every posting that I would not have to, but from the two hours I spent last night trying to sort out a couple of other threads where people could not refrain from lowering themselves to petty fingerpointing and name calling, I am really starting to be of the opinion that a three strikes rule is in order...two written warnings and the third offence is the last...

Anyways, No more threads will go the way of this one, and in retrospect I am very sorry that I had not been able to freeze it or make a snapshot of it that I could edit later...or even better that I could not have deleted only posts by particular members from that thread, but now I can freeze posts and get things straightened out without having to take such drastic measures. With luck, aside from the unfortunately lost conversation, there will be a reticence on the part of people to try to start up a flame war in the future.

[Walter]

ReadWryte,

If things like the deletion of a whole active thread won't happen again, then at least something good will come out of this and that is for the benefit of ALL users...

It sure is not my place to tell You and/or the Webmaster how You should run this forum and I am sorry if You are getting this impression. But still, if You insist on claiming that "a free service is a free service and if You pay nothing this is exactly what You get for Your money", You are IMO making one mistake: An idealistic forum like this one has an immense positive energy and due to the contribution of so many members also creates a lot of synergy and it would be sad if the members get the feeling the "mighty ones" don't mind pissing those members off who actually contribute in a positive way.

Last not least I have to say I am sorry You - evidently had to - remove that part were You mentioned there are plans for a small fee in exchange for a - if I got You right - a parallel forum with some "increased member rights". I found this a very good idea, for a lot of reasons. After all this forum is also sort of a huge knowledgebase about Tolkien's work and there are quite some postings/threads that contain information that - in a somewhat "refined" state - would be worth being kept for longer if not forever. Furthermore a - however small - fee would sure be able to keep at least some of the notorious troublemakers away...

P.S. Sorry no, a moderate fee would not be the method of choice to get rid of me, but if You really want that, I am sure You will find a suitable way...

[ReadWryt]

I'm not looking to get rid of ANYBODY who is intelegent, contributes and doesn't make trouble. The ultimate goal I have in mind is to be able to take threads here and eventually freeze them in a "Snapshot" and develop them into a F.A.Q. that lets people use this marvelous resource to easily find answers to niggling questions, while somehow keeping the humor and friendly feel of the commeraderie. This would require a fairly substantial development in Search Engine design and the Front End would have to be well crafted for ease of use, but that has been my intention for quite some time.

The ability to freeze threads is indeed a great step forward in that, not only does it solve THIS particular problem, but I also will be able to save threads from deletion when we do cleanups (Deleting threads and member accounts that have been inactive for a substatial amount of time). I value threads even if they have not been contributed to in a while for their intrinsic value as references, and the hard work that the members put into the research and writing.

[daisy]

Readwryt, Walter etc.

I did not get a chance to read the original thread containing these personal attacks that had to be deleted, but I have read the postings since and my observations are that the two of you are successfully disagreeing and debating issues which you feel fairly strongly about humanely, maturely and without any personal insults. So it can be done! As someone who has had to deal with personal slags while attempting to be part of this forum, I feel that of course it is a more successful, welcoming place without having to worry about being called names. Readwryt, I kind-of like your three strikes idea, as long as the parameters of acceptable behvaviour were clear and had latitude.

I think you do a fine job, Readwryt and hope you do not entertain any further ideas about leaving your post.

Peace,
daisy.

[Thorin]

:eek:

What?? Could it be?? Harad is getting the boot??? WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Can Foe-Hammer and markrob be next? Maybe I'll even go back to the movie forum after that! :D

Just kidding guys.....RW, please don't drop the axe, or worse, use Grond on me (no, not the member).

I think you are doing a fine job, RW. And Walter, as difficult as it may be, try not to put meaningful, thought out posts with the idiots. And direct them from that thread by starting another idiot thread where they will flock like bees to honey to post their idiot threads that will bring the wrath of ReadWryt down upon them. :D

[daisy]

Hey Thorin, fellow teacher, (birthday four months to the day from mine, too!) i just escaped a scathing anti-teacher attack from little Joe in another thread so you may want to keep your evil profession under wraps.

I never thought about the strategy of not responding for paragraphs and paragraphs to mean people. I just can't help myself, I go on and on and on. Must stop.

Anyway, keep the faith out there, wherever you are imparting wisdom.
Peace,
daisy

[Grond]

I would just like to apologize to everyone for having been involved in the debacle. I let Harad get to me and responded in kind (of course Harad would say that I started it). Anyone who has known me at all will tell you that I am opinionated and maybe even head strong. But I also try very hard to be open minded and more importantly, friendly. It is only when I see my friends ideas being referred to as imbecilic or idiotic that I take exception.

I'll try harder to be more understanding and civil but I am fully supportive of taking punitive actions on offenders..... even if one of them happens to me. The forum must be kept .....nice.... and by nice, I mean friendly to all because regardless of your level of Tolkien interest or knowledge, all people interested in his works, should be welcome here.

[ReadWryt]

Just to let you all know, I will be announcing shortly that we are instituting the afore mentioned three strikes law. It's going to be a pain in the butt because I will have to be actively keeping a manual record that only the moderators can see of the offenders and the number of counts against them, and I had to devise a method of notification so some poor member who lets their emotions get the better of them doesn't end up with a letter from each moderator and think that their account is more then dead by the FOURTH strike, but I think it will be workable.

Details to be posted as an announcement shortly.

Oh, and we are reinstating Harad on the condition that he and everyone else involved mind their manners. With luck everyone will be able to see that the privelege of using this site is more like a right when handled in a reasonable manner.

[Walter]

Originally posted by ReadWryt
Oh, and we are reinstating Harad on the condition that he and everyone else involved mind their manners.I appreciate this decision, even though I look at it with one eye smiling and the other one crying (for all the obvious reasons)...

[Eonwe]

you all know who the real loser is in all of this don't you??

I started the thread in hopes of getting some smart minds to clear up something I thought was important in LOTR. And I went to great lengths (means I posted on my lunch half-hour at work :)) to try to show EVIDENCE for my thoughts. And now I look at the thread started by lilhobo that was supposed to continue the discussion, all of my arguments are gone, and the same thoughts I felt like I had given good evidence against are being stated. Frustrating.

But I have a sense of humor (thank God), and I have enough in me to realize this forum isn't as important as I sometimes think. So I will move on and let it go (yes it can be done).

I won't participate in the thread, and I won't ask about this passage in the book again, its too much work and bother. So while we have a three-strikes rule, everyone is back on the forum, the moderator is being beaten for trying to respond to user's statements of "personal attack" (You know I have been on many BBSs and forums in my life, and conversation always gets heated, used to be you just sluffed it off and went on with your business, you know no blood no foul) and there are young skulls full of mush that could benefit from this discussion, I sit here watching all this going on and wonder why the heck I even bother to post here.

Please all apologize to ME, because I lost out. Everyone else's loss in this discussion is IMHO tiny.

(Can't wait to see the responses to this :) )

[Grond]

Eonwe..... you are indeed correct and I sincerely apologize for my part in causing the thread to be destroyed. I have already pledged to take no part in a thread when personal insults begin being tossed about.

I am truly sorry.

[Eonwe]

no biggy. I like Harad, although he really is an a-hole... Where is he lurking?

OOOPPS One Strike!!! :)

Remember Grond, Harad has come back from death, he is no longer Harad the Grey, he is now Harad the WHITE!:D

[Grond]

Whatever Harad's color, Grond is still the Black but will act as if he is Grond the White. I can only promise that I will not ever be involved in a situation where I am one of the primary causes of it being deleted. Peace to you Harad and to you Eonwe, again my apologies.:)

[Walter]

I indeed was sorry for You, - as I am sorry for everyone else who lost a meaningful post - in this thread that was IMO - until it got out of hands - a very good and interesting one, Eönwë... :)

It was never my intention to "beat the moderators", but I felt I had to object against the deletion of a whole active thread with a lot of good posts in it and it looks - to me - as if finally something good has come out of this all, because a lot of people have started to think about what went wrong, many - including myself - have thought about what their own part of the guilt was and how a similar problems can be dealt with in the future...

[Eonwe]

and I learned something from you Walter, to watch my mouth (it requires continuous watching), thanks:)

[ReadWryt]

Here is the problem with threads that, over the course of a couple of days, get intermingled with so many personal attacks. The only recourse left to a Moderator is to click on the "Edit this post" button for every offensive message, click a "Delete Post" check box on the top of the page and then click the "Delete Post" button, then on the next screen click the "Yes" button in response to the question "Are you sure you want to delete the post?". Once you have done this for 6 or 7 posts made by people who are sitting online itching for the chance to flame the other person the second they have finished attempting to flame THEM, you have eaten up a goodly amount of time.

Otherwise we have the option to edit the thread with a special command that gives us a screen that has the first line of every post in a thread and a pair of checkboxes, one that if left checked will delete the post, the other when checked will leave the post in tact. This means that a moderator has to open a second window and read every post, switching between the windows and resetting the checkboxes for all the posts that will NOT be deleted as the screen defaults to wanting to delete them all.

Anyways, this has been fixed through some, albeit convoluted, means which will let me fix these problems in a less timely manner, but one that will not leave the problem laying about for everyone to have to see until I can get to fixing it.

Eonwe: I appologise for the loss and the injury to your hard work and heartfelt attempt to share with the Forum. When confronted with a large problem that had to be taken care of immediately at a moment when I had not the time to deal with it (Life invades!) I took what I thought was the most expedient and efficient action I could. Please continue to participate in the Forum as you wish, I feel that this type of problem will be handled in a much better manner in the future.

[Walter]

as I have learned something from You, Eönwë and that is not to judge someone by a single post...

[Aldanil]

As one who has for the most part watched these wars from afar, although fleered at on occasion and prone sometimes myself to intemperate adverbs, I'd like to add my gratitude to ReadWryt for his yeoman service as editor/surgeon/Moderator; masterfully done, Marse Anderson, thank you! My post-pasting skills don't yet encompass transporting others' previous quotations ("I'm short of wit as you will understand"), but I'd like to allude to an answer made by Tar-Steve to the aforementioned Harad (before his banishment and swift return from exile like Elba) who'd been griping about some comment on his Logic in Middle-earth thread, which judiciously phrased response put me in mind of the way that Confucius once said it: Do Not Do To Others What You Would Not Want Them Doing to You. The many pleasures of this fine and free Forum indeed merit full measure of all our self-restraint, and we posters like Shirefolk are protected and well provided for by the (mostly) unsung efforts of Rangers like ReadWryt.

[Greenleaf]

Here here! :D :D Thankx to all[U] Moderator:D :D :D

[ReadWryt]

Aldanil,

Thanks, I cannot though take more then one quarter of the credit, and would encourage the congratulations of the three other moderators as well, should any congratulations be in order. Ciryaher, Talierin and Ancalagon are out here doing the stuff as well, they seem to get overlooked because I am the most visible in my actions. Rest assured that more often then not anymore when a "Report this post to a moderator" notice hits my mailbox it was allready taken care of by one of these three good people.

[lilhobo]

i have to agree with walter here ( and i havent read al the posts)

Many BBS go down the drain because of too much censorship, you have to let kids like Harad have a go at explaining their ideas. If they are wrong then sooner or later the rest of the forum will let them know it ( eg. theJoseph)

i enjoy the fact that Readwryte has participated in the discussions....the funny thing is that he s been part of the debate and could be labelled as much of the cause of much of the name calling :D so really he shouldnt have complains

personally i say let the forum sort itself out, jump in only as last resort

peace :D

[Ciryaher]

Yes, it is I, the Eldest! (I'll give a candy-bar to whoever figures out what I'm talking about).

I can say that deleting an entire thread would be out of the question for me (unless it has gone utterly astray and/or is no longer relevant). At the most, I will use the option to prune the posts on a thread (which I don't exactly see why RW didn't use...)
, and the only thing I censor is extreme profanity.

Kudos to RW, who dips his moderational ladel deeply int the Movie Forums (which I am quite terrified of :D )

[ReadWryt]

I can say that deleting an entire thread would be out of the question for me (unless it has gone utterly astray and/or is no longer relevant). At the most, I will use the option to prune the posts on a thread (which I don't exactly see why RW didn't use...)

I think if you are refering to either the "Delete Post" function on the "Edit" screen or the "Delete Posts" in the "Edit Thread" option on the Admin Options I pretty much covered why both of those stink as options. The amount of work involved in deleting each individual post one at a time is as bad as having to have two windows open so that I can read more then the first few words of each post in one while I check the "No" button for each post I do NOT want to delete in the Edit Thread section. If I could go in and delete just the posts by a particular Member in a particular thread, THAT would rock...

Also, I'm not posting as much in the Movie Forum for a couple of reasons. It's taken on a life of it's own and really doesn't need prodding to get lively, but mostly it's because I'm focusing on keeping tabs on the volitility in those threads. Same with the rest of the forum that isn't Ancalagon's and My "Beat". Most of my postings have been either in here or in the "Literary" forum since I am focussing on keeping the peace and moving the Movie threads that are started out of there. Dave was commenting that the Moderators were being forced to spend a LOT of time moving threads from the wrong Forum into the correct one... *Sigh* It's a job, but someone dirty has to do it...

[lilhobo]

hey if you dont post RW, how am i going to get my daily dose of sarcasm??? lol....even Harad's "A implies B, which means -A implies not -B blah blah " can get irritatingly long in the tooth, and then one needs some proper use of the english language lol

PS. hope you havent deleted Harad :D

[DGoeij]

It looks like it happened. Harad is gone, I think... At least I can no longer find his posts.
Too bad I missed the WGTTFTM debate, meaning the serious thoughts about it. But that sounds like me. I'm always told afterwards the great things I've missed.:(
Could somebody give me a sign when it is discussed again, thanks?

edit: O, and the thread that contained discussion about the Watcher. Originally created by Joseph, almost turing ugly, got closed. Was it closed by a moderator? The personal remarks weren't that bad as yet and people stopped using them to turn to the issue (even Foe). Or did Joseph himself closed it? I don't knwo, but I had some fun there, felt bad when I couldn't respond anymore.

[Walter]

Dgoeij: I just noticed the same, wonder wether s/he left voluntarily or if it was "strike three".

WGTTFTM (took me a minute to figure what You mean with that one) has been started anew under the name SWDGTTFTM here (http://www.thetolkienforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2058)

[DGoeij]

Sorry about the WGTTFTM, I just finished reading a text that shortened most of the names of theories it named in that same manner. I got a little irritated.:rolleyes:
Thanks, I had found this one myself after my last post and was reading it. It doesn't really get going it seems. Maybe people hate to repeat themselves. I would.
Maybe I'll just throw in my own thoughts, see where it leads to.

[Walter]

Originally posted by ReadWryt
... since I am focussing on keeping the peace and moving the Movie threads that are started out of there. Dave was commenting that the Moderators were being forced to spend a LOT of time moving threads from the wrong Forum into the correct one... *Sigh* It's a job, but someone dirty has to do it... I know I will get severely ...umm...critizised - to say the least - for even issuing that thought: I wonder if it would technically possible with vBulletin, and worth a thought to give a hint to the members when they try to create a new thread that they should only proceed when they have made sure that
[list=1]a) a thread with basically the same contents doesn't already exist elsewhere, and [/list=1][list=1]b) the thread is to be placed in the proper forum, and [/list=1][list=1]c) the name of the thread does give a slight hint about the contents[/list=1]

[DGoeij]

Sounds reasonable. If you make it a little more less easy (its really easy now) to create a new thread, it maight work.
With less easy, I mean you have to pick your options one at a time, so you need to think in what forum to place the thread, giving it a name, things like that. Wouldn't that help?

These are the thoughts of a very ignorant person concerning possiblilties in electronic forums. I'm helping out with the website of my scout group for the one and only reason that I ask stupid questions. Makes our webmaster think about how to create a site workable for the less internet-experienced.:D

So don't get mad, I was just thinking out loud.;)

[Greenwood]

I noticed on the members list there is a member who took the name "Peter Jackson". Given this, and the new three strikes rule, does that mean that everytime a "NPW" (their name, not mine) makes an attack on Peter Jackson because of things in the movie they disagree with, it counts as a personal attack and the person incurs a strike? :D

[Eonwe]

ok with me. OOPS! ONE MORE STRIKE! :)

[ReadWryt]

I really like the idea of adding a step to the Thread Starting process for anyone with New Member status, and found such a Code Hack last night on a forum that specializes in such things. It would indeed present someone with a screen that advises them to check to make certain of several things before starting a thread in a particular location, or any member for that matter the first time they start a thread regardless of Member Status.

Unfortunatly for some users I also found a Code Hack that lets the Admin limit the number of characters in the Signature, one that removes excess exclaimation points and question marks from Thread Titles and another, which unfortunately only works with Internet Explorer, that colapses a specific number of posts at the beginning of the thread so that all is displayed is the Member Name, the date of the post and the Post Subject should there be one until a person clicks on the post and then it expands out. Netscape, Mozilla and Opera users don't see the compression at all though, so the threads look the same for them as they do now.

I'm also still looking for a "Speel Chekcer"...hehehe These are functions not built into vB at this time and have to be coded into the Data Base Handling somehow, I don't know the particulars as I detest having to program anything more complex then my VCR.

The "Appology for the Kraken (In the Greek sense!)" thread is back from being precariously placed in peril (gawd I love eliteration!) by me as I presumed that Super Moderator functions on the forum would work as they are labeled. It's a long story but my intention was to make the thread invisible overnight so that in the morning I could take the time needed over my first cup of coffee and edit out all the nastiness. From time to time when a Moderator comes across a thread such as that it will dissapear for a while, but will be returned to it's previous location once it has been cleaned up. Sorry for the confusion...

[lilhobo]

yeah but u want a forum to be dynamic....if anything is important, then it will be repeated!!!!

the reason that the SWDGTTFTM forum wasnt as dynamic as WGTTFTM is the lack of spontaneity of the latter

[Tar-Steve]

Good point lilhobo,

Threads take on a life of their own. Trying to recreate them is like Feanor trying to make a second set of Sils ... can't happen twice.