If any of the following sounds like criticism, it's not. I have just come in the house from a two and a half hour slog in rush hour traffic and I'm going to do the best I can with what's left of my little grey cells.
I was very glad to see this matter come up as a member posting and discussion, as opposed to a pre-emptive action by the system operator. It gives me hope that the situation will now improve because those of us that are serious about being here will continue to contribute and discuss matters according to our experiences and knowledge - and that the boneheads that are causing the problem will lay low, or go away.
However, please don't think that such situations will go away anytime soon. In fact, if they do, they will quickly be replaced by another problem. This is just the way it is. A forum operator has to have a hard shell and the ability to think fast, make the right choices in his moderator staff and give them their individual marching orders.
At one time, I was the senior moderator on a very well respected aviation historical forum and the sysop used to call me the Celtic Barbarian because of the manner in which I swung a two-handed sword. My major responsibility was to make sure that copyright infringement was not a problem on the forum - and it wasn't, for a long, long time. Then, out of nowhere, some guy we really didn't know joined the forum and posted a pile of material that we all knew wasn't his. I called him on it, dumped the material and ...the forum was closed, because the legitimate copyright owner had been notified - by somebody - and a lawsuit was threatened. Years of serious study down the toilet.
On another historical forum, where I was simply just another member, I became incensed by a posting by one of the administrators, a Serb, in which he called the NATO allies that operated in Kosevo racists and mass murderers. I called him on it, asking him what right he had to use his admin powers to make such remarks, when the rest of us would have been censured for doing so. The operator of the forum (not a Serb) immediately banned
me from the site for creating a flamer!
I think Scott can take heart in the fact that most of us are taking the situation seriously. We don't want pieces broken off what must be the most important and effective warbird forum on the net. I, for one, don't want to see anybody quit because of someone who is here to scream and yell, rather than discuss serious aviation topics.
There are always going to be 'situations'. It's up to us to show the operator that we can handle them like the adults we are.
Doug
