Wow, been a tough few days on you peeps. A lot of people asking/getting their account zapped.
As custodian of this forum I try to keep things civil and over the last few days life admin has got in the way so I haven’t been able to moderate as much, but it looks like we’ve lost some valued members, and others are also considering leaving etc
I’d like to keep this place civil, and humorous/playful, but at times some of you lot wind yourselves up a bit too much.
So if you’ve zapped (or want to zap your) account I ask you first to do a few things:
Think - are trying to ‘punish’ someone or making a grand statement by leaving?
Take some time off. A week minimum. Emotions can run high
Have you spoken to anyone else (including anyone winding you up) in private about it? Maybe you should be the bigger person and do so
Have a word with yourself. Are you the dickhead? Really? Or the other person/people?
If it is all a bit too much then of course, we can delete your account. But there are a couple levels:
Anonymising your account: this is where you can no longer access and are assigned a randomly generated username. It stops huge holes appearing and topics disappearing from the forum
Completely depeting: I would rather not do this. Mainly as it’s a bit more hard work and I am lazy. And conversations have big holes and gets confusing.
If you want your account anonymised or deleted including posts then let me know. Be nice to each other you dickheads.
I did pen a lengthy response earlier but after two years of covid - whilst still on the tail end of the disease - we’re now being introduced to a war which feels quite close to home and I’m done as that’s on top of day to day personal battles.
I’m sure everyone with compassion and empathy is totally fried and it’s easy to get into a bit of a tit for tat online. It really isn’t worth burning bridges over imho.
I think arguments/beef on this forum get exaggerated on this forum due to us being so few in number and pretty much everyone has posted in every thread at one point or another, so there’s not really any escape from other members, and we know each other so intimately in terms of our online personas that changing usernames isn’t enough, we subconsciously know our posting patterns and linguistic signatures. It’s a unique community in that respect and part of the reason I love it.
I don’t think I’ve ever had beef with anyone on here, except with a certain user named after a town in the West Midlands, when it looked like Brexit might entirely focus my workplace. I’ve certainly never hoped that anyone leaves for any reason, not even that guy.
Every beef from now on gets settled with a game of SKATE. Scummy tricks allowed.
Losing 5 people is a real shame. Although I personally didn’t enjoy interactions with one of those people in particular, having a mix of people and opinions is good for this place ultimately.
Hopefully for future arguments people can just log out for a week instead and get some irl space.
I agree that losing 5 posters is a shame as I do appreciate having varied opinions and contributions on here.
That said, if I look to social media as the best possible comparison and think of the few close friends I have who deleted an app which was making them less happy in general I don’t think they’ve looked back from what I can tell anyway.
