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Message: [QUOTE="tomcat, post: 2987410, member: 961"] I just want to get this off my chest. Maybe it will be allowed and maybe it won't. I honestly don't care much., The writing of it is what's important, not the publishing of it. I don't know if anyone else on the BY will understand that, but there it is. We had a skirmish on the board early this week and Nan, our faithful moderator, had a bit of a meltdown because of so much attitude being shown on the board. I thought she was being overly sensitive based on the fact that as a moderator, she sees absolutely everything and we don't. So she may see lots of people acting like jerks and we don't. I thought there was logic to that, and maybe there was. But in response, she said some things that got me to thinking. Basically, she said that some longtime members have left this board because of the negative attitude shown by some others. I assumed she meant negative toward UConn and launched into a mini-rant about censorship, because I believe people should be able to (within reason) criticize all sorts of UConn things. But no, she meant negative toward others on the BY. Let me say up front that when it comes to speech, I tend toward the libertarian: I think people, if polite, should be able to say damn near anything they want. However, I think it should be done within the boundaries of politeness and mutual respect. So I started looking. The very next day, a relatively new poster had a thought about moving Williams into the post. It was published politely, with credit given to the person who originally came up with the thought, and with a semi-apology for posting it. It was that person's first thread. In response, someone else pulled the old :"So you're smarter than Geno?" routine. Snarky and uncalled for. I'm kinda proud of the fact that I managed to call the responder on his/her attitude even before Nan could respond. So here's the deal: I've noticed that we've lost a number of regular posters in the last year or two. I have no idea why, except in a couple of sad cases where people died. But it's disturbing to think that people maybe got disgusted with the way they and others were treated here. I miss a number of the people who used to be here and think it's awful that they might have left because of attitude. They made great contributions to the board and to the discussions on it. The other thing I see is that some people respond to criticism of snark with comments criticizing political correctness. These, IMHO, are people who do not know the difference between political correctness and boorishness. It is okay to disagree with someone. It is okay to be sarcastic, as long as you're poking at someone's opinion and not at the person. It is not okay to hurt people. It is not okay to make it personal. Truth is, we need more members, not fewer. The last thing we need is to shut people down when they're just getting their sea legs here. I think that if any of us see insulting snark, we should think about we would feel if we were on the receiving end and if the answer is "not very good," we should call it out, especially if it is directed toward newcomers. That';s what I plan to do, anyway. [/QUOTE]

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