As happens on probably all forums, especially successful ones like this one, there are e-savvy folks who elect to spend their time involving themselves in forums in less than productive manner. They might post under several different names and create arguments (sometimes arguments between their own aliases) in order to stimulate argument which does not lead to any productive discussion. Often, not always, the discussion becomes sarcastic, insulting etc., and basically takes the topic off track to the frustration of sincere and thoughtful participants.
I know that folks posting in this forum have a wide range of forum type experience. Many will know that there is a casual term for this kind of forum behaviour and interaction---it's called "trolling". Trolling refers to any interaction that winds up being more to the purpose of causing discord than productive discussion.
Our I-M board here has seen a little of this, not as much as others. Please know that the moderators and admin are very hip to this sort of thing and work hard to create a balance between being too "strict" on one hand and allowing destructive influence on the forum, thus maintaining the high quality site that this forum has become.
The other two areas of intermittent concern on the moderator board are (1) posters who are outrightly insulting to others (not so much of that recently); (2) spammers--obviously, folks who look for forums and other sites to post their ads or other links for their own monetary gain, but contribute little interest otherwise to the discussion topics.
Our site here has attracted a little, but very little attention in any of these areas. That's because we are so cool, yah !!!!
Just for people to be "in the know", I'd suggest the following (and I think each of these has been done by at least one or more already). These precautions are just to avoid raising "red flags" for moderators who are taking their time and energy to review the different boards and bring back potential problems. (Yah, maybe this is just very, very slightly self serving--make it easy for the mods
)
1. If you change your user name, announce that fact so that it doesn't look like you are posting as several different people (note that SimplyGold-------->Sadhana just did that)
2. When you post a relevant site which may well be an income producing site, yours or someone else's (absolutely NOTHING wrong with that !!!! ), please make sure that in the same post, you detail how that site might be helpful and is relevant to the topic at hand. Off topic posts and posts to all boards are the ones that raise those red flags, as you can imagine.
3. Skepticism and open, challenging discussion abt any of the forum topics is welcome, real healthy and everybody seems to feel that way. Basically the only thing to say abt that is "mindyermanners", ya know? If a person feels real strongly abt something and wants to express the strength of their feelings, that's great.
Seems reasonable, if I'm talking to people I don't actually know (who, you guys???), people who can't actually see that I am smiling sweetly and batting my eyes while I'm telling them that I think they are talking from another planet or missing the point entirely, then maybe I should SAY/WRITE something that defuses the probability that someone will take something personally or feel I am being disrespectful or talking to them in an abusive manner.
Overall, no real problems here at all...this is just some stuff from the moderators board that I thought might be helpful, and I'm waiting for our turkey to be ready.... (Admin of any forum has access to IP addresses and can quite readily track what is coming from an individual...nothing more than that, but in relation to posts on this forum--that's why people are asked to register)
All best, hope this has not been too boring and has instead been useful..
Ati