[nostatic]

I'm not sure if it is just my life situation, but I, for one (and I know I'm not the only one judging from some IMs and emails I've received), am sick and tired of the level of hate and bile that is being slung in this forum. imho, OT is *not* carte blanche for people to come and dump their hatred in the forum. The lack of civility from a small subset of people has seemingly gotten worse over the last few months. I'm all for free speech, but I think I speak for the majority when I say "enough."

There was a time when OT was where threads from the tech forums ended up because they weren't exactly "tech" : a bunch of Porsche owners who were already members of the Pelican community based on participation on other forums (911 tech, 944 tech, etc). It was not some cesspool where people used it as a bully pulpit for their fringe political/social viewpoints and a convenient landfill for rabid hate.

So, I'll put it to the community to comment, but I propose that we try to dial it back a bit. I really don't like to censor comments, lock threads, or ban people. In the time I've been moderator here, I've banned only one person, removed a few vicious racist comments (and a pic or three), and locked a handful of threads because they were spinning out of control.

And I'm looking in the mirror while I'm typing this too. Over the past weeks I have actually deleted some of my own posts, and *not* hit reply after typing out a response that while I thought it was warranted, in fact would just make things more inflamed. So I'm editing myself. I would encourage others to do the same. And for those that are unable to keep themselves in check, perhaps we as a community can figure out what best to do (other than ignoring them, which is usually my goal).

cheers,
Todd