by CptnCalculator » Jan 3, 2003 @ 6:17pm
I will preface this by saying that I am what you all would call a "follower" of goofather. I am a moderater of two of the forums at expod.net, and I consider him a friend.
I think there are many reasons that the BE community has such a (deservedly perhaps) bad reputation, and they all stem from the BE being such an inexpensive machine. As such, there exists a great number of people that have purchased it under the age of twenty. This of course is both good and bad, good in the sense that a young community is not satisfied with the crippled nature of the BE and approaches the problem from a "how can this be made better" standpoint, but also bad in that some of the attitutes (and thus posts) can be pretty militant/childish/etc.
I am a big fan of the seperation/breakup of the forums. As has been mentioned before, one size cannot and does not fit all, and seperate boards help in the peaceful coexistence of the community. (You may laugh at the term "peaceful" but just imagine how things would be if we were all somehow forced to stay in the same forum all the time!) What we need to work on is a more peaceful coexistence between forums. I don't know how this can be achieved, but I think it starts by those of us who are perhaps a bit more "unchildish" by not fanning the flames.
Let me wrap up by saying that I don't think anyone, myself least of all, has acted properly the entire time. The commments to Dan East were inappropriate, comments to goofather have been inappropriate, comments to wolfman have been inappropriate, etc. Let's just all take a step back and relax. If you don't like the attitude of a particular forum, simply leave, there are many other to choose from. The only way this community can continue is for some of us to lead the way in "being the bigger man"