to contributors of this topic,
i just want to be clear about your replies to myself or mr joe, as i’m not certain who you were commenting to in your text…
i did not comment on what someone should/should not say in the forum… this was about handling what mr joe, or anyone, reads in the forum…
mr joe spoke of anger, of ‘spam’, and generally what displeased him… i offered suggestions on how to cope with aspects of the forum that negated his enjoyment…
i said nothing about what people should avoid expressing in the forum, only about reading what others have said…
it is all too apparent that asking some contributors to elevate their mentality above the dumpster division is pointless, and asking others to stop writing things that anger readers is too close to twisting the first amendment…
the only solution left is to read everything that interests you on the forum… when you see something that ‘gets your dander up’, back off, turn around and go another way…
dont waste time giving them a piece of your mind, they wouldn’t know what to do with it… i have replied to some of these rejects for the tv show ‘when idiots attack’… but i used humor to trivialize the issues they write about… there are examples available to read…
if you must reply to a nut-case, don’t take the bait, tell a joke… it doesn’t have to relate to the subject or the contributor, just write something you’ve read or heard somewhere… tell it as if you were posting an original topic… don’t acknowledge that you are replying to a post which is outrageous, stupid, whatever…
if i read a post that says, ‘engineers are a joke , they sit on their a** all day and do nothing’, i might reply with a joke: ‘hey, how can you tell an elephant’s been looking thru your refrigerator? his footprints are in the pizza…’
this defuses the contributor by letting him know his post is out-of-bounds and he is being ignored in the content of his m