B
Barry
As I had stated in the opening post of the thread on gun-control, I'm curious about what folks on these forums think about a number of pressing issues facing the USA: Accordingly, I'd also asked about what folks think about drug-control policies on street drugs, asked for an international perspective from folks from other countries on illegal immigration. There's other stuff I'm curious about folks' opinions on, too.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar: My motive for bringing that stuff up is precisely what I said my motive was. I have a tendency to pontificate, so I generally would give only a brief overview of my own opinion. Precisely the way I would begin a conversation with someone on a controversial topic.
But I really wasn't trying to start any trouble, and I really am not a troll. I guess this is just the wrong place to solicit opinions on controversial topics unrelated to heart valve replacement. Too bad, because the folks here generally are more mature and well-informed than you'll find at most forums - and accordingly their opinions tend to be more mature and well-informed.
I'm a bit uncertain how to proceed - I just checked the gun-control and street-drug threads and it didn't see any problems going on in them, hadn't devolved into flame-wars, nobody using these forums to encourage or abet illegal activities. One person noted that the topic is boring to them, and I see no problem with that - not every topic is going to be scintillating to everyone and best way to deal with threads with boring topics would seem to be to simply not read them.
Freedom of speech isn't really an issue here in my opinion, at least not in any constitutional sense. The First Amendment protects us from government interference in expression of free speech, but this is a private forum - the government isn't involved. So the First Amendment is irrelevant to the issue. The owners/administrators here can restrict what's said here in any manner they choose - just as any of us are free to establish house rules that certain topics are forbidden subjects of conversation in our own homes.
Now, it hasn't happened in any of the threads that I had started - I don't think - but apparantly has happened in the Schiavo thread from what I read in this thread (I haven't yet read the Schiavo thread today), but...
A separate issue is threads becoming flame wars, in which forum members address one another very harshly, even rudely and insultingly. To my way of thinking, even were one free to talk about any topic at all, one still has the obligation to always be civil about it. Civil discourse on difficult topics is exceptionally interesting, and that the members of these forums tend to be mature and well-informed would, I should think, make flaming one another a very very rare event. I guess it's not a separate issue - it's precisely for that reason that I thought this would be a good place for civil discussion of controversial subjects, subjects that at many other forums would rapidly devolve into flame wars. Anyway, there's no excuse for rudeness, and I do hope folks will be civil to one another around here: I think we really can "all get along" so long as we're polite and civil to one another.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar: My motive for bringing that stuff up is precisely what I said my motive was. I have a tendency to pontificate, so I generally would give only a brief overview of my own opinion. Precisely the way I would begin a conversation with someone on a controversial topic.
But I really wasn't trying to start any trouble, and I really am not a troll. I guess this is just the wrong place to solicit opinions on controversial topics unrelated to heart valve replacement. Too bad, because the folks here generally are more mature and well-informed than you'll find at most forums - and accordingly their opinions tend to be more mature and well-informed.
I'm a bit uncertain how to proceed - I just checked the gun-control and street-drug threads and it didn't see any problems going on in them, hadn't devolved into flame-wars, nobody using these forums to encourage or abet illegal activities. One person noted that the topic is boring to them, and I see no problem with that - not every topic is going to be scintillating to everyone and best way to deal with threads with boring topics would seem to be to simply not read them.
Freedom of speech isn't really an issue here in my opinion, at least not in any constitutional sense. The First Amendment protects us from government interference in expression of free speech, but this is a private forum - the government isn't involved. So the First Amendment is irrelevant to the issue. The owners/administrators here can restrict what's said here in any manner they choose - just as any of us are free to establish house rules that certain topics are forbidden subjects of conversation in our own homes.
Now, it hasn't happened in any of the threads that I had started - I don't think - but apparantly has happened in the Schiavo thread from what I read in this thread (I haven't yet read the Schiavo thread today), but...
A separate issue is threads becoming flame wars, in which forum members address one another very harshly, even rudely and insultingly. To my way of thinking, even were one free to talk about any topic at all, one still has the obligation to always be civil about it. Civil discourse on difficult topics is exceptionally interesting, and that the members of these forums tend to be mature and well-informed would, I should think, make flaming one another a very very rare event. I guess it's not a separate issue - it's precisely for that reason that I thought this would be a good place for civil discussion of controversial subjects, subjects that at many other forums would rapidly devolve into flame wars. Anyway, there's no excuse for rudeness, and I do hope folks will be civil to one another around here: I think we really can "all get along" so long as we're polite and civil to one another.
