It appears that last night's pharmaceutically-impaired "skim" through this thread missed something of a llama stampede.
It is a noble goal, and I don't mind repeating myself to say I'm proud to know the people who worked so hard to achieve it
...due to the hostility, it might be doing more harm than good...
Well, as long as it was just hostility we could argue about it.
In the sense of polite discussion, as is our custom, I mean.
But as is the case with participating in any forum, we're all basically playing in someone else's yard, which means there's nothing to discuss.
He who owns the yard gets to decide who can play there, and he gets to change his mind tomorrow.
Not everybody has the same philosophy about yards.
Some people love having a yard, they enjoy taking care of it, and you'll see them out there every day, removing defunct petunia heads, putting fresh water in the bird bath, and dispatching any stray candy wrappers directly to the Reincarnation bin at the curb.
Other people will buy a condo precisely so they could live their whole lives without ever having to buy so much as one small bag of mulch.
Any horticultural urges they might have are more than taken care of with a geranium or two in a window box.
Still others like the idea of having a yard, but prefer to have someone else do all the cutting and pruning and scraping bird mistake off the statuary.
If their budget isn't a good fit for the local landscaping company's rates, most of the time, they'll go for that condo and geranium.
But once in a while we'll run into somebody who'll invite the neighborhood children to make a flower bed by his mailbox, but upon realizing that maintaining it will require his own time and energy, he'll change his mind, and being disinclined to do the work of removing it himself, will have no qualms about asking a neighbor to dismantle it all, and while they're there, pick up the candy wrappers blown in by yesterday's monsoon wind.
Most of the neighbors, of course, will ignore him. A few may argue with him about the provenance of the candy wrappers, and some can be counted on to suggest in varying degrees of politeness or lack thereof, that he get out there and tend to his own yard.
So if our capricious yard owner is a shrewd fellow, he'll direct his request to the neighbor who's dedicated himself to the cause of getting the street on the town's Prettiest Hood Tour list.
The administration here has put in a lot of effort and invested a lot of resources into making this place too legit to quit, and for obvious reasons don't have the luxury - even if they wanted it - of getting into arguments about whether Dweezlina87 called somebody a doo doo head in post #8934 on Feb 30, and whether she shares a typist with Dweezluna78 on another message board.
Because ECF is not just another forum for fans of a particular video game, or people who are outraged by the overabundance of leopard of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, the story must perforce begin and end with "a complaint was received."
...I pm'd the admin there and asked to have my account deleted...
Especially in light of some of the concerns Magnus expressed, if I understand him correctly, that is probably the most prudent course of action.
There's really no way to prevent bored young folks, or even troubled adults, from doing something like creating an account anywhere, claiming to be this or that character from this or any other message board, and proceeding to post any content they choose, but if I had ever registered "there," I'd probably do what MustangSallie did, and take the extra step of making sure that the moderator here was aware that I had requested my deletion, and would no longer be present "there," in any capacity, just in an overabundance of caution.
...combative...stumped as to how to put that right, trolling doesn't describe what I've seen over there from ecf people, nor does being disruptive...
Personally, I'm inclined to agree with you, but as both "here" and "there" are somebody else's yard, that means each yard owner gets to characterize anything that takes place in his yard using the vocabulary of his choosing, as well as variously speak to, remove, or complain elsewhere about any persons or persons in said yard, for any or no reason, and our opinions about any of it are irrelevant.
And against that backdrop, we have this:
...brain is still messed up...can barely drive a car...have to keep telling myself over and over to concentrate...can't remember things...The doctor told me...that for some former smokers these problems seemed to be more or less permanent...
(bold mine) I bolded it because that is the part that simultaneously gave me goose bumps and tried to mess up my sinuses.
How to navigate that tricky point in the time-space continuuum where somebody else's yard ends and our moral imperative begins?
It's an age-old question, just as "make a way out of no way" is an age-old strategy.
I think Magnus and Randy may be working on a version for this particular age. You are, right? Magnus? Randy? Working on that?
LibertarianNate and deuxtrouble also posted things that tried to mess up my sinuses, and reminded me of one of the wisest quotes I've read anywhere - from a most unlikely source.
When asked about his decision to resign from the cast of "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,"
the old orange movie star, George Hamilton, said this:
I'm 70 years old , if I don't enjoy every day now, I'm stupid
To which I would add that no one need wait for their 70th birthday to claim that as a watchword.
