I don't really appreciate your sarcasm.. I know, I know, you couldn't care less! I don't make trouble around here. I don't lash out at people (for the most part). I probably have done it a time or two, but I don't think anyone here would label me a troublemaker. I came to this place as a Houston Rocket fan. I'm an out-of-towner so my attention drifted to The Hangout and then the D&D where geography wasn't such a limiting factor. What does go on behind the scenes? Moderators interrupt threads with very general warnings. Why aren't offensive or overly aggressive responses just deleted rather than locking a thread?
Thank you very much, R2K. Sometimes I get frustrated, but I do try to not attack anyone personally. I honestly think the quality of debate has deteriorated in here a lot, but I still love this forum. I came to this site to discuss the Rockets under a different Screen name years ago, forgot my password and got a second screen name. I forgot that password as well, and then joined in this incarnation. I enjoyed and still do enjoy the Rockets discussion and would still visit the site if there was no D&D discussion. But the debate over Steve and Yao became so tiersome, that I could barely stomach it. I have always loved Yao Ming, and Steve Francis. That being said I am glad we got Tracy MacGrady which is different than saying I was happy seeing Francis go. I think it was the right trade, but still bittersweet. Never-the-less some people look at my screen name, and assume I'm a Francis only fan, and disqualifies any criticism I have of Yao Ming. I've seen Steve Fans attack Yao, because they feel that Yao brought unwarranted criticism to Francis. I've seen Yao fans put that player above the team, and bash anyone on the team that seemingly was in the way of Yao's personal glory. I rarely post on that board these days, because that type of mess has soured my experience. Honestly I think very few people on either side here actually don't debate and just attack the poster. I'm not very sensitive, and I don't take at offense or feel attacked very easily. I have seen some posts which clearly do attack others, and rarely provide little evidence to support a position. Others on both sides seem to often provide evidence to support their position AND attack other posters as well. I don't think it's necessary and even if it doesn't cross the line, it pushes both sides towards the line. If anyone has taken offense at anything I said that people felt was a personal attack, please understand that it wasn't personal at all. This board has always been interesting to me. Rarely has the arguments changed my position(though it has happened) but I enjoy the opportunity to try and understand where others are coming from in their positions. Some things to me seem so far removed from reality I didn't understand how a person could support those positions. I asked, and usually I've received an answer that explains where another person was coming from. I like that about this forum. I also learn more from posts of people on the same side, who find articles I haven't found, and bring light to issues I don't normally follow. I hope the debate is able to maintain a level that makes this board viable in the future.
For me, I honestly would miss this forum as a place to argue what I have and hone my arguments as well as shape my ideas and make up my mind. I am a wiser man having had discussions about abortion with MadMax, the drug war with several posters, and this forum has made more more politically aware than I would ever have been without it. It will be a sad day in my life when the D&D goes away. This is my place to explore the political universe and talk to people I might not come into contact with otherwise (I do work in academia). This board is important to me because I am a Rox fan first and foremost. I will continue coming here sans the D&D, but will probably not post nearly as often or have nearly as much interest. I like it here because I can talk about things I will not talk about at work or in polite settings, which pretty much limits me to my wife and the 7 month old and he doesn't even get the nuances of difference between a consumption tax and a value added tax. But the big bonus is that I get to hash out these differences with people with whom I share a common bond. I don't mind telling MadMax where I stand on abortion because I know that if we were watching a game together, our views on abortion wouldn't matter. This forum has become a dear friend and I am the richer for the time I have spent here.
I maintained a site for about 2 years after 9/11 called warroomcentral.com. I made this crude news portal that updated itself using keywords like "terrorism" and "iraq" and "bin Laden" that pulled down news from everywhere from the Corpus Christi Caller Times to Pravda to the Wall Street Journal to the Syrian national wire. It was kind of a very specialized, very crude version of what news.google.com does. It wasn't really focused on politics as much it was about the war on terror and the aftermath of 9/11, but I guess for it to become political, it would have had to have had opinionated users. It had a forum that was used by 3 people (me, a co-worker, and my friend who owned the co-lo server) , that I had hoped to generate traffic to at least justify the expense and the work I put into it. Didn't happen. It didn't look like much, but it helped with my real-time news addiction after September 11th. It also helped family and friends keep up with my manic discussions of world events. But that's about it. Not worth the few hundred bucks a year (and time) to maintain. If enough people are interested I can take it out of mothballs, and beef up the forum to accomadate the debating needs of the partisans from D&D. The domain is long expired but still available, and all the old stuff is sitting on a friend's server in Houston. It would have to be moderated, but if memory serves me, the bbs software was free as long as the site was advertisement free. I think we may all owe it to Clutch to move the political discussion and save him bandwidth and sanity from non-Rocket ventings. So if enough of you are interested, I will volunteer myself to do it. I would want volunteers to help moderate the thing and keep it up to date. The details can be...debated. Talk amongst yaselves. If you guys decide we need it, it can be built.
I haven't posted here for too long and not very often recently but I'm not surprised that things are deteriorating. That seems to be the case with political discourse in general. Anyway I hope this forum isn't closed. I like the Rox, I like politics and I like Houston and Texas. Where else can I discuss and debate all of those? Certainly not on the T-Wolves Den and I'm going to get some pretty strange looks mentioning Whataburger or Ann Richards there.
