Originally Posted by BILL WILLIAMSON (Post 1145330)

Henry,
My Dear departed wife, Pat, had a sign in her IRS office, "I AIN'T YO' MOMMA"!!
Bill W.

Originally Posted by tbirdtbird (Post 1145249)

I know of several knowledgeable posters who have quit, myself included, for several reasons, which include open attacks on the forum and hate mails via PM. It is tiring.

Originally Posted by Ryan (Post 1145156)

If requiring members of this forum to be civil with each other or, at the very least, to ignore those they don't get along with is an act of censorship, well then... consider me a censor.

Point being, opinions are cool fellas. Opinions will always be welcomed. However, if you can't express an opinion without bagging another person in the process, then this forum will not cater to you.

This is really just a matter of simple manners. Our parents taught us this, right? So, it shouldn't be too hard to extend those principles to a forum about old Fords.

As a forum admin with limited hours in a day to tend to admin manners, the really hard part of all of this to me is this:

I have about ten members that are constantly complaining about one another. If I had the time, I'd go back and look at years of post history to see who started what... But I don't. Further, I don't really care too... It's not fun... and this is supposed to be fun for me too... But because I don't have this context, I have no side in any of these arguments and long standing hate fests. Instead, I tell each side to simply be nice to each other, ignore each other, and move on.

You what the typical response to this is? They ignore me... and continue bashing each other on a forum that I provide to them at no cost what so ever.

That's really the part I'm done with. I'm essentially wiping the slate clean at this point and giving these people one last chance. But, that's it...

Originally Posted by Ryan (Post 1145156)

If I had the time, I'd go back and look at years of post history to see who started what... But I don't. Further, I don't really care too... It's not fun... and this is supposed to be fun for me too... But because I don't have this context, I have no side in any of these arguments and long standing hate fests. Instead, I tell each side to simply be nice to each other, ignore each other, and move on.

Originally Posted by Ryan (Post 1145113)

There are social cliques in this community... And through posts on the forum as well as through private messages, these cliques seem to be constantly battling each other and seemingly measuring each other's manhood.

The reasoning behind it all baffles me. This is, after all, just a forum about old Fords. I can't, no matter how hard I try, find a rational reason for anyone to attack or ridicule another person over an old Ford.

I have a whole bunch of kids. One of them is 9 and her class recently got to debate on the lunch menu - what is served on what days and things like that. Now if you have a 9 year old, you know how important this is to them. It's like three or four on their life priority list.

Anyway, the parents were told to sit on the sidelines and let the kids go at it while the teacher moderated. They argued back and forth over things like pizza and burgers for an entire hour. In that hour, not a single 9 year old called another 9 year old a name... And not a single 9 year old told another 9 year old to "shut up."

Amazing given the way some of you guys treat each other, isn't it?

I have a theory. Kids are honest. Kids are wholesome. They haven't been tainted by society and they haven't had their ego stomped on by years of the kinds of abuse life can bring. Grown men on the internet, however, are entirely different. Some of them aren't honest. Most aren't wholesome. Some have battered egos. Hide them behind a computer screen with a silly username and an avatar and all of this is amplified to the point of nausea.

If we were all at a bar having this conversation, do you think anyone of you would tell anyone else in the conversation to "shut the fuck up?" And if you did, how long do you think you would be welcome in the group?

So why on earth would you do it on a forum about old Fords?

I believe it's because some of you like the feeling of being something online you really aren't in real life. And some of you like to act online in a way that you are too scared to act offline. In either case, I don't like to host these kinds of fellas. I would rather them not be on my forum at all. Maybe that's my issue... Maybe I should be more understanding of these folks, but I've failed miserably when I have tried.

In any case, I'm done. I'm done baby sitting a bunch of kids at a name calling party.

- Want call some other guy a name because you disagree with him? Your account is gone.

- Want to constantly report another member's posts because you feel he is doing the same to you? Your account is gone.

- Want to team up on another group of members with all your buddies? All of your accounts are gone.

In short, I'm done fellas. It's either you or me... And it isn't gonna be me.

Note: To those of you that are just here to enjoy old Fords, learn a thing or two, or teach something to the masses - please excuse this post and understand that in order to end all of the drama, you might start to see some really common names around here gone.