Joel's Thread Temporarily Removed from View

[Wayne]

certianly those that persist in these childish exchanges are partially responsible, but i feel that in these matters the moderators are also partly to blame. if there are certain personalities that can not seem to play nice, they should not be allowed to play at all. it's that simple.
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I agree. I didnt see the incident in question, but I can easily imagine what transpired. I dont understand why the rules on personal attacks arent enforced, and never have been.

[QT Luong]

Steve, I respect your intend and approach, however, after examining the suspended thread, I must conclude
that the way you worded your reply contained demeaning tones which could easily be interpreted as antagonistic,
even if you didn't mean so. You are also as guilty as others by participating in the escalation and throwing out more personal arguments.
For instance, in this very thread, you repeat the allegation that Jorge has a personal grudge against your magazine. Whether true or not, this kind of ad-hominem argument has no place in the forum, especially when it is has been
rehased so many times.

However, Jorge this does not excuse your escalation of the flame war by resorting to even more direct name-calling. Case in point, you could have made the same point that you made to Darr in this thread without using antagonistic langage twice. You certainly can defend yourself without resorting to this kind of language. As for her initial statement, I would have to agree that you are one of the problematic posters in the forum.

Kirk, you might be an "old fart", but your comments on optimizing flatbed use could certainly be considered "obsessional" by some of the less technically-minded :-)

[David Luttmann]

Probably best to put the thread back, in its intact state. That way we can see where all the problems started and make a decision ourselves.

For the future, anyone who resorts to name calling and insults should be banned outright.

[Joel Truckenbrod]

I'm a bit hesitant to post as my name seems to bring bad karma

I have certainly kept up with my original thread and a few more subsiquent threads that followed after it was shut down (some of which asked some interesting and relevant questions...such as Mark Sawyers difraction thread). The real shame was that quality information did exist in the thread, despite the madness that followed. Many thanks to everyone who did post a helpful response, and there were MANY. I was a bit shocked to see the digression that took place as I percieved this forum to be a highly professional and civil forum. I was thankful that nobody mocked me for my question and ignorance. I've seen that happen before, not here though.

In any case, I'm not going to offer my opinion of what happened/who's to blame. Its quite irrelevant. What is relevant, is personal responsibility for one's actions, as has already been stated. I hope that this can be something which we all can learn from rather than a catalyst for future conflicts. It is what you make of it and I challange those involved to have the courage to forgive each other, despite what has been said and exchanged. I'm certainly not holding to be "holier than thou" or any such attitude, rather I have been one who has lashed out at times and have seen the futility of it all. No good comes from such exchanges.

...I'll get off my soapbox now before I make a total fool of myself.



Steve,

You bring up an interesting question in regardes to presenting highly (and perhaps overly) technical information to newbies. My personal take is that it is the posters responsibility to sift through what has been said and come to their conclusion based upon what has been presented. In this sense, regardless of the rather shallow depth of my technical know-how, I can often find things to further research as a result of such posts. I hold both the "real world" use answers and the tech head answers to be of value. In many senses, such different responses serve as compliments to one another. What length we go to in regards to how carefully we investigate or ponder purely technical issues is a personal choice (IMHO).

The wonderful and yet often frustrating truth, is that as photographers we are tied to our machines as tools. Yet, each one of us must make our journeys to transcend them. The purpose of the forum is in many senses to simply function as another tool...A means for each of us to gain the neccessary knowledge that we can bring our unique visions to fruition. Because of this, I oftentimes find tangents and other related/discussed issues to be quite helpful in my personal growing process. That is, as long as the initial question is addressed. In light of this, I believe that essentially dumbing down the responses could actually prove to be a disservice rather than a help...once again, assuming that the initial question is clearly confronted. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you though to an extent.

All of this blabering on my part aside, I greatly appreciated the direct responses to my question as they put me on the right track.

[Ed K.]

It's sad when people with so much knowledge fight. Good that at least some
are so passionate about it all. Berating other colleagues work or reputation
is something everyone is usually taught to avoid, and most photo associations
have a code of ethics that bans such behavior by members.

This IS a great place to share with others or find both solid knowledge and
interesting theories.

President: "..can't we all just get along?"

Martian: "Ack Ack!" .. "ACK! ACK!"

- Mars Attacks

I'll stop short of sending an mp3 of "Indian Love Song"....

[Matthew Cordery]

I go away for a little while and look what happens to the place.
It's apparent that a large swath of you aren't ready for the Internet, or polite social discourse.
I ban all of you.

ig·nore ( P ) Pronunciation Key (g-nôr, -nr)
tr.v. ig·nored, ig·nor·ing, ig·nores
To refuse to pay attention to; disregard

[Tom Diekwisch]

IMHO, Neil has done a fantastic job in handling this situation. I wish I could get myself to post more, but I surely like reading the comments and the wealth of information posted here. Come on guys, photography pure - here we are. I also understand the backgrounds behind the heat of the arguments, but I wish everybody would just be more concerned about the forum as a whole and not take their arguments that important. For those of you who have been there, I'd like to through in the Rodney King words, I know it's out of context, but it's hard to forget once you have been in the situation - can't we all just get along?

[Tom Diekwisch]

throw that is, for the orthographers...

[Aaron van de Sande]

Dan, I was kidding right? Can anyone come up with a more socially disadvantaged photographer?

IMHO the best solution to these situations is to simply 'lock' the thread. It leaves the information intact and seems like the least heavy handed form of censorship. The antagonistic parties are 'off the hook' so to speak because they can't respond anymore. This is a proven method that works well on other forums and requires the least amount of effort from the moderators.

[bglick]

Steve, this is not an attack, but simply a "common sense" suggestion. It's possible in the begining you were in denial of being the instigator of these flames. But after reading all of this, I am sure you can't still hold that position. It's obvious the reason no one came to your defense for name calling is because you instigated the name calling, then continue to complain everyone attacks you and calls you names? Not a favorable position in any situation in life.

Why not try, just once, to take responsibility for your actions, offer an apology and see what happens? You would be amazed how far an admission of fault and an apology can go, even after all this. You never even acknowledged the help of several of the peacemakers? You simply wanted everyone to run to your defense.

If I sold LF books and magazines, I surely would not want to alienate the bigest single group of buyers of my products. I think this forum has been overly fair, allowing you to use this forum to announce your products and web site to the LF community. You never abused the privelage either, but the forum moderators are very generous in this area. Why not give a little back?

Even the original poster (who must be traumatized by this experience) stated the obvious.... Which you have refused to accept..... allow the readers of the forum decide the level of technical endeavors they prefer to apply to their photography. And just to be clear.... and as Kirk also mentioned, there is nothing wrong with a simplistic, non technical response or even books of such. The problem I had is, you oversimplify so much, the information can border on being wrong or sometimes is so vague, it's hard to comprehend the issue. Your continued insistenece to use no numbers prevents a reader from getting a sense of scale. For example, does the term, "a lot" mean 2x, 20x, 200x? I would not consider the use of numbers like this to be "technical".

In addition, if the entire purpose of this forum is to give short, simplistic responses for non technical readers. The forum would loose 98% of its content. The beauty of these forums is for many people to learn the nitty gritty details of a subject which may be hard (or impossible) to find elsewhere.

I think Aarons suggestion is very good! Can a post be frozen?