I am leaving, too. I have made some good friends here who will remain my good friends through emails. But the viciousness and acid I have felt from someone here has simply proven to be too much and I do not want that person to be privy to my thoughts here any longer. To sense someone's unfair judgment has been unknown to me before joining this board. I've been active on a music board for years, and never did anyone attack me. I see no sense in my offering myself up as a sacrifice so this person can jab at me in nasty ways. This was a place of joy to me--much friendly wit--and terrific exchange of information that so often delighted me. So many of you have been kind to me and encouraging--as I see your kindness extended to others on this board.
I'm afraid I'm one of those sensitive types--emotional, perhaps thin-skinned (heaven knows the people in my life know I'm strong!!)--but words do hurt--even a single very sarcastic word wrapped in a veil of cruelty--and I will not submit myself to this kind of treatment ever again.
I fear that sometimes what's written on this board--in a guise of superior humor--is not conducive to the good of the board. But I'm not a knight, as I wrote to Keiva--I do not know how to fight this without the board's becoming a place of flaming, and that categorically is not good for the health of a board.
I'm happy to be leaving as an "Old Hand"!!! It's been great being here--other than the nasty PM's--and I wish all of you great fun in your exploration of language, good-willed humor (please read here clearly: good-willed), and joy.
Truly, best regards, Wordwind, who will now take her leave like the wind
PS: I do want to offer one easy suggestion. To those of you who write in foreign languages, it would be an act of kindness to show translations in white. We seek to understand each other here, and it has been frustrating for me sometimes not to know all the languages that are presented here. Just a suggestion--but I believe it would be good for all the readers. Edit: I want to add here that I, too, have been guilty of dropping the foreign phrase without translation. This suggestion comes from a new awareness that I believe would benefit all.
I now know that it was the same person who sent both Wordwind and Geoff the PM's that caused them to leave. I was not surprised when I found out it was you. I cried every day for six weeks over what you said to me last summer, and still do if I think about it too much. I don't know whether your intention is to be cruel, but I'm telling you now, your words come across as cruel. I hadn't been hurt that badly in years. Years. Maybe you are a person who can "take it" and assume everybody else can, or ought to be able to. But a great many of us can't. I noticed early on that a lot of us are artistic in various ways, and I think perhaps a lot of artistic folk are extra sensitive, somehow. So I am asking you to please restrain your words somehow--to my knowledge, you alone have caused this board to lose two fine contributors. And more importantly, they are two lovely people who did not deserve to be hurt in that way. And if your intent was to be cruel to these people, then I am telling you flat-out to stop it.
wow. I am both stunned and surprised at these developments. I second Max's thoughts of course
But I find it difficult to believe any regular contributor has achieved these results by malice. We see so much good will here, it simply does not square. I trust the result will be persuasion to more care, whoever is involved now, and in the future.
It is my understanding that the Reader's Digest will soon be publishing an article about AWAD. Many new people, eager to participate, will be showing up here, board names in hand. Are we to give the impression that posters are not welcome here? Also, consider this, if you will: To the person or people who are responsible for the unwelcome PMs, Do you see how all the people you have hurt and run off the board are still protecting your identity? These are some of the kindest people I have ever met. They don't deserve to be made to feel less. Not by you, not by anyone else. Please, think before you post or PM. If care is not taken now, when the impending influx begins, it will most likely turn into a flame war and destroy what we have come to love. We must consider what we want this board to become. Newcomers have ever been welcome here. Some understand, some do not. Those that don't understand what this board is about usually move on, with no pushing or meaness of spirit required. We cannot say "You cannot play". We all play on this board. We also all love words. It is the tongue in cheek, the puns, both bad and excellent, the marvelous sense of play to be found here that brings me joy. I like the pedantry as well. It's another form of play. Let's keep informing each other, laughing together and enjoying this board. Let no one take matters into their own hands by sending hurtful PMs. I would also counsel all to take a long look at the information they have included on their user profile page. Now might be a good time to trim any information that might attract unsavory and unwanted attention. Better to be thought paranoid now than rue the day later. I hope no one misunderstands the intent of this post.
You have evidently been around for a while since you know how we interact on this Board, you know how we kid around and you know how we welcome strangers. YET you post under a stranger's title and name.
For some reason I am very uncomfortable with that.
Everybody here knows me as belMarduk. I am who I am, and I will always stand up and be counted as such. It doesn't matter if I ever have an argument with someone or if someone attacks me in a PM. No-one will take my name away and I will not let them. If I ever leave and come back I will come back as belMarduk. I will not hide and I will stand up as myself.
Firstly. It was not me who sent these PMs to those noted above. They are unknown to me and Jackie is a close personal friend of mine so I would never think about offending her.
I write the above sentence to put in context my explanation of the following. I left the forum twice as a reult of the petty bickering that began and persisted over the past few months. Some bad eggs still exist on the forum and it is quite obvious, from reading the posts, who they are.
I have been quite a hot head in the past few months and have berated, some say unjustifiably, some members of the board. For this I am completely and unreservedly sorry. I will personally contact these members soon about this.
My return is both as a result of personal pleads by members whom I met in person and a growing urge to continue the good fun which I experienced almost two years ago when the forum first kicked and screamed itself into life.
The things that unite us irrevocably are words. Not necessarily English words but those words with which we can communicate and have fun with be they Latin, Italian, Spanish, Greek or whatever. If we delve beyond language into the horrific relams of politics, cultural differences (of a negative persuasion), petty and gross racial differences, differences in educational levels or supremists attitudes then we have defeated the purpose of the forum.
This forum is about words!! Words, language and discussion about such. Leave everything else out. We are a global community!! What irks someone in a political field on one side of the world matters not to most of us on the other side and vice versa. Lets keep it down to words, and no more. Blood boils at a low temperature and there is no need to encourage ot to this state. If you can't be nice, discuss the above the topics on the board with good humour and decency then maybe you should consider the reasons you are contributing to this forum.
Maybe a lot of you are wondering why I, of all people, am 'preaching' after my lack of decorum but I am aware that I made a mistake and I am spelling out the reasons why I was so blatantly nasty.
The board is 99% educational, pleasant and fun!! Will that 1% please STOP! Stop being nasty and give the rest of us a chance to continue on the good work started by Anu, Tsuwm, Jackie, AnnaS, jmh, et al.
BTW. I have stated before that I know who that 'bad egg' is. I haven't received a PM from 'them' yet but I intend to send them one soon if they don't desist with their 'behind the scenes' nastiness. Especially now that they've been far from nice with Jackie. And nobody does that - nobody.
Sticks and stones may break your ones but words will never hurt you. But don't forget your sticks and stones.
I feel uncomfortable with this: a lot of us like and love and respect someone , and desire he/ she stays with us at the Board.. and just ONE DOES something in the shadow, and HE/SHE WILL WIN ! I will send by an e-mail this post to the three leaving persons.
But I also have to add that I personally am deeply uncomfortable with this process of hidden shaming going on - none of us know who or exactly what was involved, certainly know nothing of the context or the tone of the 2 messages to which offence was taken.... yet we risk making the whole atmosphere of the board one of suspicion, recrimination, and splits between cliques & factions.
Can we please all draw back? If anyone of our regular contributors to this unique forum has caused great personal hurt I *know it must have been unwittingly. It is otherwise completely inconsistent with all that umpteen friends have shared here. Let us all breathe deeply, and stop all tendencies to start lobbing rocks - I say this as an old lag who has both caused and been given serious offence, sometimes without any such intention. We need to all recognise the difficulties inherent in an 'airless' medium, which sometimes distorts the message sent and received.
No me, Wun Hung Lo. I order nummer 69 and food arrive nummer 10.
Actually (and this is a little bit scurrilous and Max will probably remember it, too), a Chinese girl was kidnapped in Oamaru (in the South Island of Zild) about ten years ago. The kidnappers (one of whom I happened to know; he was the twin brother of one my near-neighbours) intended to hold her for ransom on the grounds that her father was a wealthy market gardener and should be able to come up with what was a small amount of cash, really, in no time flat. They only asked for a few thousand, probably figuring that's all a daughter would be worth, I suppose! But these idiots didn't bargain on their resourceful 14-year-old captive loosening her bonds, breaking out of the house she was being held in and just going home ... where she arrived before the ransom demand did, if I remember correctly.
I forgot what Phil George and his crony got for that one, but I think the judge went light on the grounds of terminal ineptitude.
Anyway, the point of this is that Gloria, the girl in question, gained the nickname "Chinese Takeaway" (this being an extremely popular form of food in Zild). She went from being unnoticed among many other Chinese kids of her age at her high school to being very well-known and rather popular. She was interviewed a few years later - I think when the doo-lally duo were released - and she'd grown into an extremely self-confident and articulate young lady. She was laughing about the experience.
Perhaps Anu is peeking in on us? The quote he used for Today's Word seems more than coincidentally fitting, and so very, very true:
So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919)
Dear CK: the only kidnapping I every thought laughable was fiction: O. Henry's The Ransom of Red Chief. It sounds to me as though the Judge was a stupid bleeding heart to let the perpetrators off lightly just because they were inept. It is the amateurs who often panic and kill the victims. I wonder if the victim's being Chinese made the crime seem less serious.
It sounds to me as though the Judge was a stupid bleeding heart to let the perpetrators off lightly just because they were inept. It is the amateurs who often panic and kill the victims. I wonder if the victim's being Chinese made the crime seem less serious.
Bill, you take some things far too literally. No, the judge didn't go lightly on them. In fact, he threw the book at them, but, again from memory, there was a legal catch - since the young lady wasn't actually a captive when the ransom was demanded, it wasn't kidnap, it was something like "depriving her of her freedom". The legal eagles will know the one. I think they got the maximum for that. If it had been kidnap, they'd probably still be staring at a cell wall.
And the only funny aspect of it was their stupidity, and I though I'd made that quite plain. The fact that Gloria was able to shrug it off and get on with her life impressed the hell outta me.
One final point: There is a very large Chinese population in Zild, especially in that area of the country. Believe me, justice in New Zealand isn't always applied justly but when it misfires it's not on the basis of race or creed.
belM says: You have evidently been around for a while since you know how we interact on this Board, you know how we kid around and you know how we welcome strangers. YET you post under a stranger's title and name. For some reason I am very uncomfortable with that.
Right on, belM, I agree. Especially since, but not only because, one of his/her () few posts was a direct attack at me (not that it has stopped me--I've dealt with way worse and I love this board ).
i'm with stales... at first i kept looking for the punchline, until i realized that you are all serious. to those that have chosen to depart (keiva, wordwind...are there more? i'm so far behind on posts that i don't even bother to *try to read them all anymore), i'm truly sorry you didn't find what you were looking for here. FWIW, i've enjoyed much of what each of you have offered to this Board, and i'm sorry to see anyone go away feeling ripped offcross-threading a bit
i would like to offer this observation, as an 'outsider' who is reading all of this with a bit of detachment (i've only been alerted to this thread quite recently, and i don't really know most of the folks involved, and as such i have the advantage of not being inclined toward a 'knee-jerk' reaction): it seems to me that this call for a lynch mob is a bit illogical. after all, some of you are decrying the "vicious" and "cruel" things that were said in private to some other folks, and in the same breath you are admitting that you don't even know what was said, by who, to whom. as keiva would be the first to tell us, this is what we'd call hearsay, and it wouldn't be admissible in court well, except if it's a dying declaration, which is an exception, but as mav pointed out, things haven't yet progressed that far. it just seems like an ugly mutation of the telephone game to me.
can't we all just talk about words now?[/rodneyking]
(Are you sure you didn't set us up for this deliberately to see if anyone would bite?)
And who the Dickens are you?
Sorry. I always knew I would get into hot water some day for saying something only because of the wordplay involved, but after reading the Jeepers exchange above I couldn't resist ;-)
But seriously, folks. Is anyone besides me struck by a resemblance to Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama series, in which the benevolent aliens set up a colony where all human needs are freely provided for, but then humanity's baser side emerges and knocks the whole thing apart, and then some? Is this starting to sound familiar?
I, for one, have to say that I have no problem with casual observers. I think it's entirely possible for someone to be interested in a topic and want to learn something, but not really have anything that they care to say about it. I've browsed plenty of discussion boards without posting and I've posted maybe twice on the Survivor discussion board that I visit occasionally.
We say we want to be open to everyone. Well, people are watching, and as far as I'm concerned, they're welcome.
That, of course, doesn't mean they wouldn't be more welcome if they actually did post.
You have evidently been around for a while since you know how we interact on this Board, you know how we kid around and you know how we welcome strangers. YET you post under a stranger's title and name.
For some reason I am very uncomfortable with that.
Everybody here knows me as belMarduk. I am who I am, and I will always stand up and be counted as such. It doesn't matter if I ever have an argument with someone or if someone attacks me in a PM. No-one will take my name away and I will not let them. If I ever leave and come back I will come back as belMarduk. I will not hide and I will stand up as myself.
Why do you not?
When I first read Jeepers post and then yours, BelM, I agreed with yours. Now, on reflection, I'm not so sure. Sure, Jeepers has only posted three times and has an 'uncanny' grasp of the AWAD board. Then again you can get a good idea of people's characters and the workings of this forum simply by sifting through a few threads.
Jeepers may be a pseudonym of an old or established member but I'm not wholly convinced. If you join a forum such as this and have the enthusiasm for words and discussion which we all purport to share then that will come out early on, shouldn't it? Many viewers 'lurk' in the shadows waiting for their opportunity to contribute a word or two. Perhaps Jeepers has been here since day one and has been happy to watch from the sidelines and enjoy the banter, discussion and progress rather than partake themselves. If that were the case then he/she would naturally be familiar with everything.
Many members don't have bios listed for reasons of privacy. I don't mind listing my name although their was always the risk of attracting unwanted attention. Jeepers has every right to remain anonymous as do we all, if we wish. As for 'coming back as someone else', it's not unknown for AWAD members to change their usernames and, indeed, use several. Again, that is up to the individual. Perhaps it makes their contributions more fun or, yet again, they have privacy issues.
Regardless of all this I see no reason why Jeepers apparent name change should make you uncomfortable. Jeepers is a username, a nom-de-plume used to gain anonymity. Mine is Rubrick but you can easily look up my real name in my bio. I don't see any sinister connotations attached to Jeepers reason to remain anonymous or to his/her fundamental knowledge of the workings of this forum. Are we suggesting that, unless someone joins the forum in complete ignorance, they are to be marginalised and viewed with suspicion?
Jeepers comments were perfectly acceptable and appropriate. Lest we forget the nature of this thread we are in danger of losing another new member if we criticise him/her and question his/her identity.
Rubrick, a little bit of inter alia would do you good, my friend.
I don't care to discuss this further in this here thread . We shall E.
post-edit Excuse me. I thought inter alia was a fairly common expression, and I apologize now for not providing a translation in white. It literally means "between the lines" ... to explain it metaphorically would be almost as challenging as explaining a pun.
I've read this thread a couple of times now, and mulled it over a bit, and I'm still rather shocked. I don't understand why someone would send "nasty" PMs, and I can completely understand how one or two badly timed ones would make someone want to leave. But I wish it weren't so. (Just wanted to publicly post my support for the people who were offended, even though they're probably not reading the Board any more to know that I did post. I felt I had to say something, anything at all, even if it was too late by the time I could bring myself to say something...)
Dear AnnaStrophic, Please enlighten me. My latin is a little lacking but my dictionary says that inter alia means "among other things" and that does not make sense in the context you have provided. Is there a different meaning to this phrase that does not appear in my dictionary? Consuelo
Well, I realise that I probably haven't the slightest right to add my comments to this as I have been noticeable only by my absence for some considerable length of time, but I'm hoping you'll bear with me. (Apologies to one and all - I've been watching/reading, it's just that life's been rather hectic and something had to give) However, the nature of the daily announcements that have been arriving in my inbox made me feel that I should break my silence - if only for the selfish reason of wanting to see the board survive.
One of the things that's always struck me about this board is a) how welcoming people are and b) how people are willing to wade in when things start to get out of control - which has happened in the past, been stopped and the board's moved on.
I'm stressing the 'board's moved on' bit, 'cause I think it's really important. If we just let the recriminations go on, then the person/persons involved win. We need to learn from what's passed and let the subject drop off the board before it can put anyone off from joining in the future.
Hopefully those involved have learned from and been chastened by the whole-hearted condemnation of their actions. If anything were done unintentionally then maybe they'll think before they hit 'post' next time. Those who were offended will hopefully have been heartened by the support they have received. It seems to me that continuing the debate can only keep re-opening the wound and leaves us open to further misunderstandings.
There comes a time in any friendship when things have been said. If that friendship is strong enough you talk about it and put it behind you. Agreed, sometimes you have to re-build the trust but if the friendship is strong enough, you do it.
I don't agree with the "whole hearted condemnation" bit since (to repeat) none of us can actually fully know what is taking place by pm~s, by their nature - I refuse to criticise a dear friend simply because I am told to do so. One or more of the leavers may well have simply not understood this forum.
Since you appear to be a newcomer welcome, Dickens. Can I gently point out that Caradea and AsP’s suggestion may have to do with a genuine concern for the overall harmony and well-being of this virtual community, rather than any fear of heat? I don’t believe the tone of a remark like yours is calculated to benefit anyone here, but this may well have been unintentional on your part – and that is my point about all drawing back from slinging rocks.
But I agree with your final sentiment, rkay, and repeat: it’s time to cool it, folks.
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We need to all recognise the difficulties inherent in an 'airless' medium, which sometimes distorts the message sent and received.
) few posts was a direct attack at me (not that it has stopped me--I've dealt with way worse and I love this board
).
. We shall E.
(Just wanted to publicly post my support for the people who were offended, even though they're probably not reading the Board any more to know that I did post. I felt I had to say something, anything at all, even if it was too late by the time I could bring myself to say something...)
