With this thread, I do apologize to my fellow 'Fritter Critters for any part I may have contributed to gobabushka's recently deleted thread.
Short of responding to a few PMs, I have been off the 'net entrely since Thursday around 9-ish that morning. In that thread, I participated in going significantly off-topic from the intent of the thread. Once I saw where the other party in my conversation was going and developed suspicions that I was dealing with a banned member violating the AUP, I contacted some admins and refrained from further digression. To that point, I had only allowed myself to go off-topic enough to confirm my suspicions enough to warrant contacting an admin.
If my contribution to that thread's off topic digression (even though it was aimed at discovering the truth of a member's violation of the AUP) was responsible for the removal of the thread, then I do truely apologize as I not intend this outcome, nor do I wish my actions to mar the culture we have here. The AUP does instruct us to stay on topic.
I have seen a discussion thread about the closure of that post, now locked (could an admin please PM later on why that was?) As I did not read anything after my last posting late Wednesday or early Thursday, I do not know what transpired besides the off-topic examination of myself led by the aforementioned member.
If I am just babbling in the dark and there was some significant happenings that I missed that resulted in what happened, then I missed it having been off line for those few short days and would someone please send me a PM to catch me up. As I was off line, any warnings or corrections from TO or the admins in the thread, I missed. As such I do not know if I was the part of the problem.
Respectfully yours,
--DDTM
PS: For the sake of brevity, please do not reply to this post, just take it for what it is intended to be and move on. Please PM me if you must say something.
Don't reply, only PM? Fear of lock-down, or even worse? I, for one, have learned my lesson. My two cents are going to stay in my pocket from now on. My time is valuable, so are my writings. Macspeak, that's all, that's all I'll come here for. It's a very great site for that. I thank the administrators for that. It's a fun community here too, some very smart people with interesting personalities. Too bad there's not all the room that the energies demand. Maybe some place else. Aloha.
It sounds like it to me that as long as we just follow standard ediquette (sorry about spelling) we should all be fine. This doesn't mean that we should not have conversations like that one, it just means that we have to just be nice and respectful, thats all.
We have to remember that others are responsible for the words that we speak as owners of the venues we use to speak them (ie, the Web site, "speak" being a relative term.) If content were deemed inappropriate, it'd come down on their heads, not ours.
Personally, if I invested that much time and energy into providing people with such a resource, I'd be pretty fickle about what stays and what goes too, not only because of that...
... imagine youre a new visitor, looking for a place to hang out and talk Macs. Not that you're you for a second, but them. If I hadnt been reading AF for so long and the first post I saw was the original that went away, I'd probably not come here again, honestly.
Just my own two cents on the subject. Take it for what you will.
-- Macinjosh