Interval speeds

I only say this as some people have approached me at races to say gidday as they have recognised me through this forum. When I ask what their forum name is they say "Oh I just read it, I wouldn't post, there are too many ready to shoot you down".

Ouch. How to deal with this? The essence of a forum like this is to allow everyone their say.

The purpose of the forum is for paddlers to be able to swap information - if there's any 'shooting down', something's going wrong. It's very easy to disagree with someone in a respectful way.

Any chance we could dial the tone down a little? And the guys with their heads below the parapet - stick those heads up, make yourselves heard! You don't have to come out guns blazing, diplomacy can be made to work!

Just wanted to agree that this forum is a very difficult place to have an opinion on (lucky for me I'm pretty hard to personal flames etc).

When I started giving opinions, I even had some of the vets here PM me to warn me about the backlash

If you think about it, there are a lot more non-champs on this forum than champions - so really almost everyone here lacks the right to tell others what to do.

Lets all just share opinions, present them as no more than that, and take them at face value. Until Big O, Dawid, Tiny Tim etc start posting here, we're all just midpackers or one level or another... right?

Thanks again to Mr Mousley for this forum where we can have such colourful disagreements.

With a forum, I think you have to go with the policy that if they are playing the ball, as in questioning the content/ conclusion arrived at, then critisism is fine.

But the moment they switch to playing the man and not the ball, mod it straight away and say why in the post.

Everybody gets their back up if you get attacked personally.

Many don't care if their opinion is challenged, but a lot do as this is sometimes seen a hit to their self esteem and can be internalised into a personal attack.

And that is the grey area that exists and always will exist.
There is nothing that can be done about that, posting up is scary until you have become comfortable within yourself to present anything you believe to the outside world.

But I think the single most important thing is to come down hard and quickly when ever the conversation switches to playing the man.
To call somebody an idiot is not required if what they post is garbage, the garbage will do that for you and I think that to directly name call or similar should result in an immediate deletion of the post and a temporary ban on the poster.

In place of the post should be a blurb describing why the post has been removed or modded, as an example, the following has been used successfully.

snark - the problem with snide remarks is that they light fuel that causes others to ....

piling-on - pile on and fan the fire using .....

ad hom - ad hominen attack where the argument switches from playing the ball to playing the man



Readers soon get used to knowing what has happened when they see these words in place of all or part of a post.

There then being a record of modding to your postings is a deterrent to post throw away flippant remarks that add nothing to the forum.

So if you see that some of your post has been changed to 'ad hom' or similar, you want to sit down and think about why that happened.


This idea is shamelessly copied from another forum which shamelessly copied it from another forum.

RAB That's a cool idea except that... it would give Rob some more work to do...

There is a mechanism to help with this.

The thing is that I don't get to read the forum posts every day - unfortunately I have quite a hectic day job

But there's a "report to moderator" button that could be used to hint to me that a post is particularly offensive.

Although most people naturally shy away from a "tell on to the teacher", it would be a big help to me. Usually I would then get hold of the poster and ask them to cool it. In extreme cases I could blat the post itself, as suggested.

Some banter is healthy. Too much puts people off - but it's a tricky line to draw.

To be honest I don't think it's needed. For the most part everyone that contributes to this forum does so with the good of paddling and our fellow paddlers at heart. It is only when outlandish statements are made or an over indulgence of poetic licence is involved that things may get a little heated. If you are going to make such statements you either have to back them up or be prepared to be questioned. Put up or shut up, basically. That applies to anything not just this forum. We don't want to create any more work for Robin as this is a great site for us like minded people. It would be a shame to loose it because it becomes hard work and time consuming to maintain.

RAB, Im just stunned that you typed ALL that with a broken finger. You obviously know how to push through the pain barrier. Possibly your most impressive post to date!

Not broken, it's a joint issue, probably the base cause is paddling, just that the final straw was climbing.

Anyways, hunt and peck typing method works with any two fingers.

And as the weather is a bit crappy at the moment, I loaded the boat up for the first time in weeks this evening before I came upstairs.



And Bigdog, your post was was pretty much borderline for being a candidate for the Snark mentioned above and may very well invite somebody to do the piling on example which may again lead to the last mentioned one.
It was a sneaky little jib meant to tickle another member up.
Like I said, let posts stand for themselves, rubbish if it is rubbish, is seen as rubbish by everyone.