bovinehost
Administrator
Listen, this whole right to express yourself is one of those really great concepts. Freedom of speech has been proven to be a winner! And, in America, what's really hard but even more important is our willingness to protect speech that we don't much care for.
After all, who gets offended when someone agrees with them?
So let me explain this one more time and then, please, let's be done with it.
This is the Ernie Ball Music Man Forum. Think of it as BP's living room, or Dudley's bulletin board in his workshop, or Dargin's 1960s theme martini lounge, if you will, and then consider that each of those people mentioned above, plus a few more from deep inside the secret BongoCave, have real conversations about real things and, in some cases, actually know us as we know them - and not just on a surface level, but we know each others wives and kids and when they wrecked their car and whether or not they've had health problems or had a loved one die or - well, it goes on and on.
We're friends and we're family.
So, as a moderator and friend and family member, I don't much like it when someone (not going to single anyone out, this is just general information) walks into the living room, looks around and declares the couch is coyote-ugly. Or that the carpet needs to be changed. Or that it looks like another living room, only the other one was better even though it was based on the living room we're in.
You get what I'm saying.
So you have a right to express yourself, yes. This is not Cuba (ahem) or any other place that will repress you or arrest you or any of that foolishness. I have lived in places like that and only people who have NOT lived in places like that would suggest that moderating a forum, keeping it moving in the right direction, is the repression of free speech.
I have a right to decide what is appropriate in this forum, as do the other moderators and (of course) the people from Ernie Ball. I let some guys hang themselves last night on the SR5 20th thread. I could have deleted things, PMd the posters, explained my rationale, etc etc. I didn't, though. I asked people to think about what they were saying, and, perhaps more importantly, where they were saying it. And who would be reading it.
Some chose to take my advice. Some did not. I knew it was going to be the old 'turd in the punch bowl' concept, but I wanted to give people a chance to police it up on their own. Some did. Some didn't. I could have thought, "Well, I'll save them from themselves", but then what would BP have to do this morning? Run a company or something?
Now is the time to let it go and to either understand and accept that this is not a wide-open, everything-goes internet wrestling via keyboard forum....and there are a few, and we all know where they are, God bless them...or to prepare for me to go ahead and moderate offending posts a little more severely.
Do I want to do that? No.
So can we all STF up about it?
Yes?
It's up to you to decide. I'll still be right here, having a good time and plotting ways to afford my 20th SR5.
Okay? And before giving me any more grief about free speech, please keep in mind that I spent twenty years of my life defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. (I am ashamed that I did not do more about Warwick.) Not to say I deserve any special consideration, mind you - I do not. There were lots of other guys doing the same thing. Just saying that I take the Constitution and the freedoms it affords us quite seriously.
This is not a Constitutional issue. This is about basses - okay? (Well, and I guess I have to admit it - guitars, too.)
Thanks, boyos.
Jack
After all, who gets offended when someone agrees with them?
So let me explain this one more time and then, please, let's be done with it.
This is the Ernie Ball Music Man Forum. Think of it as BP's living room, or Dudley's bulletin board in his workshop, or Dargin's 1960s theme martini lounge, if you will, and then consider that each of those people mentioned above, plus a few more from deep inside the secret BongoCave, have real conversations about real things and, in some cases, actually know us as we know them - and not just on a surface level, but we know each others wives and kids and when they wrecked their car and whether or not they've had health problems or had a loved one die or - well, it goes on and on.
We're friends and we're family.
So, as a moderator and friend and family member, I don't much like it when someone (not going to single anyone out, this is just general information) walks into the living room, looks around and declares the couch is coyote-ugly. Or that the carpet needs to be changed. Or that it looks like another living room, only the other one was better even though it was based on the living room we're in.
You get what I'm saying.
So you have a right to express yourself, yes. This is not Cuba (ahem) or any other place that will repress you or arrest you or any of that foolishness. I have lived in places like that and only people who have NOT lived in places like that would suggest that moderating a forum, keeping it moving in the right direction, is the repression of free speech.
I have a right to decide what is appropriate in this forum, as do the other moderators and (of course) the people from Ernie Ball. I let some guys hang themselves last night on the SR5 20th thread. I could have deleted things, PMd the posters, explained my rationale, etc etc. I didn't, though. I asked people to think about what they were saying, and, perhaps more importantly, where they were saying it. And who would be reading it.
Some chose to take my advice. Some did not. I knew it was going to be the old 'turd in the punch bowl' concept, but I wanted to give people a chance to police it up on their own. Some did. Some didn't. I could have thought, "Well, I'll save them from themselves", but then what would BP have to do this morning? Run a company or something?
Now is the time to let it go and to either understand and accept that this is not a wide-open, everything-goes internet wrestling via keyboard forum....and there are a few, and we all know where they are, God bless them...or to prepare for me to go ahead and moderate offending posts a little more severely.
Do I want to do that? No.
So can we all STF up about it?
Yes?
It's up to you to decide. I'll still be right here, having a good time and plotting ways to afford my 20th SR5.
Okay? And before giving me any more grief about free speech, please keep in mind that I spent twenty years of my life defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. (I am ashamed that I did not do more about Warwick.) Not to say I deserve any special consideration, mind you - I do not. There were lots of other guys doing the same thing. Just saying that I take the Constitution and the freedoms it affords us quite seriously.
This is not a Constitutional issue. This is about basses - okay? (Well, and I guess I have to admit it - guitars, too.)
Thanks, boyos.
Jack
