[sunhawk]

skigod377 wrote:

I dont know what flaming is so could someone enlighten me?

Flaming is when people decide to insult other people on a forum/mailing list/etc by using personal attacks, strawmen arguments or attempts to in some way discredit the other person by underhanded means. Usually capslock and a breakdown of typing skills is involved in some fashion – “U SUCK!!!” – but sometimes people can write fairly intelligent but cruel posts to the same effect.

My favourite example of extreme flaming is from another forum i used to mod where a user decided to create multiple threads entitled “SUNHAWK IS A [female dog]!!!!” and “GET BENT SUNHAWK!!!!!” 😆

[sunhawk]

Dragon Master wrote:

I would HOPE that banning would never have to happen here

Oh i doubt it will come to that with anyone but those who join bbses just to spam and troll, banning as i’ve experienced moderating tends to happen very very infreqently. But sometimes people either need to be reminded or just need a time out if a thread goes… nuclear 😉

[sunhawk]

SPark wrote:

A very good point. *nods*

Honestly, if something like this came up again, I’d probably leave it on my blog. Not because it’s not appropriate here, but just because, as you said, just venting isn’t what this forum is for, and people are going to comment, and discuss it, and that’s not really what I was after in the first place.

Not that I mind the comments and discussions, I don’t. They’re just not really serving any purpose, given that I wasn’t looking for suggestions or help with the situation.

I understand, sometimes you really do just need to get something off your chest ^_^

[sunhawk]

Dragon Master wrote:

I lOVE warm fuzzies too but we have to remember there are some topics that will end up real heated no matter what happens or how much we say we are friends. I’m not sure how to figure out which ones they are but I just know they are out there. Every one has different feelings how can we make sure nto to have explosive topics???

LOL besides politics and religion, it can be hard to anticipate what topics will turn into a brawl. I’ve seen people flame each other over pet ownership, knitting, any fandom under the sun (tv, movies, anime, toys), you name it.

My thought is that the best bet is to just encourage people to remain respectful regardless of their negative reaction to a post and if necessary warn those who cannot control themselves with temporary or permanent bannings. It’s very rare that it has to come to that but i’ve found the three strikes system tends to work best and sometimes it does have to be used.

[sunhawk]

Dragon Master wrote:

I would have to say that should be asked of Chessie and Vantid and let them make the decision about if they want to allow it.
Sorry I just say this forum is specific to chat about our LOVE for Windstones and Melody and her staff.
It could be disasterous if it ever got out of hand

Of course we always end up off track anyway and discuss personal issues which helps us get to know eachohter better

Well, in this particular forum of Community, its description is “Talk about anything you wish here” so technically we are doing that. If they choose to amend that to say “Talk about anything you wish here except religion and politics” or they lock this thread, that’s their right as siteowners. And i certainly understand being cautious but i would also like to believe that we are capable of being adults about controversial topics – show respect and manners while discussing.

[sunhawk]

SPark wrote:

My thought about sharing religion is it’s kind of like grapefruit jucie.

I LOVE grapefruit juice. If I didn’t have problems with the acidity, I could drink it all day long. I think it’s wonderful!

But some people don’t like it. Sure, it’s got vitamin C in it, and is good for you, but if you don’t like it, you’re just not going to enjoy drinking it, and you can get vitamin C in other ways.

But if I’ve got this nice glass of grapefruit juice, which I love, and am drinking it in front of you, it’d be rude of me to do that without offering you some, right?

So… my religion is my grapefruit juice. I LOVE it! It’s great, and wonderful. But not everybody feels the same way about it. It has things in it that are good for you, like service and charity and love, but you can get those things other places too.

But here I am, with this great religion, I should probably offer to share it with my friends, right? I love it so much, maybe they will too. But then again, maybe they won’t. So just like offering up the juice, if I say “Hey, want to hear about God?” and they go “no thanks” then I go “sure, just offering,” and leave it at that.

I can definitely understand what you are saying ^_^

I don’t have a problem with your kind of approach, it’s polite and not pushy. I just have issues when people take it one or more steps further and try to tell others that religion is more like insulin, not delicious healthy fruit. Or if someone just kept offering me grapefruit juice every time they had it, in a “are you SURE you don’t like it?” sort of way, as if they think one day i’ll just turn around and say “you know what? i woke up today and i LOVE grapefruit juice!”

I mean, it could definitely happen someday, but before then it would be really annoying to be constantly asked if i was sure LOL

[sunhawk]

Melody wrote:

sunhawk wrote:

Melody wrote:

sunhawk wrote:

Melody wrote:

A Jade Empress?!? I didn’t know there was a Jade Empress!! Where did you find her??
What a wonderful and rare collection you have!
These Jade guys are a total mystery to us. We don’t know how many there are, how many different designs there are or even how they got painted…I am accumulating info from you folks about them!
I suspect that several of of our dragon designs got painted this color, but we just have no idea! It is kinda fun to discover this sort of thing.

How DOES that kind of thing happen? LOL Who is allowed to paint your dragons besides you and your people? Or is this the first time it’s happened? Well, it happened with these and the orange eyed emeralds. Nobody knows how it happened! Apparantly we weren’t very clear on the paint scheme for the Emeralds! Or, we intentionally did these in jade… but we don’t remember doing it. We certainly would of called them “Jade” on the price list if it was intentional! …really weird.
I wasn’t at the factory very often during the child bearing years. I worked at home. Stuff like this could happen, but for nobody to notice they were Jade?… and then not remember it? Weird. Fun, but weird.

So it was someone working for you to paint them that got a little creative with the green? That’s weirder than snake shoes!

I have definitely seen a yellow-eyed emerald on Ebay at least once, i just thought they were an older version of the emerald! LOLNo, it is weirder than that ! Several people work on each cartfull of dragons, they get base coated, painted, antiqued, detailed, eyes jewels and packed! That is five places, and five different people at least, that would of noticed something wrong.That is why the painters must of thought that that is how they were supposed to be painted, it wasn’t an accident. It is just that nobody ( people in the office, John or I) can remember how or why they got painted that way…if anyone knew they were being painted Jade, we would of called them Jade on the price list, and sold them that way.
I knew that we had done some jade coiled dragons and test marketed them that way, but these others are a suprise to me! Maybe they are test paints too.
It is also very possible that our memories are terrible.
The orange eyed emeralds do seem to be the older version of the red eyed ones.

That is the funniest example of quality control run amuck XD LOL “Did YOU paint it that way??” “No! Did YOU??” “I thought YOU did it!” XD hee hee

Nah i can only imagine that with that many people involved and that many dragons, it’s probably a miracle that sort of thing doesn’t happen more often! LOL

[sunhawk]

get out, you are making the rest of us LOOK BAD! 😉 😉

[sunhawk]

Dragon Master wrote:

I kind of think religion and polotics are 2 areas we should sort of streer away from here
Just my thoughts

What about a compromise of sorts? If threads are clearly marked as to their topics, it would allow those not interested in discussing such topics to avoid those threads, no? And those interested in discussing more controversial topics would agree to keep to those particular threads and not accidently/purposely bring up such topics in other threads?

[sunhawk]

SPark wrote:

While we’re on the subject, do you think it’s appropriate to post about personal issues? We’ve a wonderful sense of community here, and I know a lot of people have posted about things in their lives. But I kinda feel, in hindsight, that posting about my current woes may have been inappropriate. I’m not sure where the line is, though. I really, really, really don’t want to offend anybody, but I seem to have managed to anyhow, and I’d like to avoid doing that in the future, if I can, but I really am not sure what is and isn’t appropriate. I’m just feeling uncertain, I guess.

I didn’t have a problem with you posting your personal issues. But it’s good to consider the risk to yourself as much as the risk to those reading the post. As i briefly mentioned in your thread, when you post on a medium like a messageboard, which is dedicated to discussion, you are basically inviting people to discuss the topics you bring up and you cannot really control what exactly people will say in response to your post. Obviously some things can be discouraged, such as flaming, but it’s good to keep that uncertainty in mind if you are going to feel negatively about posts that don’t adhere to whatever goal you had with posting your thoughts.

In a sense, i think you are correct that if you are just looking for somewhere to vent to a sympathetic ear, your private blog may be a better place since there will probably be more people who are more readily sympathetic to your problems. We get along pretty well on this bbs but i think we are also fairly new to each other overall, so people’s reactions to the venting of others may be more distanced, which i think is perfectly reasonable for people to do when faced with incomplete information.

[sunhawk]

I have a few pet theories about religions in general, i hope i don’t offend anyone with them because they are totally not meant negatively, they are just observations of mine

First, i have seen a lot of tension related to how the individual responds to the idea of worshipping an all-knowing being and i think that tension at its core comes from the fact that many people feel that a perfect being deserves nothing less than perfect devotion. But since we are not perfect, the goal is noble but not something i think anyone but a god could achieve, and people respond to that frustration/percieved failure in different ways. Some see it as something that drives them to just try harder, some see it as proof of the illogic of religion, some place blame squarely on themselves or others. My personal belief is that religion provides a sense of comfort to people and social groups, that there is a metaphysical sense of relief in the concept that there is something out there more powerful and more knowing than we could ever be, because for some it makes the world a beautiful work of craft and/or it allows humanity to give up some kind of ultimate responsibility towards the way the universe is. Not that i think humans are the ultimate authority if that position is not filled by a god, but the alternative is immovable forces with no intelligence to reason with that may be beyond any control. It’s a scary thought.

Again, my point isn’t to prove or disprove any of the gods or suggest that religion is just a series of social conventions without an actual higher being involved, this is just my perception of one of the roles religion plays in most societies.

Second, there is the tension which we have seen here in this very thread, between those who want to share their religion and those who do not want to have that religion shared with them. This seems to stem from a concept that Golddragon accidently suggested with her(?) post – that religion is filling a pre-existing gap in people that if filled will lead to a fufillment/growth of the self that would be otherwise lacking. I think the problem with this assessment is that it is based on an assumption that a) all people are alike in having this “hole” or b) that “hole” is percievable to an outsider the same way we can see if someone has been eating too many carrots – an unmistakable symptom. Yet, if faith has no shape and love can be said to have no size, it begs the question – how do people know that “hole” is there? Presumably, some people feel a “hole” in themselves that they feel is best filled with religion and the love/support/purpose/comfort/etc that religion brings. But it’s like how everyone here knows what it feels like to be happy or sad and then we tried to say our happiness or sadness must be all the same. How would you compare? How do you measure the metaphysical, the insubtantial, feelings and ideas?

Sorry, that’s a bit of a ramble, isn’t it?

I think religion and politics CAN be discussed, just extra care must be taken when doing so with some sort of agreement to approach the subjects intellectually foremost, though emotion is certainly just as valuable in a discussion ^_^

[sunhawk]

Melody wrote:

sunhawk wrote:

Melody wrote:

A Jade Empress?!? I didn’t know there was a Jade Empress!! Where did you find her??
What a wonderful and rare collection you have!
These Jade guys are a total mystery to us. We don’t know how many there are, how many different designs there are or even how they got painted…I am accumulating info from you folks about them!
I suspect that several of of our dragon designs got painted this color, but we just have no idea! It is kinda fun to discover this sort of thing.

How DOES that kind of thing happen? LOL Who is allowed to paint your dragons besides you and your people? Or is this the first time it’s happened? Well, it happened with these and the orange eyed emeralds. Nobody knows how it happened! Apparantly we weren’t very clear on the paint scheme for the Emeralds! Or, we intentionally did these in jade… but we don’t remember doing it. We certainly would of called them “Jade” on the price list if it was intentional! …really weird.
I wasn’t at the factory very often during the child bearing years. I worked at home. Stuff like this could happen, but for nobody to notice they were Jade?… and then not remember it? Weird. Fun, but weird.

So it was someone working for you to paint them that got a little creative with the green? That’s weirder than snake shoes!

I have definitely seen a yellow-eyed emerald on Ebay at least once, i just thought they were an older version of the emerald! LOL

[sunhawk]

Keplilly wrote:

Hey Sun! I just wanted to thank you again for the magnets! Everyone has loved them so far!

Awesome! Thanks again for ordering so many! LOL I got your letter today btw ^_^ If you ever want more, you know where i am 😉

[sunhawk]

Nirvanacat13 wrote:

Thanks Sun. *warm fuzzies* I won’t completely abbondon your thread. =P how could I? I’ll be back at it in no time.

sweet! ^_^ *more cuddles and tickles*

[sunhawk]

I don’t know if this is helpful, but i culled a few rules from my own bbs’s guidelines (which came from a set of guidelines written up by Sony) and i’ve found them useful over the years:

* Never Forget that the Person on the Other Side is Human *

Because your interaction with the network is through a computer it is easy to forget that there are people “out there.” Situations arise where emotions erupt into a verbal free-for-all that can lead to hurt feelings. Please remember that people all over the world are reading your words.

Do not attack people if you cannot persuade them with your presentation of the facts. Screaming, cursing, and abusing others only serves to make people think less of you and less willing to help you when you need it. Hasty words create more problems than they solve. Try not to say anything to others you would not say to them in person in a room full of people.

* Your Postings Reflect Upon You — Be Proud of Them *

Most people on the BBS will know you only by what you say and how well you say it. They may someday be your co-workers or friends. Take some time to make sure each posting is something that will not embarrass you later. Minimize your spelling errors and make sure that the article is easy to read and understand. Writing is an art and to do it well requires practice. Since much of how people judge you on the net is based on your writing, such time is well spent.

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