Polite Rules for discussing Audio related things

I'm a newcomer here and in general find this site to be friendly and helpful. There are some very obvious exceptions. Many sites are not welcoming or friendly to those who are just learning about the given subject of the site and I commend Adiogon for not being like that.

I think not feeding the trolls is really good advice that I often fail to take and have failed to exercise it here. I'll try not to make that mistake again.

I have moderated on other technical websites. It is hard to do well in part because it is easy to be biased for whatever points and beliefs you hold to be true and in regard to personalities. It is easy to abuse the role of moderator especially within a site that allows them a heavy hand.

I would agree with those who have said leave things alone here. For now.

I have also been a member of a paid website or two that had a specific forum for gloves-off discussions. The member is warned before entering. It worked well on one site where the general membership was generally intelligent and thoughtful. In the other site it was just pure acrimony and nothing else.

Sorry Geoff there would need to be a LOT more posts here for all of your stalkers to have showed up yet......

Oh right, was that a perfect example I wonder?
As long as we can keep things light hearted without any real angst and vilification then I for one am happy with the status quo as it is.
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@ron1319- think of it as a giant, dysfunctional family. At least you don't have to show up for Thanksgiving or eat Aunt Tilda's 3 bean salad.
@erik_squires - Erik, in my experience, snark and downright craziness has been part of the Internet since the old Usenet groups. The WWW is just bigger, broader and encompasses more, as people spend more time on it for everything, not just topic specific stuff like Audiogon. I don't think the world has gotten uglier, we just get to see more of it  since everything is on the Internet. 

Back a while ago there was a massively successful drag racing game on mobiles.
It was so huge it spawned its own website and forums.
I was a member of THE most successful team in history there AND was a mod on the forum. Now we literally had the power of God!
Suspension,bans, complete annihilation of a members very existence, reset post count to zero( wouldn't GK love that one!).
But the point is that those powers were never needed, usually a few warnings were enough to calm the rabble.
But here is where I see a big difference, on that forum, all the mods were well known and very active participants in the forums and contests.
I am really not sure I truly like the faceless mods technique that this forum uses.