the FC vibe and a thank you to the mods

[headdoctor]

Honestly, when I first came out here and started participating in the conversations, I sometimes thought that the mods could be a little heavy-handed in limiting debate and disagreement. Rarely did I ever feel the sting of the bright red letters myself, but still it seemed a bit much. After spending a number of years out here, reading and sometimes posting, I've come to greatly appreciate the insistence on civility. I am a regular on a few other forums (sex and drugs and rock and roll) and I find it almost unbearable how discussions deteriorate into hostility, name-calling, demeaning insults, and plain-out rudeness. And these other forums are not political sites, not places for obvious contentiousness; they're places where people discuss their pleasures. It's obvious to me that it's getting worse, and it certainly seems to be aligned with the general lack of civil discourse in US cultural politics and perhaps beyond. I like hearing other points of view, and as opinionated as I am, I like reconsidering my positions and engaging in honest, thoughtful discussion. But the attacks--so cowardly, behind the cloak of anonymity--are just awful. There's so little listening, so much asserting. So, thank you FC and thank you mods for keeping it real, keeping it on track, and keeping it positive.

--If all this has been said recently in other threads, good. It can't be said enough.

Carry on!