Hi,
Over the past few months here, several people were driven off the forum due to personal attacks. Sometimes the attacks were re-opened under another topic title.

The most recent example of this has been over on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum. A recent discussion about the Durango & Silverton and their willingness to try to be a good neighbor to the recent influx of naysayers into Durango who do not like the smoke by planting trees using a carbon footprinting methodology became a pro & con on carbon footprinting shouting match (despite no rail oriented information).

It then became a personal insulting match when a few people took the disagreement with their position as a personal attack on themselves.

The moderator shut the thread down and warned about restarting a similar thread.

Someone tried to open the topic on carbon footprinting with no railroad content at all. He could have gone elsewhere on the net to find information about carbon footprinting.

As of today, the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum is no longer available. The web address is gone.

I mention this because a few people who would not take no for an answer killed a good thing for all of us. I do not want to see something like that happen here.

As with my personal experience, I thought that when the D&H (in the 1970s) purchased four PAs that they would be safe forever. I thought that the Southern Railway Steam Program would be there forever.

Please think twice before sending a reply that might be taken personally. Also try not to take a post personally. A good well thought out discussion is always good.

Thanks.
Doug vV

Doug,
I agree...I regularly read the NGDF, also. In fact, I obtained much useful information about the Cumbres and Toltec and the Durango Silverton that enhanced my experience in riding both in 2006 & 2207.

I have also obtained much useful information from this forum on a variety of subjects, and have shared my 2 cents worth often. I don't understand why some folks must attack someone personally just because they disagree with their view point. Name calling and personal attacks have no place on forums like these. Differences of opinion will always exist and debate can be healthy, but personal attacks are just plain wrong. These are also not the forums for irrelevant political agendas. Hopefully folks in here will continue to act accordingly.

The NGDF will be missed.

Bill

Doug,

I feel your loss... I am a narrow gauge railroader at heart... just a bit west of the NGDF primary focus. I (at least until today) read the NGDF regularly.

I also understand the ways of an internet discussion site as the soldier at the gates here.

For the most part we are here because of our passion for old railroads... That passion sometimes comes out in inappropriate ways... that can be taken wrong by others, who fan the flames or throw gasoline on the fire...

For the rest of you, we moderators are trying to preserve our site, while making it an open discussion of sometimes contraversal issues. Its a dance with the devil without an instruction manual.

Randy Hees
Moderator, RYPN
Curator, Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources (www.spcrr.org)

Hi,

I accidentally clicked on the NGDF link a few minutes ago and found the NGDF is back up but still not accepting any new posts.

Maybe it will be back.

I also received a private message from the NGDF by someone who has opened NGtalk. [narrowgaugetalk.freeforums.org]

Doug

Doug,
In the thread you are referring to, I do not see any indication of a personal insulting match or even a shouting match. There was some debate, quite a bit of reasoned discussion, and one member presumably violated the rules by his comments. He used a derogatory slang name to characterize an idea, and then when pressed, said the name should apply to whoever came up with the idea. Then a member threatened to stop hosting the form if such behavior continued, although he said he had no responsibility for moderating the forum. The then moderator locked the thread. I do not see where anyone tried to open a second thread about carbon footprints as you say.

A subsequent thread was started, having a rather strange focus on lamenting what has been lost in the railroad ambiance of Durango over the years. Someone insulted the new generation of Durango residents as being responsible, and there was some back and forth on that. At that point, the same member who had previously threatened to withdraw hosting said he would no longer host the forum, and the moderator then said he would convert to read-only as a result. So that was the thread that supposedly destroyed the forum.

Neither of these threads was off topic. The D&S has been under a lot of pressure to control emissions, and the tree-planting project that was described in a newspaper article and linked to the first post of the first thread is a direct response to the emissions issue.

I do not know what was actually behind the abrupt decision to shut down the forum, but the so-called offensive behavior by the posting members did not strike me as justification for such a severe reaction. Furthermore, the minor misbehavior in both threads was mild compared to what has gone on there in the past in the generation of vitriol directed at the Durango smoke complainers.

The moderator there did discuss why he locked the site, so I won't go over it in the entirety, but the owner of the server where the site is hosted got upset and wants them to move. I hope Don can find a way of continuing running the site on another server somewhere.

As I did not read the thread (except for the first post or two), I can not nor will I comment on it.

I was relating the last post or two from the moderator and what he saw it as. His action was backed up his belief whether or not you or I agree.

If you have issues with the content, take it up with him.

Doug

The Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum is a victim of its own mismanagement by its moderators and supporters. Having been a victim of that mismanagement I will not miss it.


Robby

There are plenty of free or nearly free places on the web to host these forums, so if a host gets all pissy then just move. The NGDF is now at: www.narrowgaugetalk.freeforums.org

I run a steel industry forum at www.steelheritage.org . It costs me roughly $5.00 a month in extra bandwidth charges. We only had one incident where members violated he rules, and suprisingly enough one of the offenders moderates the Yahoo Steel group. Once things went too far I simply deleted the offending messages. No problem!

We as a society are getting to the point where any dissention cannot be tolerated, and any differences in opinion villanized. The artificial propping up of a person's self esteem and the obsession with political correctness has resulted in a generation of people who have a very thin skin. This shows up on these forums when people throw tantrums, threaten lawsuits or vow to stop hosting forums. Quite sad.

We as a society are getting to the point where any dissention cannot be tolerated, and any differences in opinion villanized. The artificial propping up of a person's self esteem and the obsession with political correctness has resulted in a generation of people who have a very thin skin. This shows up on these forums when people throw tantrums, threaten lawsuits or vow to stop hosting forums. Quite sad.

Here, here.

After seeing this thread open, I started perusing the names list to look for names of individuals who posted and quit. Guess what, there's a lot of them. I then opened the "see all posts" link to see id they had been "flamed". Many weren't even INVOLVED in contentious discussions.

On the contrary, only interesting discussions get heated. Now certainly some stuff will go over the top here and there, but I'm looking at recent posts and they are by and large BORING. Oh, once in a while the Strasburg guys will post the their latest doings and that's great to see, but I see posts on "newsletter names", "angola steam", "steam in China".

Not being posted:

R&N Steam trips (Tunkannock to Jim Thorpe) almost 40 years since steam has graced the ex LVRR and ex CNJ rails that are much of the modern R &N on a public excursion. Why? because everybody's afraid the Mullerbashers will come out and play or they'll deliver the usual nonsense about diesel helpers (that I expect will have to be used as a hand-bombed light pacific with a SOLD OUT train will need on a 1.8% grade). So let them, I doubt the executive offices in port clinton care, why should we? Not even a decent discussion on best places to see this from public property.

Project 113- Here's a real great story, an effort to restore a really big 0-6-0 that's being completed under a blue tarp.

Large steam locomotive restorations, NKP 190, etc, etc.

On the contrary folks, too much civility is like carbon monoxide, colorless, odorless and lethal. I'm not suggesting we return to the days when disputes were settled ala Burr/Hamilton, but if you want perfect order-go to an 8th grade cotillion (do they still have those?). They are (were) carefully moderated, everybody said please and thank you, nobody got shot down. All so pleasant and borring.

Superheater,

It's not so much what is said, it's the way it is said that causes problems. But otherwise, you are spot on. I am also of the opinion that a lot of us who post on Internet Fora are of a certin personality type which compounds the problem. PM me if you want that explaination expanded... ;)

What was funny about the thread on NGDF is that I do ride a bike AND own spandex, yet I'm pro-train and don't want the rails turned into a bike trail, unless there is no chance a train will ever run on it. I wish I'd had the chance to respond in a civil manner.

I don't know what is meant by artificial civility. We have been very fortunate to have "Roberts Rules of Order" for many many years. Yes it is boring and a bit tedious to operate under that system, but it allows voices of dissent to be heard discussed and evaluated. We are reinventing those rules every time a moderator steps in and makes decisions, whether by some published agenda or his/her own personal one.

I remember reading NGDF from its earliest inceptions, and (someone correct me if I am wrong) that the earliest rifts created the renegade "Dead Goat Saloon" site where name calling, jumping to conclusions, gross generalizations, and other inflamatory speech were somewhat tolerated, so long as you wore a flame suit yourself. Over there they referred to the NGDF discussion site as the "Gilded Lilly" where things were politer and flaming was not tolerated. Some civility is a good thing, if it allows the gentler people to be heard and not shut down by another's fears and anger.

But all this is subject to people playing by the rules and accepting judgements of moderators (even if they don't seem fair). Is it completely fair? maybe not. I think we are creating a new system for Roberts Rules here, possibly, and in my opinion NGDF and RYPN are stellar examples of a public discussion where ideas come forward and get discussed. Perhaps it would be nice, if when we got off topic, that we could find another forum to take the political / environmental / social issues and have such a civil arena to explore problems and solutions.

I look forward to the return of NGDF.
O Anderson

I don't know what is meant by artificial civility.

You never saw "chip and dale"?

Having been censored on this discussion for criticizing the totally incompetent performance of a particular nationally affiliated organization, I can only observe that there are a number of groups in this pursuit that are headed at high speed for the trash can of history with the way they are doing business. The fact that the etiquette on this site prevents you from pointing out incompetence for what it really is will do nothing to effect their eventual inevitable outcome, it just hides the problems from view for a little while longer.

MX

When notions of "civility" prevent open discourse of ideas, those notions are a problem not a solution.

Controversial topics can be discussed without resorting to being uncivil. Most of the times I have seen people resort to calls of being flamed and suchlike here, it's because they're involved deeply in an argument and rather than admit to being wrong about something, so they revert to personalizing I to shut it down.

I have to admit though that I understand why moderators might just shut everything down when it gets like this. When a fight breaks out in a bar it's way easier to throw everyone out than try and figure out who was causing the ruckus. The problem of course is that you punish everyone that way, rather than just correcting the problem.