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I do cringe at some of my fellow FReepers comments, though. They make us all look bad in the public eye

I agree. We should all be quicker to hit the Abuse button on posts that are offensive and which reflect badly on FR. FR is no longer just some obscure internet forum where a little gaggle of cyber-acquaintances chatter with each other while being totally ignored by the MSM and influential people. Threads that are littered with rude and mindless comments not only make FR look bad to the outside world, but also tend to drive away newcomers who happen to bump into a lot of this crap on their initial visit, and discourage respectable and influential people from recommending FR to their friends and co-workers.

I've been happy to see the near-complete demise of the old FR fad of labelling thread headings with "Barf Alert" and variations on that theme (and would like to see it 100% eliminated). A few years back, I showed the site to a friend who had never heard of it before, and she was clearly unimpressed when she scanned the index of threads and saw at least a quarter of them labelled with "Barf Alert!", "Mega Barf Alert!", "Double Bagger Barf Alert!", etc. First impressions matter and that sort of thing doesn't convey the impression that FR is a serious forum for discussion of our nation's political system and future. There was so much of the "Barf Alert" nonsense that nobody bothered complaining about it, because it was obviously being accepted by the management. I finally complained to JimRob when, during a sluggish FReepathon, the main forum index sported a thread labelled "Projectile vomit all over yourself and your date alert!" -- I pointed out that this sort of thing was getting out of hand, and was hardly likely to inspire thinking people to help subsidize FR (and the inane label was promptly removed).

When I click on a thread and see that it's dominated by stupid, rude comments, I've tended to just deal with it by hitting the Back button and going to another thread, unless I see something that is in very explicit violation of FR posting rules (advocating violence, explicit racial attacks, etc). But I think perhaps it's time to start being more proactive about posts that are just mindlessly rude, vaguely racist while being devoid of any substantive thought, etc. This forum has become really huge while still being run on a shoestring budget, and the little crew of volunteer moderators can't be the first line of defense against the heavy volume of trash-posting that damages FR's reputation.

‘When I click on a thread and see that it’s dominated by stupid, rude comments, I’ve tended to just deal with it by hitting the Back button and going to another thread, unless I see something that is in very explicit violation of FR posting rules (advocating violence, explicit racial attacks, etc). But I think perhaps it’s time to start being more proactive about posts that are just mindlessly rude, vaguely racist while being devoid of any substantive thought, etc. This forum has become really huge while still being run on a shoestring budget, and the little crew of volunteer moderators can’t be the first line of defense against the heavy volume of trash-posting that damages FR’s reputation.’

I paraphrase... Someone once said that ‘evil will always win if good people (FReepers) stand by and do nothing.’