Let me step up here and, once again, explain to people what this forum is all about. This note is not for the productive members of our community. TRF has always had and hopefully will always have a wonderful family. No, this note is for those who think TRF was built to serve them and that the mods are paid servants that should just shut up and serve.
First a little note: Bowhunter, while not having the title, is a representative moderator of TRF. With his own time and energy he got chat working and, along with Carl, has moderated the chat and attempted with blood, sweat, and tears to keep chat up to the high standards of TRF. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude. In the following rant, when I say moderators, I am including Bowhunter. When I mention TRF I also include chat.
What TRF is: A forum built to provide a community of people who love rocketry a place to gather. A place where people young and old, new to the sport and experts can come and discuss their love without fear of being embarrassed by personal attacks or private discussions that have no place in a family forum. TRF teaches the new, learns from the experienced and entices the curious.
What TRF is NOT: TRF is not an open forum for you to bring your dirt. It is not a place where you can treat others with disrespect or talk in a manner that you cannot talk at home. It is not a place to bring illegal behavior or berate anyone for legal behavior. This is not a brothel where your every need is met.
The moderators work very hard to keep this forum up to the standard any family forum should have. It is a very high standard and my hat goes off to each and every one of them. They take no money for this and require no kudos. When they censure or call someone out it is always to keep the integrity of the forum. They do this with great pain and much discussion because we want everyone to have a say regardless what the say would be. When they get slapped in the face for trying to keep up the standards that is when the forum stops being fun and becomes a hard task.
Now, many of our members understand this. For 90% of you, TRF is what it is supposed to be (Thank you). However, every once in awhile a person speaks up who I swear does not understand. So, I'm going to try to break this down a little further and then I will shut up.
Members - No members, no forum.
Chat - Bowhunter runs the chat and has done a great job. No Bowhunter, no chat.
Moderators - Moderators have done a wonderful job moderating the forum to the high standards defined. No Moderators, no moderation, no forum.
Admins - Milo owns the hardware and software and I own the domain. We run the forum. Without us there is no forum.
We are all interdependent. Recently every person in that list has been "attacked" by various members. If these people leave because of that attack, then there will be no forum. So the message is, the people in that list want the good people in the forum to discuss rocketry. All you other people who are here to create havoc can go away. We will keep the forum. You will start to feel the vise as the moderators and admins take back the forum. We have never disabled accounts from specific users but we may start.
End of rant.
