It's time for forum rules, Read and Comment Please!!

[RIPGaryColeman]

But I don't see that mentioning a loss of someone or something, not feeling well or facing future health problems as it could pertain to the member not participating fully within the forum for a while, is a problem.

It becomes a problem when every post is prefaced by the ins and outs of their health issues.
If it involves helping, like the gentleman n who contracted an exotic infection and almost lost his seed business, then hell yeah.

[Shule]

I'm separating my topics with lines:

If people on the site don't want euphamisms, so much the better. I just thought they would be difficult and impractical/unmerciful to moderate. But the inherent rules already state no vulgarity, and censoring would make it easier (if we did censor it). So, whether or not we enforce it or censor it, vulgarity is against the rules, whatever its form, I imagine.

Yeah, I didn't intend to send a comprehensive list of suggestions, even if I seemed to imply it. Sorry about that. I think my list had maybe ten words. My original thought was that an amount near that is probably enough. If it gets too long or intricate, we risk censoring unintended things, including parts of popular tomato variety names that aren't intended to be vulgar. I had that happen on a ProBoards forum I started once when I set up filters, with my own posts. It happened on Tomatoville with a certain word and tomato variety, too, but I forgot which word it was. People seemed amused by it, though.

__________

There are lots of kinds of depression, and lots of kinds of chronic depression. What helps one person doesn't necessarily help another person (and vice versa). Even some kinds of chronic depression benefit from gardening (but they aren't permanently cured by it, per se), but some don't. For some, depression might be purely mental/emotional/circumstantial (and there are a lot of different kinds of this). For some it might be hormones or neurotransmitters. For some it might be brain injury. For some it might be caused by epilepsy. For some it might be lack of sleep. For some, it might have genetic causes. For some it might be nutritional deficiencies, genetic or otherwise. For some, it might be parasites. For some, it might be dehydration. For some, it might be some autoimmune condition. For some it might be air pollution. The list goes on. Anyway, there are so many causes of depression, searching for a single answer to it is probably not the most functional approach. Saying this or that is or isn't good for depression is misleading. Just about every depression suggestion would help someone, I imagine, and not help (or even hurt) another person.

__________

Do you think it would be wise to try to make a policy for posting while drunk? People sometimes do some crazy things online when they're drunk. I don't drink; so, I don't know how well people would be able to moderate themselves there. However, I was once a leader of an online group (not a forum; it was in an online game in the '90s—yes, they did exist then) where one of the other members got drunk quite a bit, and it was a mess. He was one of the other leaders, though, who had done most of us some important favors (so we all just had to put up with it).

I haven't noticed anything too bad in this regard on Tomatoville. A few questionable cases, but that's it. But, if we have a policy, they might just decide not to drink while they're writing. Self-moderation, I mean. Of course, there's the chance they'll drink first and post later, but yeah.

[Nan6b]

The drunk posting seems like infantilizing. We've stated the rules. If the rules are broken, it doesn't matter if they were drunk or sober. I think people can resent us for telling them not to drunk post.

[MissS]

That can't be enforced, so I agree with Nan6b. There is not a breathalyzer on everyone's computer...

[Shule]

[mention]Nan6b[/mention] [mention]MissS[/mention]

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting enforcing it, but if it were in the rules, people might try to enforce it, which could be bad; so you're probably right.

People might self-moderate just as much anyway (without a rule), given the rules that do exist, in order to avoid doing things they'd regret.

[worth1]

My father had a list of so called vulgar words that would make your head swim.
I got a whipping for saying swipe as in someone swiped it instead of stole it.
Another was cops for the police.
You couldn't say pregnant.
The list goes on forever and you never knew what was on it until you got that whipping
He was a prude to the extreme.

[worth1]

Intoxicants effect people in different ways.
Some people want to fight others get depressed and others become lovable.
Yet others become bashful while others lose all their inhibition.
One of my brothers stopped drinking and he wasn't an alcoholic.
He turned into a judgmental *Bleep* preaching his temperance ideology in public.
It was embarrassing to go anywhere with him.

[bower]

I'm with Nan on this. If the rules are broken, it doesn't matter if the person was drunk or sober. Not to mention we have no way of knowing if a person is intoxicated or not, unless they say so. It is not our business IMO to make any rule other than the quality of behavior that we experience online. And there are untold number of reasons for that, but they are not excuses. If drinking causes bad behavior here, it should be treated like anything else.

[bower]

On the subject of language considered vulgar, I believe the general rule against profanity is enough. I don't see the need for a mechanical process to remove a list of words. The more important thing is the context, not the word. Name calling of any kind is a no-no. You can't use a machine to strip all the words that can be used to insult one another. Anything of this nature can be reported to a moderator for action, whether it is 'profanity' or not.
I personally don't find it offensive that gardeners may occasionally use the word "damn" about eg caterpillars or pests. I would not moderate or remove that kind of language if it's reasonable in the context. Obviously if someone is using it too much it becomes annoying and "too negative", so a person could be warned on those grounds. But realistically, even the argument that the site should be child friendly, maybe is going too far. It isn't a site tailored for children. And if they are here with a parent who is strict about language, it is an opportunity to teach their child "we don't use that word in our household". Realistically, no human being is going to grow up never hearing "damn". I never heard "gosh darnoodly" said by anyone in the real world. 2 cents.

[worth1]

I agree with everything Bower had to say in the last two posts if my opinion counts.


The good news is the Home button works.

[MsCowpea]

RIP

It becomes a problem when every post is prefaced by the ins and outs of their health issues.

Remind me not to mention my aching back, shot knees, etc etc. They have a feature called ‘foe’ . You wouldn’t see any of those posts. Would that help?

MissS

But I would not suggest that we give psychological/medical advise on a gardening forum other that to garden.

People don’t necessarily want psych/medical advice. And not everybody can Garden when health issues arise. Maybe they just wanted Acknowledgement and encouragement. Someone to commiserate with?? Perhaps ‘I’m sorry‘ Will suffice.

[Nan6b]

Pain & illness are a fact of life. Our health is bound to come up in posts. Tips for gardening without kneeling, for example. We had a good discussion at TV about gardening with your sight failing. Or in the Area 51 section, why not be allowed to talk about our own medical conditions?

[Shule]

Pain & illness are a fact of life. Our health is bound to come up in posts. Tips for gardening without kneeling, for example. We had a good discussion at TV about gardening with your sight failing. Or in the Area 51 section, why not be allowed to talk about our own medical conditions?

[mention]Nan6b[/mention] [mention]MsCowpea[/mention]
I personally don't think there's a problem with it, as long as people aren't doing anything illegal. But, maybe [mention]MissS[/mention] is just worried about the potential liability issues, and the potential for people giving medical advice who aren't legally allowed to do it. Illegal behavior is already against the law; so, I don't know that we need an additional rule to enforce it (I think we already have a rule to obey the law). However, a rule for the sake of liability makes a certain amount of sense. We should probably analyze whether it's already covered in our current liability statement. I don't think we need to ban people talking about their physical ailments, but maybe some regulation of how people are allowed to respond to them might be helpful—or at least it might be a compromise.

[MissS]

Shule was correct. This is a gardening site we are not professional therapists or doctors. We have no license or authority to be giving psychological or medical advice. I am concerned about the liability. Also there is the point of contention that if one states to another to go seek help of a physician or a therapist that one is horribly insulting the other. That is unacceptable and considered flaming.
As for the advise to go garden, that is perfectly fine. Great threads are written elsewhere about raised gardens, containers, apparatus to help one move around, great carts and such to move things. Those are all perfectly appropriate topics for a garden forum. Giving medical advise is not. This does not mean that one can not mention that they are having an upcoming surgery, an illness or difficulty. It does not mean that we can not show compassion to others. This just means that we do not need pages written and a list of professionals to treat every illness in every state and county in the country for the members of our gardening community.

[RIPGaryColeman]

My suggestion of the "feeling blue" section was to have links to proper sites (national cancer institute, suicide prevention, mental health hotline, etc), providing direct access to legitimate advise/guidance.

We all have health problems. We've all had surgeries. We all know pain.