Originally Posted by
rf2
Here's a word: Semantics.
If someone told you to eff-off, I think you wouldn't say, "it's just a word". At a minimum, you would likely wonder why that person said that to you. Most people would also be offended by that and get angry. On a forum, that often leads to a snowball effect of increasingly disrespectful exchanges.
These increasingly disrespectful exchanges have been occurring more and more often here, and usually it is not even caused by "swear words", although I have noticed a few instances where people have been jumbling the letters of swear words to get them past the filters, similar to what I did above. Usually it is caused by childish name calling, or just disrespectful responses. It's unnecessary and really takes away from the discussion. Personally, I think the underlying issue is that lately, the majority of threads are not even about outdoor topics, but rather about COVID/lockdown/politics/erosion of rights. Even threads that start off as an outdoor topic are being derailed so that then end up to be about those other topics. It's very tiresome. Maybe the stress of the current situation is starting to get to people, but the state of the forum is the worst I have seen it since I joined. We wouldn't need moderators to straighten things out if people were just respectful in the first place.
