Excellent Rebecca, I share your concerns and wholeheartedly agree with almost all your sentiments
(I wrote a long PM to someone along similar lines but then lost it thanks to fat thumbed ness - maybe a good thing as it ended up being a bit too stream of conciousness like anyway)
The single point I wish to add is that
all are welcome
except trolls. The trolls only aim is to harm the forum, so they are a geniune enemy.
Like MDemon I see the boring paranoid place that Divernet has become, and it makes me concerned for YD. Then I see obvious trolls beginning on here, and to my dismay instead of rising above it we have the longest threads for ages and infighting between genuine members - they must have been truelly delighted. And so encouraged.
I'm not going to bang on about this other than this post, but YD needs to learn quickly to ignore trolls, completely. Some may have found recent threads a little amusing, but before you respond to a troll, ask yourself if you want a YD like Divernet in a months time - full of drivel (not just in non-diving
and unable to read a post from a new person without questioning their intentions.
The only good response to a troll is zero response. You may thing you've got a witty comeback or whatever, but any response is oxygen to them. Ignore them completely, add them to your ignore list if you want, but don't reply. Not even with "get lost troll". If you reply, they're not upset by the name you called them, or laughing with you at some quip - they're laughing at us. Any response at all is them winning.
Ignore them, and eventually they'll leave. Respond, in any way, as collectively YD has so far, and we'll have a boring, unfriendly, paranoid and over policed forum in short months.
Don't believe me? Read Divernet main forum archive for a while.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll http://curezone.com/forums/troll.asp
Google for
"internet troll".
Maybe I'm being too negative and Monday minded about this, I hope so.
[/rant over]
Rebecca thanks for your more positive post
Dave.