Alright, I said this before on the OTL social topic, and I'll say it again, here: these sorts of threats are NOT necessary. With respect, you're a moderator, not some great shepherd that has to keep his flock in line and never let them off of the straight and narrow.
As a moderator, I have two choices. Warn the thread, or close the thread. Take your pick.
Threats like these don't keep things on-topic, they only serve to intensify the atmosphere and - again, with respect - give the person issuing them an ego boost for "keeping us in line." For one thing, the conversations were DONE. Long done. Bringing them up again just as fodder for complaint doesn't advance conversation. As a matter of fact, when forum authority figures bring this sort of thing up after the fact like this only serves to further derail conversation.
You think I enjoy telling you guys to stay on topic? Honestly, I consider a lot of you guys my friends. If you ever talk to me outside of SWF, you'll realize that I'm a completely different person. I'm sorry that I'm
trying to protect the thread, but if you want me to let it get to such hell that it'll be forced closed, I'll walk out right now until another mod deems this unnecessary and closes it. I don't care
how long ago the offenses were. I worked two 13 hour shifts in the past 3 days. I saw spam about two pages back, and that's recent enough for me. I kept this thread open too, asking for no spam, and no religion. Why are you complaining?
And you
seriously think I get my jollies by threatening gay kids that need someone to talk to? You've got to be kidding me.
And for another thing, barring a subject ipso facto like that is every bit as counterproductive as - well - saying it's wrong to be homosexual. Everything is contextual, and while things CAN get off-track and require help to push them back on the topic, a brief tangent never hurt anybody. Especially because, let's face it, religion and homosexual persecution often go hand-in-hand. We can bury our heads in the sand and not say anything, but it won't make it any less real.
These rules were made before I was even a moderator, and I would like to keep these rules up. Allowing religious discussion leads to nothing but gay bashing, or religious bashing, both of which I
do not want to see. I don't care how mature most of you posters are. There there are tons of idiots out there that love to ruin perfectly good things, as they have in the past. Allowing religious discussion will ultimately destroy this thread. Which I honestly don't want. I grew up
extremely religious for the first 19 years of my life, then came out of the closet. To be honest, being religious was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. For other people, that's just the opposite. Some people find religion to be the most important thing in their lives. So what do we do? We keep our mouths shut and try not to offend each other. Religion is based
mostly on faith, and as such,
there is no debate. So why waste our breath trying to debate or talk about anything on the subject, when you know it'll just end up offending people?
I don't get where you guys think I'm coming from. I want this thread open as much as the next guy-- I came out to SWF on one of the past iterations of this thread. I like it. I'm not trying to be mean, but if people are trying to ruin a good thing by spamming and starting religious banter, I'm gonna stop them before it gets out of hand.
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