I had to go look for what you were talking about because I quit reading anything with BMN in the title about his fourth post.

I agree pretty much right down the line.

Nothing I can do. That user is out of line. Nobody else would get away with it. My hands are tied.

Nothing I can do about changing anything. I just get to clean up the mess.

Dan [F or B] must change those pages so maybe if enough noise is created it could maybe happen. I wouldn't hold my breath, however. Change is slow.

Glad to see it is not just me being anal about things. Support is nice.

TomW

That being said, I do not think it is appropriate for one person to use this website's dairies section as his personal blogging space. Hey Dan, I've been wanting to start a blog, can I do it here too?  I put a rebuilt head on the Toyota pickup last week and got some liberatarian ideas I'd like to publish and see what people think.

Kind of a shame that this whole thing has blown up over this one post, because it's probably the most poignant and thought-provoking thing Brian has ever posted in here. The fact that people are up in arms about the language makes me really wonder if it is about two cuss words in six paragraphs or if it isn't about something else.

Volvo Farmer

Now with that said I feel that the Diary should be a place for going projects that may or may not be RE related
The hey what have you be up to how is every one  the funny an corny stuff

 The stuff some would call the warm an fuzzy.  Its the warm an fuzzy that's the glue that helps  hold Forums like this together .

Its what keeps the talented an creative folk coming back it keeps boredom an burn out at bay

It's the stuff that keeps the Board fun
If some one should ask are we having fun
We should be able to say heck yea  
Were having so much fun it should be illegal

 Anyone can start a diatribe or a rant that is uninformed and type away endlessly without really doing anything and even claiming that they do..(not really pointing fingers) ..I just don't feel that this is the place for it. People don't start coming here to learn the situation of banking, or for that matter what's in george bush's closet!

 So I vote for bringing this site back to what it was intended for, RE saving the planet in our own insignificant ways, and leave stupid opinions of why lawyers should all be banned to antartica....

 (I so had to restrain myself in this and my earlier post to boss's diary)

  "We reserve the right to move and delete postings at any time, without warning to
 the author. We also reserve the right to ban users from this board, at any time, for
 any reason".

    This seems to be a workable methodology already in place for the folks that actually make the rules.

BMN, if you feel the need to blog, add WordPress to your domain and have at it! I have two blogs, one related to politics that you will find not one link to on this site as it's the wrong place for such things. If you need help in setting it up, give me a shout.

What I have done on my sites is to allow off-topic blog posts from regular on-topic contributors. You can't get away with wholesale spamming, political ranting or making it your regular personal blog, but you can post about personal things that would be of interest to those that share the site. The general guidelines are there, but I am the sole arbiter of what stays and what goes.

Over the few years that I have been here, I have pointed a great number of people to this site, if for no other reason than to get a real-time pulse on what real people are doing. Those people range from the technicians that maintain 480V UPS' with enough energy storage to keep a 3 floor building operation for 3 hours, down to children and their parents from around my neighborhood.

ALL:

I will -out- my self, I have mildly complained about BOSS' "newsletter" more than once. Several of them I read as mindless ramblings, and as the man says "if you don't like it change the channel". Easy enough, I merely click on the diary and close it back up "done".

Language: Certainly there are much worse out their , but why should it be continued? much less allowed here?
The "words" used weren't even that bad , of course, and when used correctly they aren't even considered foul language. BUT they weren't used correctly according the any dictionaries I subscribe to.

Diaries:
I don't own this site therefore the rules setup are not mine to question. I have opinions but that matter no more and no less than anyone else's.

As a parent it is my responsibility to look out for my children, and I do, other might not but I do. Even the ones that have already grown and moved away, it's what makes us family.
Perhaps that it why I would like to even see the posts with foul language deleted, no questions asked. IF I do it lock me, other the the owners who pay the bills and keep this site up, no one is better than the next.

Bruce S

As TomW says above, he often uses a hook to get them read.  A case in point is this one....

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/3/3/15552/83594

in which he has taken Ghurds original post and pasted it into his own. I found this very confusing, because even though he mentions the Ghurds thread it isn't clear which are his words and which are pasted.  Reading it you would think that he is describing the circuit and offering it for sale.

Rest assured that we are reading this thread up here on the mountain, are discussing it, and that we feel your pain. We are also completely swamped with building wind turbine kits, writing a book, and giving seminars to teach people how to build wind turbines in exotic foreign countries like Nicaragua and Wisconsin. Without volunteer editors like TomW (how many years has it been now, Tom?) we'd have shut this board down years ago. We are also trying to deal with the fact that this board has grown WAY to big for its software, so that people can't even order our products or read our articles for 1-8 minutes at the top of every hour.

The whole idea of the 'Diaries' section in the first place was kinda like Playboy magazine, or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition -- you don't HAVE to read it, but you can if you want to! It's not included in 'Everything' on the main menu. And as long as it didn't contain porno or perpetual motion, we'd let it ride.

That seems to be becoming a problem now. We'll discuss it, and yes, as Tom said, changes are slow here. In fact, we'll get to discuss it with him in person in about 6 weeks, over some beers....a good thing, because he's the main one that is catching all the inappropriate content for us.

Basically, any policy changes here (like starting to clamp down on diary content) mean more work for all of us. We'd rather that people would just get along. Brian R doesn't have any special mojo here, but he's a rare graduate of one of our wind turbine construction seminars so we know him personally, and as was pointed out, he's a 'doer' and not just a talker. So we tend to listen, to a point. Sometimes I read his diaries, but often I don't. And it appears he just chimed in to say he would tone it down.

If something is truly offensive, email us or catch TomW on otherpower IRC, tho usually he catches everything bad within minutes of it being posted. We can come down with an iron fist if needed, but we'd rather not. And we'll discuss clamping down on diary content, too.