Thanks, Bill.  As you correctly point out, the purpose of ArtMetal is stated for all to see.

I have no problems with personal items, issues, happenings, etc, but if someone really wants a place to rant about his/her politics, religion, personal habits, or recent graduation from rehab, then I think a truly personal blog page like on Blogger might be more appropriate than a metalworking forum.

Sure, we all have issues other than metalworking and the arts.  I just doubt sincerely that anyone here wants very much to hear what I think about poliltics, religion or my early toilet-training.  Or, for that matter, what I think about anyone else's politics, etc.  I'm glad you brought this back up to the top, as I think it is important that we all tread lightly when posting about things other than art and metalworking.  We've seen what can happen when words are misunderstood, and that is one of the perils of this particular medium of communication.

Since we can't see each other's expressions, and don't often know the other person's life history and personality, it is all too easy to misunderstand or be misunderstood. Emoticons and little smiley faces notwithstanding, it is too easy to take offense, when in fact the author thought he/she was being cute, funny or humorously sarcastic.  I've had it happen to me, from both sides, and it always ends up causing a lot of back-and-forth to straighten things out.   On more than one occasion, it never did get straightened out, and ended up with hurt feelings and real animosity.  Thus, I try to avoid it, and encourage others to do so.

Perhaps I misstated the guidelines for the forum. Nonetheless, I exhort everyone to use moderation in their expressed attitudes and try to give others the benefit of the doubt. If you have any doubts that your own post might be misinterpreted, give it some more thought before posting.  If you get responses that indicate that people are misinterpreting what you said, take a minute to respond gently and perhaps to edit the post that generated the confusion/misunderstanding. 

All these posts are archived for posterity - I sometimes cringe at the thought of my past mistakes cropping up years later to haunt me, just because somebody ran a search query and it returned something foolish I said three years ago.  I'll bet it happens to me, though. (grin)  

Thanks again for helping out, Bill.  I appreciate it.

Frank,

I agree that some of the off-topic stuff can be really entertaining, and as long as it doesn't degrade into name-calling or other inappropriateness, there's nothing wrong with it. Life is about more than just one thing, after all.

My Mom used to say, "Opinions are like armpits - everyone has them and they're all best not shared too freely." (grin)

Good point about restrictions causing rebellion. Hard to imagine in a country that hosted the Boston Tea Party, huh? Boundaries only work so long as the people within them agree to them. I suppose that's one reason that there are User Agreements on most forums.

If you *really* want to undo a previous post, all you have to do is look it up on the "My Recent Posts" tab and go to it. At the bottom of each post, you'll see links for "Edit", "Reply", "Delete" and maybe something else. Click on the appropriate link and you can edit or delete your own posts.

Rick,

I double posted a reply a few minutes ago and I remembered your comment in the thread a couple a days ago so I went back to it to see how to delete on of my posts. At the bottom of my posts, it just says "edit", "reply". I don't see a way to delete. Am I missing something?

Walker

Beats me, Walker. My view of things is a bit skewed since I have a few more options available to me as moderator. I thought a member could delete his/her own comments, replies, or posts. I guess I was wrong, huh? Maybe you can only delete your own blog posts, but not replies to others' blogs. That would actually make sense, I guess.

Anyway, I whacked your duplicate reply for you. No charge. :-)

Rich

I have noticed that I can edit reply posts up until someone replies to mine.
Then I can't change it any more.

Gene Olson
Sculptor
Elk River