When I was asked to moderate a forum on Knife Forums I agreed and said I would have only these basic rules -- no profanity, no personal attacks, no badmouthing of competitors products. Anything else was fair game. We started over on the old knife forums and our forum soon became the most popular on that site. I think the reason for this was we were an oddity. I followed my own rule of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and this seemed to attract people. And I was younger and stronger then and could give a good deal of time to moderating very "iffy" discussions. I don't think I ever deleted a post, almost never edited a post, and never banned anybody although at times I was sorely tempted to do so. I used my Buddhist philosophy to good advantage and we waded through some very difficult discussions.
Then I was asked to moderate this forum on Blade Forums and agreed. Same philosophy as the Knife Forums HI forum. As you can see the forum has been and is still pretty popular. Because of my very firm belief in free speech and expression I allowed some posts which most would have banned. There were trying times when politics, religion, customs, entered into the discussion, especially if driven by zealots and fanatics and we had a few. But we survived and the forum became a place where anybody could say just about anything and it remains that way today to a high degree.
I wanted the forum to be not just a place to discuss khukuris and blades in general but a place where somebody in trouble could come, state his trouble and ask for help in the form of prayer or even money. I wanted it to be a place where help and advice could be solicited. I wanted it to be a place where ideas, philosophies, could be discussed. However, I wanted it to be a place motivated by the first rule, "Love God and love thy neighbor as thyself." I never wanted to see hate or loathing as part of the discussion or posts made simply to stir up contentions and discontent.
And here is the secret to making a decent, meaningful post: No matter what subject you might be posting about if you do so with the basic rules in mind, "Love God and love thy neighbor as thyself" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" you'll end up with a good, meaningful post that will probably be of some kind of benefit to all. Check your motives before making your post. As my old guru used to advise me, "if you can't do it with love don't do it at all."
If we follow the rules this can be a fine and worthwhile place so let's all give it the old college try.
Last edited by Bill Martino : 07-05-2004 at 01:54 PM.
..... does this include me 
