It's not going to become a battlefield TIS. You need to declare war before you can fight on a battlefield.

I agree with you that the insults, etc. that take place 99% of the time in a thread that is political. Some of the reasons that you stated are correct. But to add to that, the reason that we rarely see insults and attacks over in the other threads is because in the other threads, like GF Trilogy for instance, if there is an insult or a flame starting, it is nipped in the bud right away, and immedeatly put to a stop. That is because there is no reason for anyone to accuse the moderator of "taking sides" because in those threads there are no political disagreements where one could possibly take the side of the person's political view that they agree with. It's more of an interpretation Thread and discussion, so a flame starter, which is a rarity, is stopped in his tracks.

What started all this now is the fact that I posted a NEWS story about the floods and landslides that took so many lives in India. And in that post I asked if our fellow memebers from that region were ok.

Somone decided to start a debate about the news item that I posted, and it just began to spin way out of control with insults and attacks. Why this had to happen in a non controversial post about a natural disaster is beyond me. But as you know and saw, it happened. So rather than allowing the flame to get bigger and risk the chance that someone would get booted from here, I decided that since I was the one who started the original post, I would be the one to put an end to the fighting and arguing and just delete the post. It no longer seved it's original purpose which was to make others here aware of what was happening in that region of the world and to reach out to our fellow members from that region by making that post. But it unfortunately turned political.

Don Cardi