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Originally Posted by gillygirl
My concern is that neither the Covid information nor the investment information are specific to the Lakes Region. . . . Don is free to police his forum as he sees fit, but at this point, I think it’s illogical not to accept assistance from trusted members. As an admin to the Facebook page for my community in FL, I recognize that multiple opinions are necessary for the proper administration of any social media platform, but unfriendly discourse from either side is detrimental to the whole, whatever the topic might be. . . . I think my participation in this forum is coming to an end. I may monitor for useful information, but this site is far removed from how it was at its inception. It was once friendly…not so much anymore. It’s sad that a pandemic that threatens the continued existence of all can drive such a wedge. But the citizenry of this country seems to be moving from acknowledging an obligation to being part of a society to drumming their own personal rights. Good luck with that attitude when the excrement hits the fan.
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Gillygirl, you make important points about this forum and about how society is going in general. The unfriendly posts in the Covid forum are a microcosm of society. As I have read this forum over the past two years, I have been really discouraged to realize what the society around me here in the Lakes Region actually looks like. But this is true across our whole country---I've been depressed for a while now to realize how deep the divisions are in our country and how vicious they can get. This is definitely something new for us Oldsters who grew up in a more civil society. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet greatly magnifies the severity of insults and attacks as people say things they would never say in public. I try hard not to do that, by the way. Every few weeks I take a break forum this forum because honestly, it's a bit toxic. I'm with you on that.
What is the solution? The solution in a forum is no easier than at the national level. It involves questions about free speech, civility, and policing. Who should do the policing, and what would their guidelines and values be? For starters, if I owned a forum, I would delete all posts that propagated false information. We all know what that is. In 2020 there was a prolific poster who constantly denied the existence of the pandemic. That's dangerous, because people with addled minds believe it. Those posts should have been deleted. I would also remove posts with aggressive insults aimed at individuals. I would remove threads that are based on false information or uncivil, rather than closing them.
Ultimately any forum reflects the values of the forum owner. If people don't like the uncivility of a forum, they can go elsewhere or start their own forum.
I would love to start my own Lakes Region forum based on the idea of neighbors helping neighbors. Boscawen actually has something like that. If you post that you need someone to snowblow your driveway you're likely to get a friendly reply from a volunteer. I suspect that starting and maintaining a forum is a lot of work.
The problem with the Covid forum is that the cat is out of the box. If the Covid forum were closed down, I would still be left with the knowledge that there are some people at this website who just don't care much about other people and truth. Yes, they are strangely civil in the other forums. Many of the same people who have insulted me in the Covid forum for making bold statements like "We have a responsibility toward others" have given me great advice about my house and my car!
You could conclude that this means that just closing down the Covid forum would solve the problem. But I'd like to say that when I first came to this website in spring 2020 my reason was that under the lockdown, there were no safe ways of making contact with people in the Lakes Region and getting firsthand information about things like which grocery stores had food on the shelves. The pandemic is nowhere near finished, and I think that this type of local information and exchange is still very important. It will be a long time before I personally go back to spending time in public places like restaurants where I could meet people in person. This website has been very helpful to me in that sense.