Things have been getting somewhat heated here lately, so we’d like to remind everyone of some of our guidelines for keeping conversation civilized enough that people will want to read and contribute to Village 14. In particular:
- Avoid personal attacks on others, particularly other people who are commenting on a topic.
- It’s fine to be strenuous in your objections to anyone’s actions or words but avoid questioning their motives. If you insist on questioning their motives then please back it up with data.
- Avoid posting anything that you wouldn’t be comfortable saying in person.
- Avoid hijacking a thread to a totally different topic with no connection.
The intent of these guidelines is to promote public conversation among as wide a swath of our community as possible. If given a choice, not many of us willingly stay in a room listening to a few people screaming and hurling insults at each other. The same is true for on-line conversations. Feel free to be as passionate and opinionated as you like, without being nasty. Village 14 may block commenters who continually disregard these guidelines.
Respect is always a good idea and I know my posts can sometimes read more strident than perhaps I intend them.
Can you clarify what you mean by “avoid hijacking a thread to a totally different topic with no connection?”
I assume that you don’t feel that the majority of people on this site who wanted to definitively understand where a prospective candidate stood on getting our kids back to school was “hijacking.”
No, IMHO, that was a legitimate line of inquiry given the office being sought and the unquestioned relevance of the issue as evidenced by many current City Councilors who wrote to the School Committee on the topic.
@Craig – there are a couple of ways a thread can be hijacked. One is when a poster ties it to something unrelated and that discussion takes on a life of it’s own, pushing out discussion of the original topic. Another is when every time other people try to move on to a new aspect of the discussion, one poster keeps pulling it back to their desired discussion point and leaves no room for the conversation to flow naturally.