>
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> > I know many people already think I'm some sort of hate-filled denizen of the Dark Side who likes to flame people just because there's a huge global conspiracy against newcomers to the forum. People who believe this, I am about to make your day.
> >
> > I want to post a link to something from the forum, way back in ancient history when people wrote things here that were funny and clever and well thought out, and which consisted of more than two lines of poorly spelled pointless garbage with AOL punctuation, and which could not have been more easily said in a chatroom to the one or two people it was intended for, without melting the few remaining brain cells of the rest of the community who still come to this forum seeking something to read that was not apparently composed by random selection of words by a dart thrown at a dictionary by a blindfolded gibbon.
> >
> > To anybody who is reading this and getting offended, SHUT UP unless your offense takes some form which will be interesting, thought-provoking, and/or witty. I will settle for even *one* of the above.
> >
> > If anybody brings out the "you're against freedom of speech" argument, I will personally track you down to your home or place of work and beat you to death with a hammer. Also, I don't care whether you've been at Rinkworks for one second or two hundred years. If anybody brings out the "you hate newbies" argument, all of the above applies but I will also make certain it is a *dirty* hammer.
> >
> > To anybody who is reading this and nodding in agreement, you can shut up too. Nobody, including me, who has been whining about the forum in private chatrooms for the last six months but not actually posting anything *good* has any right to complain. Can everybody who's capable of it please get off their butts and start posting some good stuff before we all go completely insane?
> >
> > I tried to do that instead of writing this post. But my creativity, originality, sense of humour, personal motivation and damn near my will to live have been sucked away into the giant black hole of suckiness this forum seems to have turned into. I have been struggling against posting something like this for weeks now. Darien says I am good at veiled insults, but I realise that if insults were Islamic women, this post would not only not be veiled, it would be wearing a sequinned thong bikini and dancing on a table.
> >
> > Brunnen-"never give up, never surrender"G
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> --- I had no idea that we newbies were thought of in such ways....a gibbon of all things. I have only been here for 5 months, so I do not know what the forum once was months or even years ago. However I do like the Rink Works of today. I suppose I did not realize what type of things were to be posted (or not posted) here on the forum. I would like to offer an apology to all of those whom are a few brain cells shorter for having read any of my mindless garbage .... I will post no more forever.
>
> Joanna =0)

Having read every thread in this post so far, I feel that this is the best place to post my reply.

Firstly, although Joanna is joking, I would have to say that this is how I felt when I read Brunnen_G's message. At first, I thought she was joking. Then I thought 'Does her insult include me?' I tried to think back through everything I had written, and I knew for a fact that some of my posts were pretty light, no depth, and that I had definitely let bad spelling and grammar go through my check, whether deliberately or accidentally. As I read through the initial replies, I started to grow more certain that she was talking about me. Whether it was her intention or not (and I know she has said several times that it was not her intention), it *sounded* like an attack on Newbies. I've been here 6 or 7 months, I still consider myself a Newbie, and suddenly I was made to feel ashamed of expressing opinions that were not high, elegant and full of depth.
Often I try and rock the boat, or play devil's advocate, just to fully explore an argument from an unfamiliar position. I already felt uncomfortable posting my views on religion, given that my religious views differ from many others here. After Bo's disasterous (sp?) non-politically correct comment (re: "car vs child"; just because it was deleted from the forum, doesn't mean it was deleted from my memory), I felt reluctant to post as Devil's advocate, in case anybody took that as my real feelings on a subject. The circumstances are only slightly different. Now, I feel reluctant to post at all.

I had felt that this was a high quality forum. I rarely, if ever, see "AOLSpeak" being used, at least in the forum, and I did feel welcome. I don't now.

Thankyou,
"samhael", Ailie

Ps I assume the hammer was metaphorical. If you would like to continue this, my email address is right there. --A