Mike, it's your site, and I can only assume that you've made it the way you want it. So I hope that I'm not out of line by making this suggestion, but I think that the user rating (promote/demote) function should be scrapped. Frankly, I think it's juvenile. Really, it's just a slightly more polite form of name calling. If people were using it to "promote" members who made intelligent arguments or who brought newsworthy info to everyone's attention, and to "demote" those who were actually trolling, or otherwise making non-worthwhile contributions, then maybe it would be ok. I don't think that's the way it's being used however: I'll admit that I have "demoted" those whose posts I have simply disagreed with, and I think others are doing the same thing. Looking back on it, I probably shouldn't have done that, as it was, as I said, childish of me to do so. People are going to disagree, and a member who holds strong opinions, even on controversial subjects, does not necessarily make a bad member of the site.
Recently, there have been a couple of passionate arguments on this board. That's fair enough-- I tend to hold a lot of strong opinions myself, and I do like to argue them with others. The thing is, that the threads I am referring to have quickly degenerated into name calling on the part of both sides involved, and such behaviour does not tend to encourage meaningful debate. If the general opinion of the membership of this board is that it disagrees with a particular post, then there will probably be enough rebuttals made to make that fact well known, and that will be the case regardless of whether or not we can "demote" our "enemies". At least in an honest rebuttal there is (ideally) going to be some legitimate argument made. On the other hand, given the presence of the user rating function, I think that the temptation is to read a post, disagree with it, and then just "demote" the party responsible. In other words, I think that the way this function is currently being applied is along the lines of "I agree with the gist of what this guy has said, though he might have acted like a retard when saying it: I should promote him" and/or "I disagree with what this member has posted, and though the poster may have written it in a professional manner, I'm going to demote him". As I said, I just don't think that such behaviour is really very far elevated above childish name calling, and I'm not proud of having engaged in it myself in the past.
So there you go. Submitted for your consideration. And by the way, I'm aware that my user rating is not 100% favourable at the moment, and I hope you can believe me when I say that the votes against me really aren't the reason I have made this proposal.
A reformed name caller,
Willy
I don't know how much control you have over the content of the dictionary, but it would be nice if you could add some commonly-posted military related words like Pte, MCpl, Bloggins, LMG, etc.
