Let me make it clear to the membership that Rick was never asked to stop posting on ETS. Rick rec'd the SOP response to complaints about a personal attack, the same as many others have before, was asked to delete the offending posting and make the SOP public apology and as far as we were concerned, that was the end of it. That Rick has chosen to stop posting is entirely his choice.

I am getting sick and tired of this sort of BS. I almost shut down this forum once before over crap like this and I am very close to pulling the plug now.

The rules are clear. When we get complaints we take action. If we notice something inappropriate we take action. Neither Chris nor I have time to read every post here, so we depend upon you to police yourself for the most part and to let us know when someone isn't following the rules. We try to be as fair as possible, but we are hardly perfect. We will not get into a position of sitting as judge between members making claims and counterclaims. That's one of the reasons we have the rules about personal attacks. If you impugn someone's honor or reputation, directly or indirectly, that's a personal attack. This is especially the case when you are a vendor promoting a product and attack a competitor, as was the case in this instance. There is no call for that. It isn't our job to determine if it is true or not, all we want to do is maintain civil discourse and that is impossible when there are personal attacks. If you cannot be civil, if you cannot operate without sniping at others, or you don't like the way we run this forum, find yourself another forum.

The rules are designed to work to the benefit of the majority to ensure civil discourse about topics that can make the difference between life and death. No flames wars, no pissing matches, no personal attacks because they are totally counterproductive.

End of discussion!