It is inevitable that people will "go off topic"

General Discussion
1

There are at least three schools of thought here....those who clearly made a mistake, those


who made the right choice and the third parties who know and accept that they need to take


life as it comes....the good with the bad and the best and the worst of France.


There seem to be administrators...who decide when to scald and when to difuse


a scuffle.


Well there was a real Harlem Shuffle this morning and I feel the tension of various members


all eager to make their point.


I too feel strongly about certain points but know that there is a limitation to comments


which move from being exspressive towards agressive.


I would have appreciated more support 2 weeks ago from the administrators...


but it never came.




2

Valerie the words from Catherine are graciously accepted.

But the events were not exactly in the order you suggested.

We were off topic talking about alcoholism and drug addiction

and I said it is a shame that Blah Blah

and then I was accused ....was totally shocked and thought,

at first that he was joking. Then came the threat.

He should apologise.

I am still upset.

Maybe I should just move away from SF...

Thank you Valerie

3

Barbara, I've just read the apology you received from Catharine and the rest of the team. Catharine seems genuinely concerned at the upset caused by the sub-thread that was running which is why it was asked to be dropped and she reiterates how highly you're valued on SFN. Emotions were very obviously running high at that point but the comments kept going back and forth and the situation simply deteriorated. I believe Catharine's response is a very dignified apology which I hope you can accept, agree to let bygones be bygones and we all move on.

4

I have seen a lot of exchange of ideas going on on this site

but I have never come across that sort of thing before.

I am unaware of the sensativity attached to his situation but I

was moving with the extended topic on the post.

I was accused of something I never did.....for no reason and

he went on to make a threat.

He is one of your administrators and I would never have expected

this to happen.But I know that he is more relevant to SF than I am..

An apology which be very normal and dignified.

5

Dear Barbara

I feel your post is somewhat disingenuous. It would be nice if you could have also mentioned that your concerns were addressed.

You raised a concern at the time. You then received both a personal message from me and following that, an 'official' reply (below) which clearly apologises for you having had a less than perfect (as you perceived it) SFN experience.

I'm sure the other party feels that he too could have done 'with more support' but as I'm sure you can appreciate, James and I are here to administrate, not referee.

COPY

Dear Barbara

Having investigated / discussed further - we'd like to send you the following message:


I'm extremely sorry you feel upset by recent exchanges on SFN. As you know SFN is an open forum and we like to encourage frank exchanges between members. Sometimes those exchanges unintentionally touch in very personal areas of other peoples lives, sometimes upsetting them.

In an attempt to limit this we asked in this instance that the conversation be brought back to the original subject and that the sub-thread be dropped. This now appears to be the case. Short of censoring the conversation, this is the limit of our ability to control posts and we ask that members remain civil among one another at all times.

We are very sorry this has happened to you. You are a highly valued member of the SFN network with your interesting discussion topics and posts.

Please accept this as an apology for the recent experience you had on SFN. It does happen when debate becomes heated.

Keep up the good work Barbara.

Catharine and the rest of the SFN Team xx

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ah now I know.

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Barbara

Catharine Higginson and myself are the administrators of SFN, there are also a handful of other members who help out behind the scenes. We call them facilitators, some of them have it written on their avatar.

Kind regards

James

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By the way who are the adminstrators?