folder fanatic

Here is my first Open Letter. The second one will go up as soon as the photos are completed. They do address the new direction I will be taking in my personal and professional life from now on.

folder fanatic

Dear Forum Readers and Members,

For the past few months, there was a concern that I was harboring within myself about something not quite right here and elsewhere on social networking sites such as this forum. I thought that it was my problem so I kept it to myself. But now I will address it here and let all of you think about this too.

I have been seeing a large increase of flaming and even some nasty abuse through posts that even if it saw the light of day-or the screen-it could be overlooked. But those comments seem to take a life of it's own and multiply faster than rabbits. Perhaps I might be a bit old fashioned since I did not grow up with computers and all the rest of a high tech society. I am learning now at a faster rate than I could not dreamed of even at a much younger age. And I have not forgotten the way people behaved when the means to mass communication was limited to such things as phones, letters, typewriters, television, radio, and over the fence or on the porch neighbor discussions. So I will take the liberty to remind people of the power & responsibility of knowledge dispersion-through posts or Web pages.

• Whatever the means of communication, the results are still the same whether the speed of the information is transmitted. I might read a snail mail letter or see a post right here but the impression is still the same as it was hundreds of years ago. You still have some time to think about the topic at hand. This method is called editing-choosing to think or act on a given topic. While editing is a rather slow thing to accomplish, it can be done with the assistance of others in the right frame of mind online.
  
• Keeping interest alive long enough to assist the interest parties. One of the things I don't like about all this technology is the lack of keeping to task long enough to do something. Here on this site it is simply ride bikes. Each sub-forum handles the specific type of bike covered. After that is selected, it is a free-for-all and again it is up to the moderator and the user to pick and choose what he/she wants out of the site.
  
• And to tie all of this up, I noticed a big drop in repeat members and posts over the few years I was online. I chose to go way back to page 75 to see all those forgotten heros that onced graced these virtual pages. Here is a partial list of them: tommylane, eubi, flea, commander taco, and a member that really did such a great job in reviews, Wavshrdr. I could not help to wonder what became of them. Did they lose interest in folding bikes? Bicycling in general? Are they even still alive or real people? Whatever became of them, I hope they were not driven away because of poor behavior.

As for myself, I have shifted gears so to speak. I do admit I was becoming so disgusted at the poor behavior online I was seriously thinking about dropping my hours and Websites online. But I think I will keep them for now-but in a different form. My new sites will be about living a more thrifty lifestyle intergrating cycling into your life rather than the other way around. The World Of Folding Bicycles will go on with it's pages expanding into more areas that even noncyclists will appreciate and use. That was one of the primary reasons why I do and will continue to post here and that is enough for me.

joose

folding fanatic

Just wanted to say that I find your comments interesting and varied and will continue to do so

joose

chagzuki

This is by far the most polite forum I've ever visited, it looks like people are being a little over-sensitive to me.

127.0.0.1

too long, didn't read

nekohime

well, the tone of the board has changed somewhat...but its still more polite than PnR or FG/SS.

badmother

Or The Utiliy forum. When you see what some peopel do post there no need to ask why there i so much war in the world.. I`we ben suprised more than once why the moderators do not react. Or maybe they do...

tulip

I limit myself to just a few subforums, and not often at that. I used to spend hours on these forums, and the Road Biking was the only bad one. Now if someone is mean or insulting, I just go away.

FoldingCyclist

This thread brought to mind a funny diagram I saved from a few years back that described the discussion
dynamic that takes on blogs (attached). It could be used to describe the dynamic that sometimes happens
in a forum as well. For the most part, I've found this forum typically fairly congenial though since I don't
have much in the way of free time and don't participate as much as I'd like, I may have been missing some
of the aforementioned nastiness.

jur

FF:

IMHO YMMV. Get over it and try not to preach.

porschetoyz

Or the Electric bike forum......

datako

Don't worry about it FF, there's a generation of Nintendo Ninjas who have grown up being tough, aggressive and plain nasty living in their fantasy worlds. Some of them pop up on this forum.

They are just immature kids, ignore them, treat their pathetic posturings as playground background noise.

stevegor

FF, you should try an acidic tongue lashing from Patentcad or Botto over at the road cycling subforum like I have on numerous ocassions......very sharp barbs indeed.
Here, we may engage in some playful ego-charged banter about how good we think we are on our folders/SWBs, but offensive remarks???

Reminds me of an old saying:

When we were in our 20's we were governed by what we perceived others were saying about us, hence, we only dressed a certain way, drove a certain brand of car etc etc.

When we were in our 40's, we had the attitude "I don't care what people say about me...I'll do what I feel like doing and the rest of you can go to hell"

When we reached our 60's, we realised "THEY" were never talking about us to begin with.

werewolf

Good observation.

EvilV

I didn't realise you were older than me Steve.

rbrian

Hmm, I seem to have reached my 40s at the grand old age of 29...

stevegor

I'm not....unless you're less than 48...oops, damn it, I wanted everyone here to think I was a 20 something Adonis.

Then you are wise,(or foolish), beyond your years, my young apprentice.

rbrian

I hope wise, I always identified with Obi Wan more than Luke.

stevegor

Me, I tend to identify with brave, brave, brave Sir Robin of Camelot.......nearly fighting the vicious chicken of Bristol....personally wetting myself at the battle of......

rbrian

Yes yes yes, but what's the average wingspeed of an unladen African swallow?

stevegor

What?...I..I don't know that......Arrrghhh!!


"How do you know all these things, Sire?"