freewillie
Contributor
People who are rude are quick to tell people whose feelings they hurt that they're too sensitive.
If the majority of members of SB feel that the harshness of some of the posts here is not severe enough to warrant taking offense, then perhaps those of us who do should just start a separate, kinder and gentler scuba forum.
Matt,
This is now the second thread you are engaging in where you are complaining about the rudeness of some of the posters. There is a thread split for the Unable to Breath thread simply to argue this point. At least in the Accidents and Incidents forum a level of civility is asked for, but given the nature of analyzing accidents some opinions may be overly harsh. That may or may not be the case, but you seem to be taking exception to the verbage of some of the responses.
In the New to Diving and Basic Discussion there is a special rule not to "flame" the responders. But as the old saying goes you can please some of the people some of the time, you may even please most of the people most of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
Besides, in a democracy, the intent is to prevent the majority from dominating the minority. In otherwords, the minority should be protected even if their position is unpopular. The majority of posters here do abide by the rules, but you can't prevent the odd snarky response from sneaking in.
But what is considered rude is a little subjective. What is rude to one person may be humerous to another. The closer to home the comments are, especially when criticizing another diver's skills/or lack there of may be seen as a personal attack. Sometime they are, but in other instances may just be comments to help improve another's awareness.
May be a little like medical school. Some attendings were really nice, some were a little mean. There are the small number of just completely over the top ridiculous attendings. Some doctors were good, others not so skilled. I always had a saying, "some doctors will teach you how to practice medicine, some are examples of how not to practice medicine. The wisdom is in telling the difference between the two."