Changes to policies

“We are trying to build a gentler, kinder society, and if we all pitch in just a little bit, we are going to get there.”

Alex Trebek said that in his final episode and it’s encouraged me to ask everyone here to make a slight change in the Lounge/Forum.

I wanted to update you on a slight change in the policies on the venue.

Posts and Privacy

I’ve made a change to item number 3:

3.  No politics and religion.

So why are we changing this policy?  As a person in business for many years, the topics of politics and religion have been always considered to be something personal and not suited to be discussed on a site intended to be more technical than social.  Because these topics tend to cause topic drift I feel that at least for the foreseeable future I would prefer that this is a “free zone” where we all can come together and know that these topics won’t be causing a lack of civility.

Sometimes we will have articles that deal with real-life issues that affect us all, such as the intersection of law and technology. Such topics can easily slip into a political discussion but we ask that your commentary remains polite, respectful, unbiased, and factual.  That sort of commentary is to be encouraged

Anyone violating the terms of the Posts and Privacy rules will be dealt with accordingly.

I want to thank everyone participating on the site for encouraging, embracing and enhancing our educational and technical topics on this site.  Rants (complaints) forum about technology will still allow you to complain about technology.  However I will suggest that taking a hammer to your old hard drive not only to ensure that it’s properly destroyed for security purposes, will also make you feel better than ranting.  Seriously, I can confirm this after many years working with computers.  The Fun Stuff venues are still available for your use to also relax after dealing with annoying technology.

Also be aware in regards to 8. Before posting a link or question, search the site first

There are two new boxes on the side of the site. One searches the postings on the site. I called it searching the “newsletters” as it will let you search for past newsletter stubs as well as the blog posts.  I’m going to be working on getting a more advanced search that will allow you to target *just* the posts or *just* the newsletters, but this is a short term workaround that I hope you’ll accept until I get a long term solution in place. The second search box allows you to search the forums/lounge. Because the site is in reality three parts – the “blog posts”, the newsletter posts and the forum/lounge we have to have multiple search tools. I’m hoping long term to get a unified search but again, hopefully this is a good compromise for now?

Thank you to everyone and thank you all for your expertise and sharing of information.