jaylew said:
Alpe, I'm curious what your thoughts are regarding the separate doping forum issue, general tone of the forum lately, founded/unfounded acusations, etc.
Since you asked, I'd rather not have a separate "doping" forum. I'd hate to think that it's such a major issue that it requires it's own forum. However, it's not going away anytime soon. I do however agree with BroDeal that hijacking of threads by trolls is the main problem, and a separate doping forum won't fix that. Nor would moving posts. It would only leave the moderators with way too much work trying to sift through threads, and my experience from other boards is that it's generally best to let an invisible hand guide the threads, instead of having moderators watch everything like a nanny.
..you certainly aren't one of the primary thread-hijackers or one of the trolls who starts inane threads, but I notice you do really seem to be into the doping talk, Thankfully you seem to do it without the snide, sarcastic, condescending attitude of others.
I'd like to think I'm not so into it and if I counted up my 200 or so posts so far, that's not the major focus of my posting, or at the very least my commentary on doping was informative. But I don't know that I can say that with certainty.
I imagine Mellow Velo, BroDeal, Lookkg386, RDV4Roubaix, Tifosa, and some of the others around here feel the same as I in that they see a thread on (or one hijacked on) doping that contains insinuations or erroneous information, or just ignorant posting about doping, and feel compelled to set the information straight. In this sense, we are often educators, though often laced with opinions of our own, yes. This can often get caustic as the troll bait pushes buttons that incite harsh, opinionated responses at times, just exasperating things.
It's tough because on one hand we would love to ignore the trolls and the same prattle that gets posted over and over and over; but on the other, we feel if we don't respond the erroneous information will just propagate and consume the forum.