It is nice to hear from so many people, and a bit surprising that there are so many newbees on board, since the discussion here can get technical and long-winded.  Great!  I'm hoping we'll hear a few words from more of the lurkers.

As mentioned by several, writers *posting* here can be a bit daunting for the faint-of-heart, since some of us get quite serious about things others might consider trivial or obvious and immediately emit a ton of data (or opinion) in response.  Reading on the other hand is nothing short of entertaining, especially since we have a number of well-known published writers and authors.

To those who feel people are being attacked or that manners are lacking, I can only say that our policy is to take no prisoners when it comes to engaging *ideas*, but we try to go easy on *people*.  Our policy is "No sacred cows, so it is possible though to get injured standing in front of a target or trying too hard to protect it. 

Slicing and dicing ideas is what we do here, but personal attacks are rejected by moderation, when recognised as such.  Sometimes the distinction can be hard to call and we tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  

Manners vary from place to place, and besides posts sent to BEE-L are written in spare moments in airports, front sets of bee trucks, motels, and other odd spots where time may be short and uncomfortable.  I suspect that posts also written sometimes in varying states of sobriety, and we have had some members with medical or mental conditions which affect their mood periodically and which an astute observer can diagnose quite easily by reading and comparing posts over time.  All this has to be taken with some patience and good humour.

I also notice that sometimes even very smart people do a less than perfect job of reading the posts to which they make a passionate and knee-jerk response.  For those with a sense of humour, it can be hilarious to see someone fuming about a post with which they basically agree.

That is why we encourage addressing the *idea* under attack and not the *people* advancing it and suggest avoiding attribution lines, and especially ones like this: "On Tuesday the 45th of Febember 2025, Beauregard smirked...".   

Such automatic attribution lines deflect attention to people from the ideas under discussion.  Moreover, they often attribute incorrectly, so we encourage editing them out, along with the rest of the quoted junk that email programs automatically inject into replies.  

 Frankly, we don't care where an idea comes from and who worships it.  Any idea is fair game here and will get the same rough ride.  

So, to those who would like to post but are a bit afaid, I say: be brave, do your homework, post your gambits, then stand back and enjoy the fun while your pet notions get taken apart and put back together.

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