Agreed, but you have to admit these rules don't always apply to everyone.
Responding to the post, and not to the poster, is one of my pet peeves. As long as you can keep it about the issues, then reasonable (usually intelligent) discussion can be had. But as soon as things come in from outside the current thread, when the responses are personal about the poster and not about what they posted, the discussion usually quickly devolves into name calling and sticking your tongues out at each other, or worse.
The rules have always applied to everyone, it's just that they haven't always necessarily been evenly applied to everyone. That's something I've been harping about since shortly after I got here (not just the issue of favoritism, or any perception thereof, but of the basic issue of trying to get people to reply to what was posted rather than to who posted it). Hopefully I'm making some headway here. It's a never ending battle, tho, and I know that, human nature being what it is.
At the bottom of each Forum there is a list of the moderators who can moderate within that forum. You will notice my name is absent from the list of the Soapbox moderators. Because of my unnatural and irrational obsession with getting people to stick to replying to the post and not to the poster, that's probably a very wise decision.
On a side note, I think it should be called The Soapbox Derby. One, because it sorta fits with expediting vrooom, vrooom, and two, because most people in here aren't concerned with the process of building their car (their argument and the issues), but instead are only concerned with winning and will do anything they can to win their argument, even if it means abandoning their own ride (principles and issues) to sabotage someone else's. <snort>
