Negativity is a destructive force....

I re-read Gordon's story, of the girl in the red plaid flannel shirt....

Like Jesse said, it's amazing that what some people get from such a wonderful, true story is negativity....

But let's move on.

There's a certain automatic reaction of wanting to put others down, usually to make yourself feel good. By putting others down, you can feel superior to them, and therefore raise your own self-esteem a little....

But it is a sad way to have to do it. It is totally destructive.

Anyone who has been on these online forums for at least a few years would probably agree, the general quality has gone down. In this respect, Gordon and I have tried to keep Sowpub as an "oasis" in the midst of this trend....

Why has the quality gone down? Let's go through some examples....

Bill Myers used to run a top-notch FREE forum, like this one. It was full of very high quality posts - the ideas were incredible!

But then, these attacks came about. As a result, Bill sold his forum.

Now, he still runs a great forum - on his private, members-only web site. You can still get great discussions - if you pay $87 per year. (And it's worth every penny.) If you break the rules, you'll get booted out.

The point is - negativity killed a great FREE resource.

More recently, Don Alm has been posting many incredible, blockbuster ideas. But, he found the same thing - attacks from the negative-minded. The result? Don's not posting his great ideas any more - another excellent resource, wrecked by negative-minded people.

And finally, we come to yesterday.... I hope Gordon will keep posting, but now I'm not sure he will. Yet another "victim" of the negative minded.

What I have to say about the negative-minded folk is - we really don't want them at Sowpub. They are destructive. They wreck things for everybody.

I'm going to be much tougher on deleting such negative posts from now on, and tougher on banning people too if they violate the guidelines.

Sorry to have to get "tough" - but I see no other way for this forum to survive as a high quality free resource.

- Dien Rice