Respectable members,
Greetings. It is only human to make errors. Important thing is, we have to learn from our mistakes. I wish to make following suggestion to the Admin and Moderators of this forum. I invite members to kindly contribute/comment about those suggestions, please.
1. There should be restrictions placed on new memberships in opening threads in number of posts and quality of posts. Moderators are doing a great job in deciding the quality, so far.
Dear Shri Raghy,
It seems to me that the suggestion to clamp restrictions "on new memberships in opening threads in number of posts and quality of posts", is somewhat impractical, because who is to decide the quality? Secondly, is this a sort of class test or something where we will judge quality by contents, language, style, etc?
2. Other members should refrain from getting into debates/discussions on policy matters when a new member in involved. Chances are, we may scare them awway/we may be debating for someone else's pleasure. I admit, I was guilty of that in the recent saga. I request the forum to pardon me for that, please.
This is not clear to me. Where did you - or, for that matter, I - got into "discussion on policy" in the Kunjuppu Vs RP issue? I stil feel that Shri Kunjuppu, as a very senior member and also a senior person in age (unless RP is elder to K - we don't know, but judging by RP's sentiments he appears to me to be young), could have shown more restraint on his part. I have been trying to tell that the use of the words "your grandfather" in Kunjuppu's post was not in good taste at all; on first reading, I was also astounded by this direct attack but later convinced myself that this could be either the Canadian style of English or a typo for "our"; either way it was not good because this is a global forum and we have to be extra careful in writing. That is why, in my view, RP got flared up because he felt K was directly insulting RP's lineage itself. For example my family chart of more than 9 generations is with most of my family members and if someone were to tell me that my great grandfather or great grandmother was not born to brahmin parents, I will definitely not relish it.
But what I now find is to absolve Shri Kunjuppu of any fault on his side and to blame everyone else including the moderation; all for what? Not checking RP, and not for not moderating Kunjuppu. If this is the prevailing sentiment of this forum it will become (if it has not already) a club of a privileged few with unhindered veto powers, like the UN security council. So it is futile to think of inviting or retaining any new member who does not toe the line of the privileged few. This is exactly what I referred to as "caucus".
3. The moderators may consider 'reference' method for the new members while joining. Some of the members may be invited to join by an other honorable member; in such cases, restrictions may not be applied to such members as in opening threads (We have few great contributors who came here on invitation).
This is workable but supposing the invited member turns out to be having opinions like those of RP, what will happen? On the other hand, someone with a preset agenda may bring in a lot of people and scuttle the whole forum.
I would suggest that we insist on full details of the new (as well as existing members) including their ideas on the (seemingly) vital points here viz., the member's ideas about brahmin superiority, caste system, inter-caste marriages of brahmins with non-brahmins, degree of attachment to religious ideas and customs, gurujis, swamijis, mathams, etc., whether he/she will be able to tolerate criticism of all these, etc., and admit him/her only if found suitable, and not automatically.
