Dear all,
I gave my – constructive and thoughtful, at least I hope so – views on the topic at various times in the last few weeks. I gave my thoughts on the thread in a post a couple of days ago. I don’t have much to add to either. But I do want to say, for the record, that I think Doug’s intervention here was not helpful and did not match up to my understanding of an administrator’s responsibilities.
The thread may have gone on too long, it may have (occasionally) become a little too heated, but that’s what happens among human beings when they discuss things they care about. I was a little tired of the topic, but not offended by anyone’s position or attitude. Then the administrator arrived, telling us – as if we were in school or in the army – that we had taken the thread “way off course.” He didn’t tell us what the course was supposed to be, or who decided on that course, or what specifically anyone had done to take it off course. Instead, he relied on dark insinuations and thinly veiled threats.
I might also point out that there are threads all over Sober Recovery which have wandered far from their original topic, and which have been a lot more heated than this one. So why has it been singled out like this? And what gives an administrator the idea to parachute into a discussion, not for a friendly word of advice, or to make a suggestion, but to announce that they know the correct “course” of a discussion, they won’t tell us, but expect us to follow it, or else face consequences they will decide on.
After this, things have suddenly gone very quiet on the secular forum.
I waited for an answer to my polite questions above before posting my opinion on this, but the answers never came.
peace to all,
nl.