I had a most interesting note from one of our new members last night. It gave me pause! I readily admit that I take a poke or two (or even many more) at many Brits, Canadians or Australians. This may be due to that so many have had a friendly whack at me as well. But now, as I think, maybe it does sound a little harsh as we go. I recently wrote a quiz on QL where I briefly addressed this. "There is no us without them.", I mentioned. And, as this is a global site, I know the bulk of others feel that same way. I can deal with a smack on Texas (and Bush) and I can surely handle a bit of stuff criticizing kangaroos. Or the spelling of yogurt vs. yoghurt. We're all here. We all matter. Just wondering what newer or older members really think! We're a unit here, in my thinking. But maybe someone else might see that differently. Let's just ask...

Part of British humour is to be rude to our friends, we know that we don't mean it, they know that we don't mean it. An example of this is the constant hurling of insults between Ren and myself, hopefully you all realise that Sara (Ren) has visited me at my home a couple of times having travelled from Hong Kong in order to do so, we are firm friends. If we were NOT friends I wouldn't dream of being rude to her, I would never be rude to a person that I didn't like.

By the same token we take a pop at our Australian and American cousins, we do it in friendship. There is a whole world of difference in jokey rudeness and genuine ill-natured insults. Hopefully we (the staff) pick up on the difference between friendly jabs and genuine nastiness and in the latter cases will nip it in the bud.

Perhaps it confuses our newer members because they haven't come across such a friendly bunch of people on one site before, perhaps they have witnessed nastiness which has been intentional and not been taken up by the administrators of the sites they have visited in the past. To such members I would suggest that you contact us with any concerns that you have, we will take you seriously and if there is genuine nastiness it will be dealt with, let us reassure you that our members are friendly and most of what you see is friendly teasing.

Friendly?? I don't even KNOW the woman.....

I have found that insulting someone's country is far more acceptable than insulting their football code.

It would be hard to imagine the continual,seething exchange between Sue and ren33 as being real. This was apparent right away. In fact, it was one of the reasons I felt comfortable here - if that makes any sense. A charming thing to behold !

And even more enjoyable to read.

Newer members don't have the benefit of seeing how tame things are around here compared to when CI was around.

I can see where newer members may not think that some of the poking is in fun. I fell victim to this when I first came aboard. In fact, I even PM'd Sue telling her that Americans were not wrong when it came to grammar and spelling, just different. She was kind enough to respond and let me know that the American bashing was all done "tongue in cheek" and that the members were mostly great friends. Now that I've been here for awhile, I can see that, but at the time I took great offense. I am grateful that I wrote to Sue and did not publicly announce my anger. I'd be very embarrassed now.

LONG LIVE FT!

To clarify Lothruin's post about "CI" we used to have a forum called Controversial Issues. The Nebraskan foreshortened version is CI.

I really enjoy reading posts where the members are teasing each other and I always have a good laugh when I read those.

This friendly teasing and the general respect the members have for each other is the main reason why I stayed at FT and not left the forum after a couple of weeks, as it happened with every other forum I have joined so far.

FT and its members are really one of a kind and I'm just happy to be here.