CompuServe Messages

John, I can see how you arrived at that connotation. And deriving that connotation is probably the obvious thing to do. But, let me _try_ to explain how things work on CompuServe (hmmm, I think I'm opening a can of worms but it seems like some sort of explanation is in order). The vast majority of forums on CompuServe are contracted to companies or individuals. They are not directly administered by CompuServe. While these contract holders must enforce CompuServe's rules of membership (GO RULES if you want a clarification there) they may also impose others for their own particular forums. The only "rule" that I can think of offhand that the AmigaForums have, that is over and above CompuServe's own, is the usage of a full name. That rule (policy?) is so that we all know who we're conversing with in the message bases. There could be a variety of BobSs, AmigaFreaks, Bonzos, etc. This could lead to confusion as to who is saying what to whom. Because the only reason for this rule is to try to eliminate ambiguity in the message bases, it normally only enforced when a person using a handle or something other than a first name/last name in the message base. Then the person is asked (hopefully politely) to use the OP(tions) feature of the forum software to change their name to a full name. We have no way of knowing if "Bob Smith" uses the name of "John Jones", nor do we care. At least it is known we are speaking with "John Jones" instead of one of a possible numerous "BobS"s. In addition to the contract holder for individual forums, most have assistants to help with maintenance, answering questions, etc. These assistants "work for" the contract holder. Should an assistant request something that is not clearly defined by CompuServe or forum rules it should be taken as a personal request rather than an "official" one. That is how I see the basis of this discussion. I was not offended by the phrase "goddamn", nor do I see it as profane as the G was not capitalized and to be profane it requires the reader to have a belief [ MORE ]