"Good thing I didn't say anything about the dirty knife!

Unlike some others - Joe Offer does at least mention the issue along with his abusive name-calling of me. My posting to reasonably disagree with his views (in the face of this) cannot be considered by any sensible poster to be in any way a personal attack by me upon him...For it must be pretty clear and self evident - that any abusive personal attack upon him by me - would have been subject to imposed deletion. Even if other posters are permitted and encouraged simply to post abusive personal attacks, offensive language and name-calling.

Joe Offer - says-

I think that Shambles makes too much of this editing stuff. He sees it as some sort of Armageddon of the Internet, a cyberpower struggle between the forces of good (Shambles) and evil (those who have edit buttons).

Joe's assumption here is also wrong. I think that the freedom of all posters to our forum to always say what they wish in their words - is more important that the wish of some volunteers to impose their judgement upon their fellow posters and certainly more important than any inconvienience caused to these volunteers by obtaining the originator's permission before imposing any changes to these words.

I don't see it as quite so dramatic. We volunteers rename threads to make the titles more consistent, informative, and useful.

This is fine (if it were always strictly true) but I am sure that if first asked - the originator would readily agree. The is issue is NOT the change but its automatic and unfriendly imposition.

I suppose I could write seventeen pages in the FAQ about thread naming conventions, but nobody would read or understand them. So, we add or change tags when they're missing, and add explanatory information when needed. We figure that as time goes on, most people will catch on to our naming conventions - or not. It doesn't really matter, because the Forum Menu is just an index, and we can fix it if it's broke. I suppose we devote our time to teaching, and send Mudcatters preachy little messages about how they should do this or that in thread title naming. We had a lot of that preaching before we had the ability to change thread titles, and it got really old. Now we just make changes when they're needed, and don't make a big deal of it. Most people accept our thread renaming practices very well - most of our complaints come from just one person.

If these conventions and changes to conform with them 'don't really matter' are not considered a 'big deal' - why risk upsetting anyone (even me) by imposing them without the originator's knowledge or permission?

For is expecting all the contributors to our forum to conform to YOUR re-naming practices rather the 'tail wagging the dog'? Should YOU not be just accepting the naming practices of all the contributors. This surely is the difference between facilitating and the earnest but vain attempt to control the contributions of others? Remember that it was the posters who originally made these conventions and shaped our forum by them. Perhaps they can be permitted to continue to make them?