While this is somewhat tangential to the main point of this thread, I was struck by a comment that Shambles made in in his 22 Jul 05 - 02:57 PM post:

"I do have a problem with bringing attention online (where this is not anything to do with the point of the post) to poster's ethnic origins - nationality - sexual preferences - religion - politics or any thing else that may divide us. It is the love of music that has brought all the contributors to this public forum together and this universal language can transcend most of our differences - if we allow it to."

-snip-

Surprise, surprise! I don't agree with the statement that persons posting comments on the Internet should always {or even usually}refrain from mentioning their race/ethnicity, nationality, gender,religion, and/or age. I certainly believe that there are times when such information is irrelevant. But there are other times when those demographics adds context, depth, and another perspective to the discussion.

See this article on Race in Cyperspace

Among other comments, the researcher posits that "White male" is the default descriptor for folks posting on the Internet-meaning that people's first assumption is that the person posting online is a White male, probably because the majority of bloggers are White males.

I'm raising this issue not for the purpose of diverting the conversation from Shamble's main point about titles of threads being changed titles without the originator's permissions, but because I feel that his point about sharing demographics is {also?} worthy of discussion.

Peace,


Ms. Azizi