Joe, I hate to keep beating a herd of dead horses, but when you said, "I put my personal views in regular messages. The brown comments are official." I think you must have forgotten about this message, which was in brown:

You know, I'm really hurt. I said I often agree with your political opinions, and I said I admire your chutzpah. All I complained about was that you inundate Mudcat with far too much verbiage. Is THAT a vendetta?...I'll stop there.
      
I doubt that anyone would consider this an "official" message. Frankly, I think it was a misuse of your "official" status. It was an understandable mistake, but I still believe it was inappropriate. And in my opinion, the best way to avoid this situation is simply to back off. The segregation of posts was reasonable, though I had no problem with the Forum as it was. And I do agree with the basic principle of curbing personal attacks. But otherwise, as far as I'm concerned the less "thread police" the better. Things have a tendency to work themselves out one way or the other, and nobody ever made a successful career out of pushing rivers. (Well, there is the Army Corps of Engineers, of course...but you know what I mean.)

OK, I think I'll go have that Mai Tai on the beach now...it's almost sunset!

Aloha,
Mark