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And, interestingly, once I'd tried all the gentle, polite approaches, I discovered repeatedly that creatively fiesty, satirical, mocking etc. sorts of dramatizations would result in great break throughs where nothing else worked.

Ok let's talk about your dramatizations as you call them.

You need to remember who your audience is. There is no one-on-one talk or confrontations here. You are not face to face with the person you are posting to. No one can see you expressions, see your jesters or discern your tone, except through what you write. One cannot quickly reply to you or ask for clarification. Our responses are limited by our abilities to type and how much time we can afford to put into them. And there are those who never post or respond, but are affected by the way we conduct ourselves none the less.

This is not our living rooms or other such comfortable place where we feel unthreatened, but instead we are on the internet where all kinds of threatening things are going on. And we are huddled here together at FR in an effort to work together with like minded people to fight all of the threatening things around us. So you can see how it is even more disconcerting to someone who feels attacked here when they feel that we should be working together instead.

There is also the fact that we post anonymously here. Many feel emboldened by this anonymity and feel free to harass, annoy, provoke, lie, and try to intimidate others. There is no way of telling who is real or phony here except by the reputation that they build.

So you see that many of the tactics we use in our real lives while they may be productive even here at times, are not the right thing to do if they might be perceived as threatening. While we may be only posting to the few, many more people read what we have said than we will know. And when we say things that may be appropriate else where, here sometimes it can do more damage than good.

For every one person here that replies to us that we are being offensive, how many others just read our post, are hurt, shake their heads and never say anything? They just see us as another anonymous kook, bully or hater and judge our witness accordingly.

This is the kind of reasoned approach that I look for in pepole who post here. I thank you for it.

I am one who may make “drive-by” posts—which have been alluded to on the forum. That’s because my time is very limited, and if I have something I want to reply to, I have to keep it short and to the point. That puts me in the category of those who read much more than they respond. For this reason, if I find that posters don’t have in mind some of the things you have pointed out in this excellent post, I will be encouraged more to turn away than to participate and to be repelled by an ungracious post than to gain from it.

Thanks again.