Thomas,

Please keep in mind that the author of the BBS software and the boards' moderator are two different people (though Justin is currently working on his own replacement software). I can try to deal with software problems, but complaints about the composition and tone of the boards are entirely Justin's domain.

In my domain: Nacho and you talk about computers with small screens, but that's not enough information to let me deal with the problem. I responded to Nacho the way I did because "This board sucks" without further information is just a flame.

--The behavior of Javascript depends on the browser, and between us, Justin and & I have tested the software with: Navigator 4.7 and 6 (Mozilla); and IE 4, 5, 5.5.

--The issue of screen size depends on your hardware: Computers come with displays of all sizes, from 640x480 to above 1280x1024. And there's WebTV, and the Palm and other PDAs, and those cell phones with the crappy LCD displays.

--The operatiing system is also a factor because they handle text and the computation of the size of controls differently; and most OSes let you change the default font size, which heavily influences the layout of things like message forms. Between us, we have computers running Linux and all flavors of windows. That covers the majority of OS/browser/display combinations today, but it doesn't cover all of them.

Perhaps you'd consider cutting us some slack here? It's not humanly possible for us to have tested the software on your particular combination of display, operating system, and browser ahead of time--we need you to do that and report the results.

Could you let me know the configuration you're using? Browser, OS, display size. And please let me know which JavaScript error you're seeing.

I thought maybe you had the sophistication to key it to the URL or IP address,

We can block IP addresses, but have only had to do it a couple of times in the history of the site. It's a pretty severe sanction, and used sparingly. If there's a groundswell of popular demand to have you banned, you could be; but while you tend to annoy the right-wingers and they've responded with flames, I don't see how it's nearly enough to provoke Justin to have me block your IP (but I don't speak for him).

The folks here may be vociferous and sometimes a little rude in shouting down dissenting opinion, but they rarely get so intolerant as to request that somebody be shut out completely. They generally rely on (intense) social pressure. Where there's heat, their message is, get out of the kitchen. For better or worse, as rough as it can be on dissenters like you, in my opinion it's a sign of success that this place has maintained a coherent social structure over a long period of time and that the community sticks together to enforce its own internal standards.

--Robert