A basic lesson in post reading and responding...
 

Sometimes a post can be misunderstood or taken negatively leading to a flame war or just plain stupid behavior.

When reading a possibly "Offensive" post, check for the little smiley face guys... a sentence or paragraph that is punctuated with a smiley is generally considered to be in jest (Sarcastic good natured fun).

After reading a post as mentioned above, you still feel offended, GET OVER IT. It wasn't meant to offend you. If instead you decide to start trading insults... it's on you at that point. Just don't show up to a battle of wits unarmed. There's been plenty of threads go wrong because somebody got sideways over a misunderstood phrase or failure to appreciate another's sense of humour. When you instantly resort to insulting somebody's birth name... it shows a couple of things, the biggest and most obvious is that you can't think of anything better (See the "unarmed" comment above). Second, that's just plain chicken s&*t.

If the reason a thread goes sideways, is because the person who started the thread failed to read all of the other threads on the same subject, where over and over again, the thread originator was told that there was a special place for that type of thread. Or because they somehow didn't see the special tab put in place at the top of the page specifically for that purpose... They should expect to take a lump or two. Failure to do either of these (read the previous posts, or see the tab...), shows either a complete lack of respect for the other forum users, or an inability to follow instructions. If you just happen to be the 20th person to do it in a month's time and you get a couple little jabs (With smiley's... don't forget the smiley's), and you decide to take it personal, you are either really uptight, or not too bright. Whichever the case, keep your name calling to yourself and you won't get flamed. You also won't subject the other forum viewers to your blatant yet feeble attempt to make yourself look cool.

I hope this helps some of the less experienced users.:)

Rod.

I borrowed this from the 240Z, 260Z, 280Z section as it has good guidelines, is pretty general in nature and i liked it.
Since we seem to need to be reminded every once and a while how things are supposed to work around here, thought i'd sticky this for everyone to see. :)