Starting with Ekka,
I think newguy,
not even knowing the man, threw an uncalled for insult into the public forum.
Blind intolerance, polluting the rest of the space we share. Some call that slander. We're liking you newguy so you're already accepted here so you don't need to take on and spread hate to get attention or feel included. Some call this hate crime.
Stupid displays of shit like that, Ekka has himself said, and written in our rules of conduct, down to simple harassment of other members WILL NOT BE TOLERATED HERE.
I forgive you, Newguy, for this blatant infraction of conduct, but I'd like to see an apology to both Sanborn and Dunlap.
In the meantime, I'll soften that harsh reprimand with a sidestory for you, Newguy.
You may not know it, but John Paul Sanborn was among the original handful of guys who began the first forums. He has better than 10,000 posts, that means thousands of hours of contribution to the world of Arboriculture, outside of his day job and trips to Arbo events and meetings. JP, more than anybody, laid the foundation for our doing more or less what we're doing right now,
which is,
if I am to understand WHY WE ARE HERE
(please correct me if I am even a little bit wrong)
TO CONNECT WITH EACH OTHER,
THROUGH TREES
I refer to John Paul Sanborn as an original of the original founding members. Well readership, Tom Dunlap goes back to even before A-S, 2003 to Treebzzz, THE original Arbo Forum. Tom was amongst two other guys, and these three visionaries got it all started. They endured the out-of-pocket costs of everything, the inefficiencies of startup, all the extra work involved in creating something that has never been created, just for all of us to have it now, for granted, and prostitute it's use for your battling egos. I don't care really much about all the personal details, but being that it is a public display, essentially between ticked-off forum heads, it draws the whole readership more to this negative shit and less to the things that are supposed to be conecting us together in the first place:
The Trees