>As a newbie here, for a week only, I have some comments & a question. This is not directly aimed at the person I am replying too, but it seemed a good place to comment.

First, welcome.

>I was recommended this site as being excellent for Fox Pro information. And looking at some of the technical answers given, I don't doubt this. But the first screen I come to gives me rules on acceptable behaviour & I find a lot of this section to do with profanity & abuse. I get the impression that at least just recently, if I said the wrong thing or asked the wrong question, I would get a huge amount of abuse sent to me. I also get the impression that anybody who is American feels that it is their right to be able to be offensive if they feel like it and are opposed to limitations on their ability to be offensive & decide that is the most extreme form of censorship. I haven't been here long enough to determine whether or not the forum is like the impression given by the conversations going on, if it is then it is a very puerile place that I will leave quickly. I am not against bad language/profanity per se, there is just a time & place for evreything, & a professional forum is not
>one of those places. Maybe I'm wrong, but I also get the feeling that the forum is very much a little clique, where everyone knows everyone else & considers it OK to be abusive to each other, it's only when new people like me get involved that it's a problem. Another reason to not stay.

I'd say that you've come to the right place in terms of sheer technical FoxPro expertise. Certainly, the Compuserve site, FoxWiki, and so on are also good, but for my money (and I put my money where my mouth is as evidenced by my white envelope) this place is the best.

In general, no there is no problem here with abuse, profanity etc. This is not to say that there haven't been incidents where a particular thread has gone that way. Overall, however, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Unfortunately, when something like this occurs, the contrast between the exception and the rule makes it seem more significant than it is.

>The question is, what language is abuse & profanity acceptable in. I have been able to determine that English is not acceptable. Is it acceptable in French, Spanish, German or any others. May be it is restricted to languages people don't understand. Due to my programming background, I do not need a program to convert from hexadecimal notation to ASCII & I could clearly read all of the messages you spelt out, If I had a problem with bad language, then I would have been offended.

Since I basically only speak English, the subject of profanity in other languages is a moot one. Basically, however, I've never posted anything here that I wouldn't say directly to a person's face, and I never will. I think it's rather easy to sit back, behind this rather impersonal facade, protected by the distance of, in some cases, thousands of miles and slam someone. BTW, if you translate the meaning of what I wrote, you know that any profanity was directed only at myself. Further, if you did it without a program, my hat's off to you because I certainly couldn't.:-)

>I am not being critical here, more tongue in cheek, but the conversations here do make me very wary of asking any questions.

While I'm not implicating that my original post is on a par with, but it had bascially the same intent as Jonathan Swift's essay where he advocates the eating of children. I just wish I could remember the title.< g >

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