[EricH]

You can post controversial stuff and get away with it fairly often.

The trick is HOW you post it. And that's the hard part. I'm willing to bet that with proper care, you could post a thread on the most sensitive topics in FRC (like... eh, just to pick one, the dreaded student-mentor debate) and have a constructive discussion. The catch, of course, is that proper care. Most people don't take that kind of care...



A quick note on the rep system: I don't give negative rep. I can't say that I haven't thought about dishing some out, but you've got to be a special kind of ______ for me to reach for the red rep button, and usually I figure enough folks have beaten me to it that I don't need to. However, I also don't give out a lot of positive rep. Or neutral rep. (Neutral rep, IMO, is useful for a quick, short warning message--a shot across the bow, if you will--that someone is borderline. It also helps fend you off of them...by forcing you to rep a bunch of other people if you really want to dose the red.) My general philosophy is "with great power comes great responsibility", and because of that I'm just as likely to PM as to rep.