I've been aggravating some people this afternoon.

[DWSmith]

I'm curious about a few things done by organic gardeners so I went to an 'organic gardening' (???) website yesterday and asked a simple question. I don't like it when people answer a simple question by starting a game of '20 questions' in an effort to hide their ignorance. I never could get an answer out of that bunch so this afternoon I told them I could have directed my question to a bag of rocks and not received less information. I got banned. No great loss. Except for 1 person, I really don't think the folks replying to me had a clue about organic gardening. (After reading the thread my wife told me that she thinks I've learned more about organic gardening in the few days I've been looking into it than the folks that replied to me on that website know. Sad.)

That forum membership lasted about 24 hours after my first post.

Do you think I can beat that?

[veggiechicken]

You've been here longer than 24 hours

[Glutton4...]

It is difficult, isn't it!? The written word is often taken out of the context that it was written. I don't use any other Veg-growing Forum, so can't comment on their friendliness or helpfulness, but generally, this one is fab!

Feel free to fire questions at us, and I'm sure someone will be along to give you a helping hand.

Meanwhile, welcome to the Madhouse!

[Bigmallly]

The thing I find difficult is the distance factor. We both may mention products that the other party has not heard of.

[veggiechicken]

You won't get banned for asking questions here. We try to help wherever we can - sometimes we don't always understand the problem so we keep on asking until we do.
That way, we all learn something new

[Jeanied]

Well I think you have hit on the answer, DWS - the mods on this site are a) keen on the subject of grow your own in all its forms and b) intelligent people who can weed out the genuine questioners from the trolls who are looking for an online, disembodied fight!

[fishpond]

Sometimes, as we get older and forgetful, we ask increasingly more stupid questions on this forum, someone still gives a sensible answer.
Still amazes me
No names, but there are some peeps on this forum that would feel at home in "1 flew over the cuckoo's nest"

[Alison]

Maybe the site you were banned from mistakenly thought that you were knocking their beliefs, it's easy to get defensive if you feel that and as soon as a few people start responding like that it suddenly becomes the truth. One of the potential pitfalls with non visual communications, no body language and you don't see the facial expressions of the person asking the question or hear the tone in their voice. On the whole I think people try to be fair on here especially if people are being reasonable, most of the bannings I can thing of are as a result of people not being willing to listen and engage in reasoned debate where you accept that other people may have different views. Other than that not really any problems

[Martin H]

On this forum, there are just a few delicate subjects where a diplomatic tolerance of opposing views is essential:

- use of herbicides
- dig vs no-dig
- lunar planting

If you avoid going in with both feet on these topics you're unlikely to get into big arguments!

[Jeanied]

Concisely put, MH - we have many experts contributing to our forum and I have to say they are very valuable contributors -whereas some others contribute more heat than light so happily the mods are on to it pretty fast

[Bigmallly]

And some of us like to have a laugh along the way......................

[Nicos]

Martin...please don't forget, ....we really don't want to discuss religion,cats!!!!!, politics or personal health issues either!....nor see piccies of children without parental consent!!!!....

[Nicos]

Sometimes I think questions need to be delicately phrased not to upset other members.

Being a global site, we really do need to be aware of other peoples views/beliefs etc.
.....this new aspect of global chatting is in it's infancy and we all have a lot to learn from different cultures!

[Nicos]

Yup...we are a gardening forum ...a little bit of chat and humour aside, we just want to share our love and experiences of gardening with like minded people!...no strings attached!

[arpoet]

If you ask 10 gardeners a simple question you may get a dozen different answers.
What works for one gardener seems a waste of time for another.
Growing conditions across the uk varies greatly.