Pigfarmer and I have come to an understanding..

However Benny I didnt take that understanding to mean that I cant and wont have my own opinion on Live exports or any other topic..Noone dictates what I can say or wont say except maybe the Editor in charge of protocols in the interest of the forum.

There is no subtle 'gag' attached to this..We will both have opposing veiws many times over I would imagine..but respect is the underlying key issue here.

I think we can acheive much more in an enviroment of shared peace and respect than everyone being at war..we are all on the same side here after all..we all want whats best for our animals..in that we are all united.

That goes for all of us..

Well I think that any kind of voting button is a bad idea.

Lots of people once believed the world was flat, that did
not make it so. The system would be open to abuse. Those
devious posters who have multiple ids, would try to misuse
it, to silence other posters whom they cannot outreason.

Best to just let reasoned arguments prevail on OLO!

The carpark itself is a good idea. If you wanna have a scrap,
have it here.

Yabby, that is the whole idea of a voting button.

I assume people who want to talk off topic (or wanna have a scrap) will automatically be moving to the Carpark.
The voting button won't be needed if everybody would move away from the main discussion to the Carpark.

It needs to be used only when people refuse to do that and personal arguments or their off-topic talks become distractive to the original topic.

"The system would be open to abuse."
I think it would prevent some deletions and suspencions, actually.

"Best to just let reasoned arguments prevail on OLO!"
I agree, and this will happen when people can be made to take their personal discussions to the Carpark.

"The carpark itself is a good idea."
I agree.
It is actually such a good idea that I would like to see this carpark thread as a 'sticky' thread that would stay on top. Otherwise it will move down to the bottom and new people would not know about it.

I also have a suggestion I'd like to make to Graham- might see what others think of it first.

Instead of all the threads just going down the line of history in chronological order, so after a month it will disappear from the visible page (and you'd have to reset the page to Last 3 months to see it) I would like to suggest that as soon as a comment has been made on one of the threads, it automatically moves to the top.
That way, the most popular, last discussed and most recent comments will always stay on top.

Thank you RObert for this thread..it is a great idea and Celivias suggestion about making it a sticky thread is a good one, as is the suggestion that the most recently discussed topics stay on top so as not to slide right off the page.

Yes Yabby I agree , i could see the multiple ID poster abusing this system also..
The carpark is the best option.

Celiva, "That way, the most popular, last discussed and most recent comments will always stay on top" I've saved my link to the site as a sorted by last post list. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/index-articles.asp?sort-by=post-date

When I open up OLO the posts are sorted with the most recent posts at the top.

I've not worked out if I can save settings for this page yet.

Yabby, in my comments on Celiva's suggestion I said that I'd like the decisions based on the voting button to still be subject to editorial review. Not only the multiple id thing could be an issue, a few voters who don't like another viewpoint could potentially abuse it as well. Hopefully if implemented it becomes a means to alert the site to the an off topic private disussion on a serious thread. Similar to the delete button, it does not result in a deletion, rather someone having a look to see if deletion is waranted. If abused it could become a pest for administrators but it would not be hard to spot the serial abusers fairly quickly.

Thanks all for your feedback. Keep it coming, I'm not sure how closely the site is following the discussion but we are learning enough to put a suggestion up soon with many of the questions answered.

Any thoughts on the alternative of private messages, I like the public approach more myself but can see strengths and weeknesses in both approaches.

R0bert