I shall not be posting to this board again. I think it was wrong of the powers-that-be to shut down the political forum. In the final days of its existence the moderators allowed insults from the right-wingers on the board to remain unchallenged, yet berated fiddler for a pretty mild tilt at another poster’s rather unwisely-constructed blog page. I realise what a difficult job moderators have, but you don’t have to do it if you don’t feel you can be fair about it. It’s your choice, just like it’s the choice of all those other complainers in that locked pub thread who said they were glad it was gone, even though they were among those who not only posted there but who often contributed to the bile they complained so much about. The word “hypocrisy” springs to mind. You’d think someone was forcing them to post. In the last couple of days I’ve observed three threads being locked down for no good reason that I could discern, and in one instance two of the moderators had their say as last words before locking. I don’t like that. It’s happened before, too. As for the political forum, I’ve done an interesting comparison between ours and a few others on the internet, and ours stands head and shoulders above all the others I’ve looked at in terms of good manners and quality of debate. If anyone thinks ours was so bad, I invite you to carry out the same exercise as I did. Your eyes will be opened, I promise. And, without wishing to sound too hard-hitting when it comes to individual posters, it is clear that most of those who now support the continued closure were the right-wingers who frequently upped the ante in threads to get things locked. Democracy, as seen in its very limited form here (and rightly so), has been the main victim of recent events, as may be seen by the recent lockings. It is so annoying that I feel I am better off out of it. My email address is on my website. Thank you.
hugs I wish you nothing but luck on whatever other forum you end up. You’ll be missed.
Take care, Steve.
–James
I’ll miss you, Steve. 
oh, CRAPP!!!
No more cloud and seaside pictures. No more toads. No more Steve and his wife at the seashore. No more Steve’s advice on how to make the best tea and chip buddies…
As a person who doesn’t particularly like debate, politics and discussions about religion, I did occasionally peek into the famed rubber room to see what was going on there. I learned a lot. I guess I didn’t really pick up on the vitriol, but I wasn’t a regular there, either.
But still…
It was my choice to go there or not.
M
Sorry to see you go, Steve. I’ve enjoyed your eloquence and tough-yet-good-natured style of debate. It didn’t hurt my opinion of you that we agreed on many things as well, of course, but even in matters where we disagree (mostly over theism vs atheism, i think) i never got the sense that you were anything but upright and good.
Vaya con Dios 
WHAT?!?!?! No more harmonica jokes? No more man-boob cracks? No more toad-in-Steve’s-hole suggestions? Your parting will leave this board so much the poorer. I wish you would reconsider, if only to tweak the moderators’ noses from time to time.
djm
This is one reason I’m starting to really wonder if the rubber room ever needs to come back: it has cost us a valued member of the community.
–James
well, I’m sorry to see you go Steve. I share most of your opinions, and like you am astonished by the prevalence of poisonous right-wing views in the US. even though these views don’t show up much on C&F, they are still offensive, and I share your feelings about them.
good luck
brian
I miss jim stone.
What am I missing?
Initially, this was a community for music. Steve decided to leave the musical forums and severed his musical connections with us because he dislikes the Administrator’s policy to put the future of the political/controversial forum in limbo?
Is this correct?
I fear deeply that with the closing of the political board, all the political anger and frustration is coming out over here, spilled like a dead pig’s blood on so many posts (just look at all the ones which have been locked or deleted in the last week or so) that the Pub is becoming a mirror to the political forum. That’s what’s poison here, not right-wing or left-wing views in and of themselves.
Next, the Pub will be deleted because of all the politicalness on it, then people will start Off-Topic (OT) posts on the whistle board again and lead to its demise with the demise of all the other musical boards happening at the same time. We may then be forced to sell our souls and join a recorder message board. Oh, the horrors! 
Seriously, people, back off. Take a deep breath. There are more important things in the world than arguing so nastily about a message board. Go hold a kitten. Watch the sun rise, talk to a baby.
Edit: here–
Now this is impressive. Not only a kitten, but a baby kitten! Now if you’d have posted a baby kitten at sunrise, well, that would have left me triple-delightedly-impressed.
Well posted.
That’s a cute kitten Cranberry. Is it yours?
I’ll quickly chime in before this thread gets locked too!
As you all know I’m a musical guy. I make flutes, play flutes, listen to flutes, read about flutes, collect flutes, etc…
I was very lucky to have discovered C&F because it was, well, about flutes. But I visit the Whistle Board too, and the UP board ( never even seen a UP in real life !) and the Pub and the Rubber Room.
When the RR it was made exclusive for members I even joined because I liked to keep up with the discussions ( I was a lurker before).
Two things struck me in the beginning :a. everybody was being ultra polite and politically correct and b. everybody was easily offended. Seems very contradictory, doesn’t it? But then again I’m a European and we don’t have these overcivilised discussions as here seen in the RR. In our parlaiments you will hear insults and shouting everyday if the subjects really matter. There will be interrupted discussions and some of our esteemed members of parlaiment will even tap their shoe on the table if their arguments need some reinforcement .
In all honesty, I have NEVER had the impression that things were running out of hand in the RR.
It is after all a discussion board. Simply stating your point of view and listening to your opponent is NOT a discussion. You have to convince the other that he is moron for not understanding that YOU are right and HE/SHE is wrong.
Bye Steve, if you tell me where you’re going I will try to follow.
Luc
Steve - while we rarely agreed on anything (on the board), I know from our off board conversations you are a first class person.
I’m sorry if you feel that you must leave here permanently, and I’m sorry if anything I said contributed to that leaving.
I honestly don’t know if the “admins” were fair or not - I had several threads locked after I was the last poster. But I’ve always looked at life with the following piece of advice from my dad:
“Life’s not fair. Get used to it.”
I don’t take “fairness” personally. There are certain subjects I will take personally, and I think most people know those after they’ve been around me long enough.
Again - I hope you change your mind. I’ve learned a lot from you - even if I don’t agree with it! And I value your opinions and point of view.
No offense here Steve, but why is it you cannot remain a member of the musical community at C&F? Was the Political Forum even existent when you first logged on as a member?
Let’s remember that the Political Forum was initiated as an experiment. And as with most of the experiments I have been part of, it has a time limit where it is run, data is collected and then it is shut down while the data is digested and the findings are recorded.
I feel compelled to reitterate that I (nor any of the Mods) allow political agenda to determine which posts or topics get locked, there is no right wing or left wing or any wing ideaology that determines our actions. Speaking solely for myself, I really have no political position on anything. I really could care less what the content of the Political Forum amounts to. But I do take issue with how that content is related to others. I have stated this more than a few times yet I am still tagged with a politically motivated M.O., it boggles the neurons.
In any case, I hope you will change your mind and remain a member here, your contributions to this board are valuable and appreciated. It would be a shame to have to go on without them. Please give this a little more thought, OK?
All the best,
-Joseph.
YAWN 
How many of our old members did we have to loose because of this boards continued shift away from whistles and music as well? How many ‘extra’ boards have had to be added to keep the newer folks happy. Have you counted folks? 16. We used to have one. Just one, and it worked quite well - even with the occasional spat here and there. I find it really humorous that so many allusions are made to how bad the rest of the web is, or that no one can behave themselves in any form of civilized manner except for us here on the C&F board(s). The fact is this is completely untrue. I frequent several other boards of widely varied topics that have nothing to do with Irish music and ALL yes ALL of them run as well or better than this. Certainly if you look for poor discussion groups you will find them, but there are just as many that are very pleasant and easy to take part in without any need for splinter topics to keep everyone happy. There is plenty for every viewpoint to find and do on the web, and it’s really not all horrific and violent in nature.
Time to grab the popcorn and wait the dust settle. Again.
wrong button #%^&(^&*)#^#)
Steve - Let me join the chorus encouraging you to stay. For that matter, I would miss any whistler who departed because the controversy forum is down.
I think most of us signed up and kept returning because of our curious affection (affliction?) for a simple musical instrument. That’s the common bond. It’s also true that the whistle is only part of the story for each of us. We all also have every day lives, jobs, families, communities, opinions, foibles etc. The site feels comfortable because it allows us to be interact as regular folks, not just the whistle-obsessed.
The controversy forum works precisely because we’re a group of people with very diverse opinions bound together by something other than those opinions. Most political forums are remarkably homogenized and very boring.
As for questionable behavior, I did not see it coming from just one side of the left/right divide. Mostly I saw bad behavior that began when participants started characterizing another participant’s views. Talking about war and peace, corporate greed, declining moral values, politics, religion etc. is interesting. Talking about one another talking about these things is not. Those who do it sound stupid and tend to undermine their own arguements. The other form of poor behavior that troubles me is insensitivity to the personal situations of other particpants. The regulars on this site have disclosed things about their lives. Reasonable people exercise discretion around the vulnerabilties of others. We all say things that may hurt others. When we realize it or someone points it out we should exercise care. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t say what we think about the topic of the moment. That does mean that when we realize the topic effects a participant in real life, we should exercise the same sensitivity that we would around a family member or neighbor. That did not always happen here. There are real people behind these electrons.
I’m not leaving the site and I hope Steve stays. The whistle introduced us to each other. The rubber room and the pub make it feel like a real community, not just a theme park.
I hope the moderators re-open the controversy forum.