++ [ originally posted by Martin
] ++
Wow, I have just read 7 pages of this since my post on page 6 and I realized there was no reply as yet to the stuff I brought up. Btw, good job Erik on trying to derail this thread.
I'll tell you why. In fact I tried to bring out the message in my last post. Yes, ideally people should be able to accept people for who they are and I have always said that anyone should be able to support their club(s) for any reason or duration they please. It's not my business to tell anyone who the "real" fans are and who the "plastics" are. It is a fact, however, that long term supporters seem to appreciate each other a lot more than they do bandwagoners. I still think everyone should be treated with respect regardless of who they are.
So much for theory, now we come to the practical part. First of all, people's likes and dislikes will influence their words no matter what and we can hardly change what people think, can we? Moreoever, this is a forum. Make no mistake about it, a forum is a place where people come to debate and argue with each other. Nick and Kaiser have both said they are here to debate with us rather than fraternize with Milanisti. Like it or not, some people are after an argument and they probably feel it's time well spent if they engage in one.
Now, had this been a place like xtratime, with fans of all possible clubs, there probably would have been far more disagreement and heated debate. In that light, lilianna probably would be overlooked. As it stands, however, there isn't much of it and when lilianna makes a challenging statement, some people tend to want to follow up on that and debate with her. It's easy enough to say people should ignore whoever they don't like but some of us are not here to ignore but to confront and engage in arguments. That's the nature of forums. Thus, as I said before, being here for so long, lilianna should know what to expect from every word said because she knows everyone here. Moreover, her widespread participation across the forum probably also comes off as an invitation to debate.
As Serge put it: think before you post. In daily life you face consequences for things you say in haste and maybe you don't mean literally, here you have all the time in the world to make sure your message is in line with what you want to say.
And finally, no I did not open this thread to "solve" this problem, I opened it because such a thread was needed. It's easy enough to close threads but with issues in the air, they will only transplant to other locations thus we need this ground as an outlet and hopefully by the end we will be done with it.