Coffee,
I manned the 800-why-1914 helpline intermittently for about 8 years. What do you think would have been the results..had I yelled at callers or swore at them or called them names over the phone? Do you think I would have awakened them? Or do you think I would have proved to them that the watchtower was right about people who leave the organization?
I think it would have been very rude of you to do this.
Apples and oranges though are what you are trying to compare, and for obvious reasons. It has I am sure not escaped you that this is an entirely, and I stress, entirely different media than the much more intimate telephone call. These venues are so different in so many numerous ways Coffee, that I am surprised that you have even tried to parallel them.
A person who has subscribed to this Board, as I have stated in the past more often than is neccessary, has by default already been reading the Board. They know what to expect when they start posting. This Board it should be noted is a 'discussion board' NOT a 'support Board' and half the problems we get here are that people cannot distinguish the two. Posters imbue dimensions to this Board that it is not capable of handling. It is not a substitute for professional therapy, it is just a discussion board - that is all. To expect more is unfair on the posters who post here and are no 'needy' or high maintenance.
Those who call on the telephone are in a private conversation. Those who post on this Board know that their posts are going to be publicly read, internationally, by a huge mix of people with the potential of tens of millions of viewers.
Those who telephoned you on your support line were their for one purpose - support. Those who post on this Board are here for many, many reasons. The number who need 'support' are outnumbered in the score by those who no longer need to be babied out of the WTS. This whole noble desire to offer a public discussion Board as a vehicle for 'support' is imo overplayed and logically flawed. Many have asked, 'Why are you here'? Those who are addicted to online chatting always say - to 'support' those who are coming out of the WTS. What guff! Those who are newly exited say, 'to get support'.
There are numerous Boards out there which are far more 'supportive' than this. They have information by the ton, analyses by the gross, testimonies by the pound. An interesting thread would be to ask all the aching 'newbies' how they arrived here. I would be most surprised if this Board were their first stop.
The only part of the analogy that comes close to comparison is this. If you perchance, heaven forbid :), might ever be rude to a person on the telephone, they can hang up on you. On this discussion Board certain threads are guaranteed to provoke passion, again I have noted this more often than neccessary, the political threads and those that deal with atheism etc. Think about this Coffee, a person neither has to pick up the telephone by entering those threads, or they can hang up in a split second if someone is rude to them. What is so difficult to understand about that? Why do people seldom discuss this when focusing on these issues. Something nasty turns up on your TV, switch to a different channel. Something nasty turns up on your board, click out of the thread. It is not rocket sceince, but it does require a level of maturity often missing in many posters.
Sorry Coffee, you analogy between telephone and discussion board is badly flawed.
HS
...OUTLAW