Dear Mr. Suddard,
Thank you for the excellent magazine and some great online articles for the times between the paper issues. The forums on the website however are not my favorite. I would like to recommend they be more closely monitored, if not moderated.
They seem to have attracted an unusually high ratio of very passionate, articulate, yet seriously misguided readers.
To wit, a forum user posted an article about a nude bicycle rally where a man was arrested for, as was reported, exposing his underaged son to the public and other rally riders. This even after being confronted by police at the rally and agreeing, again as reported, that the child would be minimally clothed. Why this article was posted escapes me yet seems to have been done in an effort to incite conflict among other forum users.
Most rationale people, even those whom have no qualm with nudists or cyclists, would agree the actions of the subject in the article were unlawful if not abusive of the child.
Instead, a number of your forum users have quite vehemently defended these actions as civil disobedience or some other respectable form of protest. They've failed to grasp the simple truth that it is a parent's responsibility to teach children to obey the law... to work within the system to change laws that are not right.
Personally, I found the article to be a disgusting example of poor judgment. Posting it here to ruffle others feathers suggests a desire for attention. Defending the parent for exposing his own child to others is cardinally mad. Cursing one another for their opinion of the matter is plainly rude. What of this is grassroots?
Your magazines have earned a great reputation for their high content:fluff ratio the website and forums should support. I strongly recommend establishing better boundaries for the use of the forums. Please do not be afraid to restrict or even disallow the use of the forums by those whom either cannot or will not behave themselves. A right to an opinion does not equal permission to pollute your forums with it.
