I have noticed in the last week or two that people are getting more testy, more quick to recoil and react in a hostile fashion to events that normally wouldn’t faze them a bit. An example of this crept its way into the University of Phoenix Online faculty lounge this morning…

As the lounge is being overrun with pro and anti-war discussion (about 75% of the 400+ postings daily are arguing about facets of the War in Iraq), I suggested that it would be nice to have a separate group created for the express purpose of topical discussions and debates. It’s exactly how the individual classes at UP are set up, with a main group for formal class discussion and a chat group for random chit-chat, jokes, and whatever else the students feel they’d like to talk about.

The response was about evenly split between those for the idea and those against it, until I got to the following post that showed up today:

WHY not go a step further?
WHY not have a moderated group.
You be the moderator.
If you don't like the posts -- then you delete them.

I've been in moderated groups before.
This would be the ultimate in control and would please you most!

I can only assume that stress associated with current events causes such aggressive responses, but it’s sure frustrating when we have to be careful what we say, and how we say it, because the chance of random ‘flames’ has increased to such a level…

I have contacted this poster in a private email asking why his response was so out of proportion to the proposal, and it should be interesting to receive his response. I hope.