Been away for a week. I find it necessary to clarify some misconceptions before moving on.
1) rajarammsgi's "ivaraiyum thorathittingaLA" is a gross misrepresentation. From the tone and context, I presume he is pointing to the supposed fanatics here who have chased away mohanraja etc. However, the "ivaraiyum" in this context is misleading. Because, the only others who have been chased away recently are myself and V_S. And WE HAVENT BEEN CHASED AWAY BY THE SO CALLED FANATICS HERE but very much their antagonists.
2) To Softie's point, no I am not doing this out of character. I, in my arrogance as ever, have deemed that this forum is no longer of the overall quality of discussion required for me to participate and hence I am walking away. In saying this, I recognise that I am ignoring some wonderful individual posters like suresh, jai, git, kv, V_S, App, Nerd, wiz, P_R etc but the balance recently has been such that this part has become minority and a majority is a mind numbing, commonplace thinking majority that dominates in the real world too. Contrary to Suresh' claim, until recently, the balance was not so lopsided. So, softie, Plum is being arrogant as ever. Nothing out of character. In particular, outside the IR forum, this degradation is pronounced. Perhaps, the sports section still has some decent discussions going but that is not enough carrot for me.
3) IN short, like equa says artla democracy velaikkavaadhu. Likewise, democracy has become too much of a luxury to offer to a majority of posters here in my opinion. They dont simply deserve it. I recognise that the moderators have a different philosophy and have complete respect for the way they have conducted this forum, including banning me briefly, which I think was justified - and to clarify, it was for repeatedly questionin them publicly, which I now recognise was an ill-conceived thing to do. But, and this is important, their moderation philosophy of theirs is only ironically contributing to the reduction in quality of discussions in this forum. This is my opinion. It is possible for miscreants to apply NOV's signature, and drag down the quality of discussion, and then claim victory and these are the ones predominant in HUB now.
4) If and when this balance changes, I might be attracted again to post here. Until then, thanks to all the named and unnamed posters who have given me a lot of pleasure for over 14 years now in this forum. This was a great place to be. Hope it becomes a great place to be again in future.
Thanks in particular to the moderators RR, NOV, P_R and LM who have been even handed, fair and tolerant even of my stretching their limits of patience. They have done well - I just wish them more worthy participatns in future than they have now. They deserve better.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
