You've missed two very important rules: No self-appointed admins.- Polite, short reminders of these rules to other participants are OK, but please, no vigilante actions such as threadjacking or harrassing posts.
and If you have chosen not to follow the advice to Read The Fine Manual do not complain a feature is "too hard" to use
Why no self-appointed admins? It's up to the admins to make a call, not users, especially since users often get it wrong. For example, you post about "ad hominem" attacks but it seems you are wrongly calling upon that rule in a situation where there has been no personal attack. If anybody has a problem with action in this forum, write to the admins. Where, exactly, is a criticism of a person in this thread? I have searched this thread and I see no attacks on a person, for example, "John Doe is a cretin..." I do see a reasonable reminder to read the documentation and a link to the documentation that should be read. In that reminder I see no personal attacks such as "you imbecile... read this documentation," or anything like that. I see a reminder to read first and to then ask questions. That is fair commentary between adults, not a personal attack. Telling somebody to RTFM first, and to then ask whatever questions they like is perfectly OK. This forum requires participants to make an honest effort to first read the documentation. If somebody appears to be in the habit of not reading documentation, well, there can be many reasons for that, such as a language barrier or whatever, that are perfectly understandable and not a slur on the user. But still, that requirement to RTFM is still there, to make a legitimate effort to find the answer to a question in the documentation first. That rule is critical to keeping the signal to noise ratio high in this forum, and thus preserving the value of this forum for users. As far as "tone" goes, we don't want this forum to degenerate into an arena where sensible people must walk on eggshells to avoid offending anyone. Please cut people some slack on "tone" given that posts are often issued quickly, we all want posts to be timely, and nobody wants folks to sit around editing posts out of fear they might be misinterpreted by somebody who is eager to discover slights where there are none. Basic civility is fine and if anybody is too hyper-sensitive to handle reasonably polite discussion between adults, then this forum is not for them. In this case, I see a fair, businesslike comment between grown-ups, but I see no ad hominem attacks.
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