Well guys, honestly myself and the mods can't MAKE this site really be anything at all. It will be the members that choose the direction this takes. One thing I have found over the years running various message boards is that you cannot MAKE a friendly atmosphere by demanding that it be so. Once you try to FORCE that to happen, guess what happens? The mods and admin have to be pricks about enforcing such rules. Which, of course, then completely defeats the goal of a friendly atmosphere. Yeah the worst can get exited involuntarily out the door, but until they reach the point where such action becomes obviously necessary, us acting prematurely then sets a tone that will be hard to recover from. I have asked the mods to always act on the side of tolerance and giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
As for get-togethers and the like, heck, I think everyone now is just watching their dollars a little more closely than before. We recently had a period of time where gasoline went over $4 a gallon, which put the brakes on a lot of people traveling much for fun. When getting the gastank filled up started getting into triple digits, the "fun" part of it was harder to find.
So there are no answers that can can come from a top down strategy from management here. We can't force you all to play nice. There are some forums here where playing nice just may not be easy to do. I could remove those forums completely, if that is what you all want, but wouldn't that then be a little heavy handed? And how many people would then get pissed about the atmosphere changing here where the management was getting too heavy handed and taking the fun toys from them?
I guess it would wind up being like the old workplace joke:
ALL VACATIONS ARE CANCELLED UNIL MORALE IMPROVES! 