"Forums that veer wildly off topic, devolve into attacks on individuals or groups of people or use abusive language will be removed at the Moderator's discretion. Please remain respectful at all times."

This is from our posting guidelines, which was violated in certain parts of the previous thread. While we very much encourage discourse and constructive debate about living in China, we will not tolerate slander on any portion of the community, foreign or Chinese.

But compared to other threads that have not been locked, the disparagement was very mild if at all - hence the perception of inconsistency.

@tallamerican: 'free world nation'? That free/not free dichotomy is a bit dated, and was always a bit narrow for representing the real world. E.g.: Ed Snowdon, Julian Assange, Guantanamo Bay, etc.

Rather a shame the thread in question had to be closed. I would liked to have shown that I could support Tommann unreservedly and for once, I found myself agreeing almost totally with The Dudeson's - I disagree 'deceitful and devious' missionaries posing as teachers are 'too powerful' to be confronted. On the contrary, I've found these people to be rather weak characters. I've confronted a devious, deceitful, dishonest 'teacher' involved in this and I also made it clear to his students that what he was doing was wrong and they had the right to walk out and complain. Even then it didn't stop. Yes it does hurt other teachers, it could have hurt me since I was a 'close' colleague and it could potentially have brought an entire programme into disrepute. Let's be clear, the original question posed was clarifed by referring directly and clearly to 'teachers' and this is not in the same category as those who provide medical care and who OPENLY state who they are and what they are doing.

So, were there inconsistencies in managing the forum - probably not, even from what remains, the discussion started to get heated and personal. However, I think moderated posts should remain in situ, along with a simple comment akin to: 'This post was moderated for not conforming to forum guidelines'. At least then other forum users have an idea as to what is going on and who was involved.

@moderator
Thanks for the somewhat vague explanation - better than silence, perhaps. Does this mean "missionaries" are effectively (I think they are, as they form a "community") a people-group and criticisms, whether personal or hearsay are considered slanderous, as the actions of the few may not appropriately represent the community as a whole?

And jeepers - hope it wasn't something I wrote, but if it was, please send me either a PM (private mail) or just respond here in public - I don't mind, so the gokm blog community at large can learn & adapt ...

@tonyaod
Thanks for an interesting question - I was always told - there are three conversations guaranteed to polarize and thus avoid, politics, religion, and I forgot the third...oops. Everytime I learn something new, I forget something old...stack overflow.

@laotou

I thought stacks are LIFO, so maybe you mean a queue? *wink wink

Oh oh, did we just veered wildly off topic?!

Never talk about religion or politics. You can't win. Ha.ha.

@tonyaod
Stacks can be FIFO or LIFO and with quantum computing, potentially MIMO (many in, many out) - depends on how you set them up, allocate memory, etc - since it's all in RAM, I don't recall a performance penalty.

FYI - did you read about the recent sales & marketing gaff from Qualcomm. Their S&M head publicly announced (later formally and publicly retracted by Qualcomm) that Apple's migration from 32-bit to 64-bit processing was a pure marketing ploy - negligible performance increases...his comments had the side effect of also dis'ing Intel, Microsoft, AMD, etc 64 bit processing.

I'm wondering where he's gonna find a new job...makes Qualcomm look pretty stupid industry wide (despite the retraction).

What violated the rules, that some posters start to use bad words and insults far away form representing their opinion.

@laotou

Actually I have not. But I was never a fan of smartphones replacing laptops. This idea of cramming everything onto a cellphone and then justifying the need for better performance. Making calls, sending text message, and web browsing is pretty much all that is necessary.