Re: It’s your forum..
I having nothing against Saleem. He is my fellow countryman who wants to see a change in our motherland for something positive. How as a nation we can come out of this mess.. we may differ on the course. I have not doubt on his intentions.. his patriotism.. his love for the country. Although we differ mostly in the opinions we carry, over the years I have learnt a lot from his posts in this forum.
Personally I do not believe in following personalities in totality. I agree/disagree with individual actions and do not believe in absolute good or absolute evil. I have appreciated in the past the stance of Altaf Hussain when his party was the only one to stand in the parliament against giving in to Sufi Mohammed. I have criticized IK fiercely when he glorified suicide bombers in Peshawar, you can easily check my posting record. Saleem and I both carry our natural biases, but eventually both of us are a member of same nation who want to see our country progress. He is an MQM supporter.. I may disagree with some of their actions.. but I am one person who does not question their patriotism like many in this forum..
As I told you I am a poster in this forum first and a moderator later. you can not imagine the power of this forum at present. We carry a huge influence today amongst the opinion makers in Pakistan as well as abroad.. and believe me with the quality of discussions we have in this forum.. we change a lot of stances. Our forums are regularly followed by a lot of very important people in media, politics, and general public. 90% of the people who visit our forums regularly to see what is being posted here do not actually post here.
Over the years while I have been acting as a moderator here I have tried to create an awareness amongst the posters to raise the level of discussion to a more matured level. i was actually busy for two days, and did not follow the forum during this time. I told you I don’t like to be a policeman here.. I don’t like giving warnings/infractions.. and would like to see posters behaving responsibly. I was actually disappointed to see what happened here in those two days.. and the level of discussions went to a very low standard to an extent of some very cheap comments. This particular post really disappointed me not because this was against Sherry or Imran.. but to a standard which is not at all appropriate for our forum. I am sure a vast majority of our posters were also disappointed to see these kind of posts irrespective of their liking or disliking for both these individuals.
Bottom line is, the point I wanted to make was not to defend IK or Sherry. It was about the quality of posts, the atmosphere in these forums.. You have all contributed to the present standards of GS.. should we just let it go down the drain while we are expressing our political disagreements..!!!
And please khoji.. do not think for a moment I do not appreciate you comments/criticism.. In fact you taking out time to post in this thread is something i really appreciate. i do not want to be modertor who does not communicate with you guys.. and just become a dictator here. i am making an effort to listen to your comments.. and even change myself if I am doing something wrong here. We made an effort to experiment a little hands off moderation in October.. I made a sticky thread even at that time to have your opinions.. the feed back I have from most of the posters here is that they do not want to lose the quality standard of GS… which makes it different from other forums..