I wrote this last month, and would like to reiterate the point that if you don't like what's in any online site, you have all sorts of permission to leave it and go elsewhere.

Someone had the ill manners to start a thread on another journaller's message board, asking if people agreed that that journaller's writing quality had diminished. The worst thing he did was start this thread on the journaller's birthday. Those who responded were quick to call him to task for the way his question was worded and for his timing in posting it. He subsequently apologized, and deleted as much as he could of the post (he had been quoted in many of the replies, and he couldn't edit those). But the shrapnel is still floating around out there, and he still wound up looking ill-mannered.

For me, though, the bottom line was that if he didn't like what he was reading, he was more than welcome to go away. Enough other people had said so in replies that I didn't throw in my opinion on the board; I decided I'd write about the thing here.

Last year, when I really got into reading online journals (remember I only heard of such in November 1999), I bookmarked quite a few that I found, for further exploration. As time went on, I deleted some of those bookmarks, having decided after further reading that the writer's interests and mine were not close enough that I wanted to continue to read.

But in none of those cases did I feel the need to write to the journaller and say, "you bore me, so I'm going away." I just went away.

Because that was all that was necessary. Making myself look stupid in public wasn't.

The man who posted the writer-bashing comments on the other board should have thought of that.