I have been avoiding the forums lately for a couple of reasons, but one of them is because of a couple of members who have been very strongly opinionated to the point where it has seemed to come across as pure ignorance.
Once upon a time, I would have engaged these people, give them the benefit of the doubt until there is some solid ground in the conversation that they are just doing it for the sake of winding people up, upsetting people, and not for the purity of debate, and I would have e-mailed Lovehoney and done something about it to put a stop to it.
But I'm not feeling at all mentally/emotionally strong just now. Thats why I have taken a step back.
Unfortunately, I think some of the other members are in a similar boat as me and have taken a step back from the forums to avoid discord, rather than confronting these people and getting emotionally battered from it when it simply could be avoided to save ourselves. Thats how I'm feeling anyway. There is only so many times you can repeat yourself and stand up to the trolls and the people who are so strongly opinionated.
However, I cannot stress enough to other members that if you do see this going on and there is an offensive post then USE THE REPORT BUTTON. It may not stop it straight away, it may take some time, but if we all use the report a post button on the flaming or offensive or rule-breaking posts or even on the posts that don't 'nessicarily' break the rules but are clearly of aggrivating or offending nature then there is a much higher chance that something will be done about it. If Lh just get one or two reported posts to them, they may not take the same course of action as they would if 10 or more reported the same posts to them.
If you are having problems using the Chat function then click REMOVE AS FRIEND to prevent the person from contacting you. If they are breaking rules or attempting cyber with you then SEND AN EMAIL to Alice or Customer Services to notify them. Quite often the people who use the chat function for cyber are members who do not use the forums or very rarely use the forums. Lh will not be able to pick up on these rule-breakers unless you notify them. Then they can do something about it and will prevent them from doing the same thing to another fellow member.
If you are unsure about a particular member or post or feel that something should be said but no rule-breaking has really taken place then please do contact Lovehoney via e-mail.
We do normally self-moderate the forums, but sometimes Lh does intervine when needed. But far more often than not they need to be notified of something going wrong before they can intervine as the forums are rather vast and the staff are very busy, they simply don't have the time to go through the threads every morning to check for abuse etc.