First, let me apologize if I've been somewhat absent from monitoring the forum. I was camping for two weeks in Death Valley, CA and am now out of town for my sister's wedding. There was no Internet access (not even cellular) in Death Valley and the wedding is currently keeping me pretty busy.

Nevertheless, I think it may be time to revisit the SMS issue. In the past some have called for it being banned while others have endorsed tolerance. I've sympathized with those that wish to ban it but actually taken the position of tolerance--SMS hasn't been against the rules on this forum but has been strongly discouraged.

However, I have now received complaints via email that were due to misunderstandings caused by SMS. Ironically, those complaints were made by people that use SMS. This shows me that clearly SMS is not acceptable because when those that use SMS can't even understand it, things have gone too far.

Thus I'm tempted to modify the forum rules to eliminate SMS in an effort to reduce misunderstandings.

I'd like everyone's opinion on what should be done:

1. Continue to allow (but discourage) SMS. That is, no change in policy.

2. Make SMS against the rules and create a "-1 SMS" score. The only punishment for using SMS would be a negative score.

3. Make SMS against the rules and actually delete any message that uses it. I'm hesitant to do this but it would clean things up real quick.

4. Any other ideas?

Thanks for your input.

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster