Well, I'm still lurking in the shadows, but I think it will be the best for everyone if I stop partaking in this forum for the time being.

I'd either have to constantly self-censor myself, limit myself to helping newbies and off topic chit-chat, or constantly deal with the flame-wars any "serious" topic seems to instigate.

If everything said is treated as a mere "opinion" and thus at the end of the day, meaningless, if every factual statement born out of decade long hands-on experience is free to be "challenged" by every Tom, Dick and Harry, if there is not even a shred of goodwill left in the seriousness and righteousness of your counterpart, if everything said is allocated to a hidden, nefarious agenda, then no fruitful discussion is possible anymore.

And as much as I enjoy helping others or sharing my work, without the ability to speak freely, participating in a forum neither is fun nor does it make any sense to me from a logical point of view.

Anyway, I already wrote more than I wanted but I thought I owed those who were genuinly worried an explanation.

As I said, I'm still hanging around in the background and for those feeling an irressistible urge to contact me, I can be reached by sitemail.

I just think it is better to "ban myself" voluntarily while I can than ending up on the ignore list of most forum participants and/or having constantly posts deleted by the admins for "disturbing the peace."

Bye.