Quote Originally Posted by matagi View Post
Now that we've slightly drifted onto the topic of other forums, I should add my 2c worth about Bikeforums. The thing I've noticed is that the smutty co-ed behaviour tends to be confined to a couple of the subforums, no doubt reflecting the average age of the posters.

If you look at the subforums where more "mature" individuals hang out, like the touring, long-distance cycling and over-50 subforums, then you get a completely different feel for the place.

TE works well on a couple of levels .... the feeling here tends to be inclusive rather than exclusive and any inappropriate posters are dealt with promptly. As far as I am concerned if someone has thoughtful and relevant information to post then I welcome them regardless of their gender.
Matagi - I think that's the key - at Bike Forum and even here, there are threads that I might find well not interesting for me so I tend to stay out of them. At BF - there are lots of cliquey forums but thankfully there are also alot of informative forums like the over 50, MTB, road cycling etc. I have found different people find different things offensive and I guess we need to respect that. Even in the cliquey forums - I can stay out of the "chatty" threads and review, answer or post only what I find informative.

I guess where I am going with this is that there is something for everyone, especially here. TE folks tend to moderate themselves and when something gets out of hand it's ended quickly. I see no reason to change anything right now. I suspect alot of men have read, reviewed and posted here and we never knew. That's the way it should be.

One interesting note - I post on another forum that is very large, even larger than BF. It has many different topics and there is a forum for women only and even a sub-forum for women's personal issues. Neither is locked out so I suspect men go in and read those forums regularly. My thoughts, never post something on the internet that you want to be a secret. Again the whole glass house thing.