A little touchy over at Reptile Haven's site

Originally posted by BurmGirl
We have quite a few minors who frequent our website at RTB. My sons actually read the forums at times, and I think not cursing is a good thing. It is a public forum, after all, and there is no age requirement to become a member.

If I am not mistaken, isn't there now a law requiring parental consent for users under a certain age? If so, well you're saying "it's for the children" while in direct violation of a law "for the children"

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, it's been known to happen

SPJ,

I saw the post and rolled my eyes cause it was fairly obvious that he took things all wrong and flew off for no good reason. It seemed like something you guys could easily work out by msg or email though. Perhaps you should post what happened and see if he mans up and appologizes for his assumption.


Mr Berger. Although we have a trading post section...we are not reptilesforsale.com. Our community is dedicated to the wellfare of the animals. People like you who contribute nothing but pop in once in a while to sell unwanted pets are of no great loss to us if you get angered when your poor keeping practices are questioned. NOONE that knows his/her left from right will ever side with you that feeding 6 mice instead of an appropriate sized rat is the best plan for feeding a ball python. And a 6 1/2 foot scrub python that will eat rats shouldn't be fed mice either as it just isn't enough...unless once again you are cramming a stupid amount of too small prey down this animal to make up for the small size. Your argument was that no caresheets you found mentioned NOT to do that but you failed to produce one that recomended it....It is assinine to assume that any practice not condemed is ok. Find a caresheet that states not to boil your snakes head or to poke their eyes out. There is a common sense factor that the authors of caresheets with their limited time and space can only hope that their readers possess. At any rate...as I said before, the site is about helping people to properly care for their animals. You obviously aren't in to all that and don't really seem to care so cry me a river and good luck selling what should be turned over to a good rescue where maybe they will get the care they need.

Damn, er, doggone it, did I miss another damn, er, darn, vote and miss out on making brett, and who the hell are you to question me, gardin god of all damn, er, dang, knowledge on feeding snakes. Would someone email me when the next damn, er, friggin, er, bloody, er, goshdarn meeting is, please.

Aw hell, er, shucks, nevermind, obviously he wouldn't care about my vote anyway, being as sometimes I do feed my snakes large mice even if they can eat rats. Wonder if he knows that in the wild they don't always get the biggest meal they can possibly handle and OCCASIONALLY have to settle for what there is?

What a maroon. (thanks Bugs for the line and thanks also to whoever used it recently and planted it in my mind, I haven't been able to stop chuckling in several days)

Wes Pollock

Why should a pet have to "settle" ? If you can't or won't provide proper care, get a pet rock. If you wish to mimic nature while keeping your pets, then you need to start an occasional forest fire in your enclosure, flood their burrow from time to time and drive a car over them. There is nothing natural about keeping a wild animal as a pet. Therefore any argument pertaining to nature is "maroonish".

good luck selling what should be turned over to a good rescue where maybe they will get the care they need.

Any suggestions? Maybe I should just turn them over to you!

Maybe you can wear them on your head



Or when you get lonely, you can give them a little smooch



Or you can hang them in a tree (and pretend you found it there)



They might even help you paint your toes! (or worship the ground you walk on



Heck, even the Conure thinks your nuts!



Folks... I didn't come up with these pics from just anywhere. This is just a sampling of Brett's quality work.

Brett - Stick to fashion. You seem to be better at it.

OK yeah, I'm making fun of Brett now. But he just BEGS for it!

I would like to thank everyone for their constructive criticism of redtailboa.net. I do not have any clue why everyone involved felt like it would be a good idea to bring any of this up here at fauna classifieds, but hey... whatever works.

As I have been an administrator and moderator since redtailboa.net was first established, I feel qualified to address some of your concerns:

1) We do not actively condone the use of profanity. We feel that it is unnecessary and uncalled for. I cannot understand anyone feeling differently about this.

2) We promote the responsible keeping of reptiles and amphibians among other animals. To get our knowledge on this subject, we suggest careful research into the needs of each animal. As Brett Gardin possesses a great deal of knowledge and experience, I turn to him for a LOT of the answers I seek. I stand behind him when he questions someone on their husbandry practices.

3) We do not promote reusing other people's pictures without permission. Those pictures are property of Brett. I am the person with the Moluccan Python on my head. I would really prefer that if anyone would like to reuse that picure, they should at least seek Brett's permisson and mine.

Redtailboa.net (which is our permanent name) was founded on the principal that the reptile community needs an open and friendly website that allows people to come and share their knowledge and experiences. When we see that people are abusing their privilege of being a part of that community, we take steps to correct that issue. If anyone has an problem with us doing that, please e-mail me directly at morti@redtailboa.net so we can discuss it.

Frankly, I wish that more people would e-mail me their problems rather than trying to air their dirty laundry in other public forums. I think that we could come to some better resolutions that way.

Thanks.
-Donnie "Morti" Smith.

Making fun of me how? So I'm a pretty good photographer... how does this make me less of a herper? or even wrong on these issues? Grow up. Swallow some pride and look at yourself and what you are doing. You don't have to admit anything here there or anywhere. Just please take better care of your animals. Maybe I was crude and tactless. I can be that way sometimes but I don't frequent these sites for the glory of coolness with the herp people. I'm here for the animals. Somehow though I have made quite a few friends of those who can see under the gruff and know how to take me and those friendships are awesome and many. Just remember that even a jerk like me may be right about some things now and then so please....do yourself a favor and get some feedback from others...at least look into it.

Oh...and yah. I am a professional photographer and I own the copyrights to all and any photos on my site or in my albums online and you do need my permission to use them anywhere for anything...but I see no harm and no foul here and your attempt to "make fun" seems pretty weak so I will grant you permission to leave the photos in this thread but ask next time.

As to the profanity filter and editing of posts...I and other admins on the site are just that. Admins. We don't own the site. The site OWNER and he does OWN it and pays for it out of his own pocket, installed it (curse filter)and asked us (his admins) to enforce it. So like it or not...it's the rules and I really think it's childish for anyone to get so upset over such a trivial thing. As mean and nasty as I am, I just typed 3 (bleep)ing paragraphs without cussing once....kinda

Whether there are laws or not isn't the point. My children HAVE my parental consent to read the forums on RTB, because they are not full of profanity like alot of other forums. The point is, that is one of the rules on RTB. The curse filter is in place, and it is used. If you don't like or can't abide by the rules, go to another forum. Not that hard to figure out, huh?

Okay and I suppose every parent/child should conform to exactly what you feel the appropriate guidelines are for children of all ages? So much so that it doesn't matter if you enforce federal laws since you are morally far above and beyond them?

While I agree that people should handle themselves professionally or at least in a mature manner on your particular site, I also feel that there should be leverage for adult conversation and there should be room for parental control of their childrens involvement. No child should be online unsupervised any more than they should be taking care of herps unsupervised. That's what it comes down to for me- if they're mature enough to take complete responsibility for a living being then they are capable of making up their own minds on whether to be offended by profanity.

So the owner of the site has set the profanity level to a certain level. Sheri finds that level acceptable for her kids. That's supervised. It's not that Sheri has set the limit but rather she has found a site with the same criteria as hers.

It's a free system and the owner "owes" the public nothing in return. In reality if you don't like the system then move on to the next site, no harm no foul.