Hi,
Everyone should remember before they post, that all the non-verbal and situational context of speech is lost on a message board. You lose the tone in the voice, the smiles, gestures etc that imply whether you are serious, not sure, joking or poking fun
For example, at a party someone might poke fun at me, and my response might be "oh shut up you fool", or "I'm going to kill you" . Because we are face to face, the person can see that I am laughing, and pretending to be angry. They don't need to call the police to get me arrested.
However, on a bulletin board it is different. I might misinterpret someones post, which I thought was being sarcastic, but was really meant to be serious. Chuckling at my computer I might say back "I'm going to kill you you fool" . Unfortunately this can look like a serious threat without the appropriate non-verbal context
This is especially true when using sarcasm or irony, where you are saying one thing, but implying the opposite. The humour can be completely lost.
Everyone should bear this is in mind when making posts, especially when trying to be funny
An example of the above are the posts by Brett and Rakey above. I'm pretty sure that Brett was trying to be funny. However, with Rakey's post I genuinely don't know whether he was trying to be funny and sarcastic in response, or whether he misinterpreted Brett's post and was annoyed at Brett
Cheers
Robbo