I voted yes. I'm a newbie here, but certainly not a newbie to the profession.
I'm not even sure I understand all the bells and whistles available to me here at The Cove, but if there isn't a way to put an obnoxious poster on a personal "ignore" list, there should be.
In my personal view, I like to have some moments to just get a feel for the personalities behind the professional opinions expressed elsewhere. It may not be a scientific method of evaluation, but I think more of a writer who has a sense of the absurd and can understand when a religious or political diatribe belongs elsewhere than in a thread about Quality and its pragmatic relationship with the world of business.
Thus said, the Forum for political or religious opinion should be reserved for the personal opinion of the writer,
NOT for interminable inserts of text from third parties that may or may not reflect the poster's point of view.
If bandwidth is a problem, limit inserts and attachments. If the poster just ABSOLUTELY feels he needs to post a one meg or larger document on a non-quality issue, may I suggest he consider opening a free yahoo email and webpage account where the material can be posted, then simply listing the url of the pertinent page.
I do stuff like that all the time for various associations I belong to so I can avoid tying up members' email accounts with large files.
Here's a simple example, just to illustrate the point.
http://www.geocities.com/tm21stcentury/aerial-photo-of-meeting-site.pdf
It's an aerial photo made into a pdf file so any reader can easily print it out.
(depending on your internet connection, it may take a while to download.)
Definitely, rudeness and controversial points of view are par for the course of ANY opinion forum, on-line or in-person. A disclaimer on each Forum is sufficient to serve notice to those who may be offended.
