nah will keep the post, not going to let one person dictate my experiences

@ghost I appreciate your tolerance. I agree the comment is not written in a nice tone, that said I am not sure it needs to be deleted. I would I Ike to let some of the other mods look at it, or at least get more input flags from other users.

it's fine @StrongBad - this place is proving to be a time-vampire; not sure why I am bothering, to be honest.

My colleagues at the University did warn me about not investing time here - "just another forum" - I can see that they're right - there are far better collaborative places for Academia (and other subjects.

One more irony and then you're free of another foreigner - the last few hours have been a flurry of collaboration! based in Australia, with colleagues in the US, Germany, Spain, Japan and South Africa... I am just going to accept that it has to be the American view or none at all here.

@Ghost Many top users of the site are not American.

The irony is that another colleague mentioned their interest in joining Academia.SE (and a few other sites) - I echoed the advice of my other colleagues and told them not to (and mentioned that as they are not American, they are not likely to get a warm reception).

good luck with the site though!

I am not American and I never felt unwelcome here.

@Ghost I'm not an American either, and never felt unwelcome too. For what concerns forums, SE and other internet social activities, I've been a moderator of a (non-SE) forum for about 6 years and along these years I've seen many people burned out from their online activities, especially frequent posters.

Frequently the cause of such burn out was a harsh discussion with another user, whether technical or not, or the perception that their participation was not enough rewarded (e.g. low-voted posts).

My advice is: never ever take discussions personally and, most of all, participation to online activities should never become a second work. It's a hobby that should be taken light-heartedly.