I think the idea is to boost numbers of visitors to the site, so by making it more international we get not only diyers/home owners asking for advice from overseas, but hopefully professionals who can answer those questions also.
With more 'septics' visiting the site, everyone needs to be prepared for serious levels of abuse and stalking. Many of them have no filters whatsoever. On a personal level, I know I will simply stop coming if it even begins to get silly. It's simply not worth the grief - especially when you are trying to help someone for free
🙁
I did an experiment once on LinkedIn. The yanks were 'hijacking' seemingly all threads and turning them round to: politics, religion, race & abortion. Most threads died within two days due to it. So, I posted a question asking why they did it. Genuinely I wanted to find out what was behind it. In two days it was hijacked
🙄. The thread ended up running for three months with somewhere like 3000 posts most of which were generated by approx 12 people with opposing views on race, religion, abortion & politics. At the time Obama was in power so you can imagine some of the vitriol.
During this time I did some analysis. I received over 200 direct messages. Most were from non-americans who laughed up their sleeves at them and explained that this was exactly why they are so universally hated across the globe. WIthin those messages I had a handful of the kind of emails one only reads about. So disgustingly full of hate it was difficult to conceive of them coming from the people they did. We are talking preachers, CEOs of seemingly reasonable companies and highly qualified and eminent people in their fields. I got them cos occasionally I'd just lob in a question or statement to stir up the pot. One such was, "As obama is doing such a fantastic job, is it not time the Southern states of the USA recognised his value and heritage and put further victims of your racially oppressive regime into power?"
Oh the British sense of humour is naughty....
