I'm sorry. Ana, Alicia is correct that your post above is thoughtful and well-worded. But, at the risk of prolonging this God-forsaken thread any further, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you.
I think that the problem is this "Us v. Them" mentality that everyone has suddenly developed. I see all of you sticking up for posts that you know YOU could've done without reading simply because you think someone's picking on the new kid. That's ridiculous! I'm not new here, I've been a member for 4 or 5 years, and a lurker for a few before that. But you'll notice my post count is only about a 100 posts higher than say, HeartBren's, even though I've got a couple years on her. (I assure you, I'm not saying this to single her out, but she is--evidently--the reason for this crazy thread.)
Being "new" on this forum is a relative term, directly coinciding with how much you put yourself out there. Now, you, I think of as a newcomer. You've only got a handful of posts and, to be honest, I've maybe only ACTUALLY seen about three of them. I welcome you! I welcome HeartBren--who I, and several other SoWallers I know have actually met in person-- I think she's lovely. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to point out when I think she's in the wrong, just as I would do, and HAVE done, with SWGB or Scooterbug or Kurt or any of the others (love you guys, but we all know that we post some stupid stuff sometimes. It happens. :roll
The point is that nobody--let me repeat that, NOBODY--is sitting around thinking, "Hmmm. What can we do to torture the newbies today?" :scratch:
We don't look at your post count before we respond, and adjust our responses accordingly. I know that when I read a post that resonates with me, in a good OR bad way, my brain is usually already formulating a response before I even notice who posted it. As Scooterbug said earlier, if you post things, you're going to get a response. If you post enough of the same response (as, unfortunately, HeartBren has done here--I glanced back over the posts from the last few days and found around 17 posts where she made herself a victim when the intent of the original post was a joke, or was not even directed towards her, or her posts were out and out inflammatory, even going so far as to call another poster an ass (she did, of course, use asterisks to do this). Now, I'm sorry, but you get out of forums what you put into them. Perhaps this is an opportunity to remind all of us about that.
But, more likely, it will serve as a reminder that we all need to take a deep breath before responding to a post, and to read each post in the spirit that it was intended, rather than as "fightin' words". Because the purpose of the lounge is to lighten up, laugh, and have a good time! If you're unsure of the sense of humor of a certain poster, perhaps you should hang back a few posts and see how others respond to him/her. Or, as the rest of us do, just dive right in and recognize that this is a free-for-all, and we're all a little confused sometimes (ahem. More frequently than most of us will admit...

)
Just my .02...

Carry on...