FredL

Ron, I'm not so sure that the attitude of a person towards other bonsai students (and, aren't we all students?) can be correlated with his(her) level of experience. From what I've see, there are many - the majority - in bonsai-land that have a genuinely helpful and friendly attitude towards others. There are others, a minority, who are neither helpful nor friendly. It's not hard to see what a person's attitude is. Oh, there may be a few misunderstandings and the nicest people can have a bad day, but, in general, it's not hard to see what a person's true intentions are.

A point that was made earlier that I had never really thought about is that courtesy is a two way street. When we ask for advice we have a responsibility to accept well intentioned comments gracefully. On another site, I saw so much abusiveness being directed from advice giver to advice receiver that that I lost sight of the other side of the equation being just as important.

Regards, Fred