Censorship

my only gripe comes from the deletion of the serious forum and the reason being - i cant be bothered

all too familiar that, ill moderate if need be, whats the worst on there, people arguing ?

yes but the point being if it doesnt intrest someone they dont have to read it, those of us using it wanted to

hence i said ill moderate it, those of us wanting to talk other stuff than football can do

I don't think that's the point at all actually - the mods have a responsibility as publishers of this forum. The general chat section had libelous comments and direct accusations against public figures which could either result in an ongoing investigation being jeapordised or in civil action against those who run the forum - the mods.


Freedom of speech isn't the freedom to say what you like about whomever you like regardless of truth or evidential proof. Removing that section of the forum removed the risk to the moderators and will allow them to concentrate on running what this is - a football forum.


It has nothing whatsoever to do with "If you don't like it don't read it" - just like all the sh1te with our fans kicking off left and right the answer always comes back to "Oh get some perspective we only did this we only did that" Why don't people just grow the f**k up and take some bloody responsibility for their actions? The world is not your playground to do what you want with and hope that everyone else who doesn't like it will ignore it.

how ironic in a debate about censorship you belittle people who read the mail , their views not pass your test ?

Nope, mainly belittlling the bile spouted by many in their comments sections on their website.   

Jeff I presume the question was to me. You replied why the original theard was deleted, which was absolutely fine & understandable. But it's not dealt with the cause of it being deleted, all the mods (bar one notable exception) have commented on it basically saying we stick together (fine I understand that) but then contradicting each other with the facts in some sort of cover up of individual decisions & dis ussions

To put it in simple terms if I went on the thread about the Braintree player being punched saying he got what he deserved & it's a pity he wasn't knocked out I would expect my post to be deleted and to at least expect a warning from the mods if not more. Now in effect that is what strungout has got away with because he's a mod.

As to the current affairs not anything I'm complaining about. I respect the work all the mods do on behalf of the forum but I have no personal respect for one of you.

Paul - what have I got away with exactly? We had a complaint about a thread being insensitive, so I dealt with it by trying to avoid censorship at all costs, but allowing it to disappear quietly, while posting an explanation for the reasons.

Clearly people would have rather that the thread was deleted, but that's not the decision I took. I stand by the decision, but understand if others disagree. 

Closing the Current Affairs section was purely a practical consideration in the end because none of us were prepared to moderate it anymore and that is a requirement of this site.  It was taking up most of our moderating time and we thought that was daft given that this is a football forum; ie none of us signed up to moderate a current affairs forum.  In the previous thread that Jeff accidentally deleted Bladd said that as long as the people who use it are happy with it why close it? Well the reason is that a lot of the people clearly weren't happy with it because of the consistant stream of complaints and reported posts we were getting.  Generally speaking I think most of us preferred to just ignore that section but that became impossible because of the number of reports we were getting in relation to it.  We were also concerned about violating the rules of the host and copyright issues on that section.  The main reason it closed is that none of the moderators were prepared to manage it anymore and the administrators (who have far more to lose here) were no longer prepared to take responsibility for it.  So yes, bluntly we couldn't be bothered with it anymore.  It had nothing to do with topics discussed on it or anything else.  I can honestly say that in my case the only time I ever read that anything on that section was when somebody reported a post.  This became so regular that it got to the point where I wasn't prepared to moderate anymore; it's simply not why I come on a Rovers site or why I want to keep it going.

The problem with Bladd's suggestion is that there's no practical way of parcelling out moderation for a specific section of the forum so moderators would still need to wade through all the issues that it generated even if we didn't have to moderate anymore.  In other words, it wouldn't really solve the issue of the amount of admin time it was taking up and the reason why we eventually got fed up with it; a seperate forum linked to this one would do that which is why Jeff suggested it.  Seems a reasonable compromise to me.  We've discussed this issue over a long period of time, made several suggestions about how to improve things but in the end it came down to the practical consideration that no one was prepared to administrate that section anymore so it had to close because that is a condition of using the site.

On some of the other comments that were on the previous thread.  There are 4 of us volunteering to do this - we have put up requests for help with moderation before and received no takers.  We were dealing with an extremely sensitive topic which right from its first appearance produced a number of people reporting and complaining about the distress it was causing - from totally opposite perspectives. Given the strength of feeling involved (and trying to balance that with our general desire not to moderate or particularly delete anything) we all agreed with Strung Out's original decision to let the post drop.  At the same time it was agreed that if we received further consistant complaints about distress caused then we would delete the thread once it dropped off the main page.  This happened - so Jeff deleted it.  In the meantime PP locked the thread on the basis that it had drifted from the original topic (which we've done before).  There was no mixed messages, no contradictions.  Just 4 people trying to make decisions quickly and according to some level of agreed consensus.  That's about all you can hope for with this really what with everyone logging in at different times.  If you want perfect consistancy in that scenario it is not going to happen and I suggest you go and look for a professionally moderated board instead.  People asked for an explanation of our action and we have all now provided one. You can judge whether those actions are right or wrong but I'm pretty annoyed at people suggesting we were acting to cover mistakes and therefore questioning the intregrity of the actions we took.  We agreed a general approach and we did our best, as individuals, to stick to that approach.  Again 4 volunteers dealing with a complex and sensitive issue.  If someone wants to volunteer to take my place as a moderator by all means do so - I was never desperate to be one in the first place, I only did it because no one else would and I wanted the forum to carry on.