And Shane is entitled to that opinion a well. Pietra. In fact, he has a point, the exteme vileness that goes on in this forum does run people off. However, the openness encourages debate.
There is no easy answer to this type of thing. Moderated forums can be successfull and there are proven examples of ones that work,including the Seed discussion forum, only moderated for personal attacks. Unmoderated forums can work as well as has this forum for many years.
Both have positive and negative aspects. For example, a properly moderated forum tends to be more topical but also usually gets less traffic than it would if it wasn't moderated. In addition, a moderator with an ego issue or god complex will run poeple off and the forum will die. An unmoderated forum usually has much more open discussion and a large pool of participants but can be easily derailed by a troll or disgruntled person that wishes the forum to fail. These type people can cause good people to avoid the forum and create enough havoc that the intended discussion pretty much dries up.
So that is it. I understand Shane's feelings as I understand your "no Censorship" feelings. I very rarely delete anything here except duplicate posts, an exception being some porno shot that was posted not to long ago. Even in a unmoderated forum, there has to be some rules.
All this long winded explanation aside, I would like to once again ask people to respect each other here, to understand that what you post reflects on how people perceive you as an individual. Vile and crude attack posting serves no one and makes the person doing it look real small in the eyes of the other participants. In addition, this forum is an important outlet for people. I remember how I felt when I first started talking to Wes, Ginger, Kim, Kathy, Ken and a few others on the original site. It meant a lot to me. when new people log on, it can mean a lot to them, unless they run into a bunch of children screaming and cursing at each other. In that case, they are likely to log off and leave.
That is the real shame of this behavior.
