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Old 02-22-2008, 10:11 AM   #10
cali camping
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Lake Oswego, OR (near Portland)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Civil_War_Buff View Post
Just an observation.....I have been (and remain) a member of several forums for different things. My experience has been that when Moderators start acting as "moral police" and decide what is appropraite and what isn't, those forums are not long for this world. A header of "Off-Topic" as the tag line says "anything goes", should be just that. As long as personal attacks are not made, who is to decide what is and isn't appropriate? When Chris first started asking for "moderators" I immediately got nervous and voiced my concern at that time. I own the TrailManor Yahoo site, and I moderate it as well, if I find that a post is attacking someone, or is selling something (other than TM or camping related stuff), I remove the post and tell the poster why I did it. We have no spamming on that forum, and most people are very kind to each other.
I have no issue with the Off Topic category, if I don't want to look at something, I ignore it, but by definition the category allows for ANYTHING (within reason), but to have moderators lock threads for non specific reasons (other than they might not agree with the post) is censorship, and has no place here or on any other forum. The problem is there is NO training for moderators and Chris knows nothing about the people that moderate other than what he sees them post, so as they say "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

To keep this TM related, I like some of the 25th Anniversary upgrades that TM has made, good work!


I also want to let my opinion be known. I think censorship is a necessary "evil" on this board. If it wasn't for the moderators things could go south in a hurry. To those that think it is not required, compare how this forum has run to the present day, with their help, and then think about how it would look if unmonitored. Scary to even think about.

I say once again, if someone has an interest in a topic that probably is best not posted here, I virtually guarantee there is a forum somewhere out there on the WWW that would be an appropriate venue. By and large things go fairly well here, but every now and then there will be a rogue and that would be but one of the moderators functions.

OK..I'll step off my soapbox now...
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