I’d like to chime in on the censorship accusation.
A month or so ago there was a post about the level of abuse that was being posted in the forum.
https://discuss.nubits.com/t/attention-forum-administrators/?source_topic_id=5224
In that post it was politely pointed out by several forum members that they didn’t find the tone or content of some posts acceptable. It was mooted that people should be more active in flagging posts that they found offensive. Since than I have been more active in responding to flagged posts, either by hiding or removing posts that did seem to just contain offensive language towards individuals or, in some cases, where I didn’t agree it the flag, just removing the flag.
I agree in the underlying ideal of Freedom of speech on the forum but that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that anyone can say whatever they want at any time without any repercussions. If a post is obviously offensive and/or flagged by other forum members as such, I think such posts could reasonably expect to be hidden or removed.
Denying Freedom of speech would be banning posters because they expressed viewpoints that I disagreed with, not simply moderating some offensive posts.
That said, my free time for actively moderating the forum remains limited. That affects things in two ways. It means that offensive posts may well be around for longer than they would otherwise be. It also means that when I do check the flagged posts list, I tend to scan for offensive remarks and then make a decision on the whole post based on that. If that has meant that a post that hasn’t used offensive language has been unfairly moderated, I apologise.
@Ben I’m sure you can verify that my moderation activity has been almost wholly since the post mentioned above. Censorship has not been my aim, more effecting moderation requests made by a selection of forum members.
There continues to be two diametrically opposed views expressed here continuously (a microcosm of much of the politics I see discussed in the real world). I think both sides have some valid points and both sides have questions to answer. As expressed before my gut feel is that the truth lies somewhere between the two. My hope always was that we could arrive at some answers through civil discourse. My moderation attempts were only trying to achieve that.
My thoughts on the original post of this thread: I’m still finding the words. I’ll try to formulate them and post after the kids are in bed.