There is a difference between "moderation" and "censorship".
The first is welcome, and necessary if this forum is to remain civil.
The latter is not welcome, because it's aimed at people's views, not their behaviour.
IMHO, posts on amiga.org get moderated, in contract to other sites where censorship reigns supreme.
Bill,
You are incorrect; a person's views go hand in hand with their behavior. If you are moderating someone's behavior, you are censoring their views. Just because you don't agree with their views on acceptable behavior, does not mean that you are not censoring their views.
According to webster's dictionary, censor is defined as the following.
Main Entry: 2censor
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): cen·sored; cen·sor·ing /'sen(t)-s&-ri[ng], 'sen(t)s-ri[ng]/
Date: 1882
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
And a moderator is defined as the following.
Main Entry: mod·er·a·tor
Pronunciation: 'mä-d&-"rA-t&r
Function: noun
Date: circa 1560
1 : one who arbitrates : MEDIATOR
2 : one who presides over an assembly, meeting, or discussion: as a : the presiding officer of a Presbyterian governing body b : the nonpartisan presiding officer of a town meeting c : the chairman of a discussion group
3 : a substance (as graphite) used for slowing down neutrons in a nuclear reactor
So the difference is a moderator essentially organizes the meeting or discussion board we have here, which Amiga.orgs moderators do well. A censor, however, removes objectionable content, which the moderators here also do. Let's not kid ourselves people, any site that removes objectionable content censors its users, period. That being said, it is not necessarily a bad thing. If you compare Amiga.org to Moo Bunny, the topics on Amiga.org have never degraded to the level many topics on Moo Bunny degrade to. (Don't misunderstand me, I love the bunny, but its lack of censorship does have its downside).
Aside from restricting certain words, censorship is based purely on one's opinion. I have seen many times when one person considers another person's response to be a flame, but when I read it, I do not see fire anywhere. Bill, you obviously agree with the Amiga.org moderator's opinions more than other sites. Does that make them any more right than the other site's opinion? No it does not. Just as Amiga.orgs opinion is not any less right that other websites opinion.
The other side of this is that the moderators need to accept the fact that they ARE CENSORS and because of this it is really is to APPEAR BIASED. The question they really have to ask themselves is, are they? If they would let any one person get away with something that they have moderated when someone else did it, even if that person they let slide is another moderator, then yes they are BIASED. If you do not want appear biased you have to treat EVERYONE equally, which, if you look at human history, is impossible to do. The moderators here might just have to deal with the fact that there are people out there that disagree with them and consider them biased because of it. If you can not deal with that FACT, you should not be a moderator.
