Rules & Policies

Why Moderate?

Unmoderated message boards quickly become unusable -- they are taken over by idiots who fill them with offensive material such as hate mail and pornography. Censorship is a necessity; the question is how much censorship is appropriate.

Our aim is to make these forums enjoyable and productive for the maximum audience. Our users come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have widely different sets of values. In order to achieve our goal of open communication, we need to respect the fact that people have different opinions about what is acceptable and what isn't. We therefore strive for a balance which accommodates as many people as possible.

In addition, we need to keep the forums interesting. One of the most common problems our users face is sorting through uninteresting or irrelevant messages to find the ones with valuable content. For this reason we occasionally trim threads to remove messages which do not significantly contribute to the discussion. Think of this like the "Letters to the Editor" of your local newspaper. Rather than reporting every single letter, it makes sense to provide a balanced summary of the letters received.

Note: We are considering creating a "Small Talk" forum, which would provide a place to chat casually without detracting from the main forums.

The bottom line is that if you can't cope with censorship, then this definitely isn't the place for you. Leave now!
 

Trying to Please Everyone

However we administer these forums, there will be some people who don't like it. We get a lot of complaints about our moderation policy, split fairly evenly between those who think we're too lenient and those who think we're too strict. Our best hope is to make our policy acceptable to as many people as possible.

The table below demonstrates the division of opinion, based on the results of our user poll in February 2002.

As you can see, there's really nothing more we can do to satisfy our visitors. If you think we're too strict or too lenient, you'll just have to accept that you're in the minority, one side or the other.

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