It's an interesting thing about moderation/censorship or whatever you want to call it: no matter how light handed... the effect is that the entire medium (internet forum, in this case) takes on a semblance to the opinion of the moderator(s). Of course, the more heavy handed the moderation/censorship the stronger the medium will reflect the moderator's opinion. The corollary to this is that the more a medium represents the opinion of a limited few (the moderators and those who share the moderators opinions) the less useful and less valuable it becomes as a source of information. I'll forgo demonstrating this with examples, as it is beyond the scope of the discussion. Suffice it to say, I find that I spend time browsing forums and mailing lists inversely proportional to the degree to which they are moderated.

As a quick example, while I can hardly tolerate Wouter and literally vomit every time I read one of his posts, I appreciating that his opinions are welcome here on this site; not because I like vomiting but because his opinions and ways of stating things create conversation that is ultimately more informative than would otherwise exist. The argument can be extended to anyone's least favorite participant. [ ;-P ] The forum is richer for the paucity of moderation. I encourage you to keep it that way.

While I find Darryls text over the top I agree with the sentiment.

We are all grown ups. We can hack it.

I have never been much of a fan of the H16. And I have said so.
BUT, a gizzillion people clearly think I am wrong and my attitude to it has softened hugely over time.
If I had remained quiet and bigoted I might never have grown up about it.

But I would like to know what boat has caused such concern.

Let it go Mary.

I agree, I think the forum is fine as is. People just need to use common courtesy and have thicker skin (handy skill for life, anyway) or use the ignore function for bothersome users. BTW, wouldn't that have worked on the F16 forum if everyone simply set their preferences to ignore a certain argumentative person?

Apart from the obvious “personal abuse of an individual” purely for the sake of that abuse, repeated over and over, I generally find that the most “disliked/argumentative/aggressive” posts are the ones that have elicited from the greatest number of participants, on a thread, the greatest amount of logical, informative, discussion possible. Which is, after all the theoretic objective of these sailing threads/forums, isn’t it? To spread the greatest amount of knowledge to the greatest number of people as possible? (I won’t consider any commercial interests here) If threads that are seen to be “disliked” by just one or two people, who have the power to delete that entire thread, are assigned to oblivion, we must surely be the poorer? I find nothing wrong with any “obnoxious” individual being warned/censured to an appropriate degree by any moderator, but to remove the entire thread is like “burning the books” of writers whom the “state” finds contrary to the “party line” not so much that the content is wrong, but more so because the writer is “disliked”, I just don’t think that we need to go down “that slippery slope”.
In a way, when a complete thread is deleted it not only wipes clean all that was said by who ever was seen to be objectionable but it also loses all the contributions of all the counter arguments and commonsense replies made by the more informed postings which had value in their own right and deserved to be able to be read. Deletion not only rids us of the small percentage of the “bad” it also loses for us the much larger percentage of good.

Yeah mate..... But can it jump.

Sorry, could not resist <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

No problem, despite common believe I'm not easily offended.

Wouter

This was a swipe at Doug not you......

okay, that was funny

Okay, I didn't get the joke the first time but now I understand.

Sorry,

Wouter

Wow, I never even noticed those icons before at the bottom of the posts.