Real Pink in the Inside wrote:We should be allowed to post in here whatever we would be allowed to state in a private personal meeting.
This is where people can sometimes make mistakes...thinking that they should be "allowed" to say anything they please as IF they were in a "private, personal meeting". The fact is a forum that is open to the global village of the internet, accessible to anyone who has a computer and the ability to wander in, join, make comments for the world to see, and READ what others say, automatically places that forum in the public domain and therefore it, the forum owner, and the forum posters, become susceptible to the ruling laws of the land. Freedom of speech is not absolute, and it is not absolute because there are laws protecting against varying circumstances including speech that can be considered as legally damaging.
Admins of message forums who wish to keep their forums chaos free and litigation free, must have some rules in place in order to keep order. It would be nice if Admins did not have to have rules at all...but human nature will not allow that unfortunately....so they find themselves in a balancing act of how much policy making is too little or over the top. Admins have to learn to make on-the-fly decisions many times in determining the fine line that their users tread, users do not make the job easy by any means, the burden rests solely on Admins to always try to make the right decisions. Nothing is perfect and everything can be subjective, therefore Admins know that they cannot please all of the people all of the time...but they can sure please most of them all of the time, and a good rule of thumb is: Listen to the voices of the majority.
If the majority are content, don't be concerned with the rest.
I think Keith is doing a good job, and his job is not as easy as some people think it is. It is his site, his forum, he has the right to make any policies he wants and does not have to ask for anyone's opinions about his choices...but he has done so. He was only thinking of trying to do the right thing, and it's something that should not be taken advantage of in my humble.
Just my 2 pennies
Sandy