Topband: "Censorship"

[Tree]

All - 

As topband conditions improve (or at least our expectation of them improving),
the traffic on this list also goes way up.  This is the time of year I 
typically get accused by 2 or 3 people of being heavy handed about 
"censorship" because some of their posts didn't make it to the list.  So, it
is time to say something about this and make sure everyone understands what's
going on.  

Someone even suggested I wanted to keep it a secret - so this post is an 
attempt to convince him that I am not trying to keep this a secret and am 
willing to share what I am doing with the list.

It is a fact that I will be more picky about what messages get approved when
we have a high volume of messages.  Experience has shown that lots of people
on this list can not handle a high volume of traffic.  I try to make sure the
posts that make it aren't something that really should be between two people
off the list.  If someone asks for help with a pretty specific situation, 
and the response is pretty much focused on that situation without a lot of
other information that might be of general interest - then it is something
that would be better done off the list.  

A perfect situation is where someone asks for help - gets 30 replies in his
inbox (not through the list) and then summarizes them in a "thank you" post
later on.  We don't need to clutter the list with those 30 responses and 
force the many people that aren't interested in the subject wade through them.

I have also recently taken a stand on messages that I believe set an 
aggressive tone on an issue.  These tendx to make discussions more heated and
are not what the majority of people on this list want to see.  I have rejected
some messages asking for words in CAPS to be toned down some.  Some people 
have responded to this request and reposted their message without them (or
with less aggressive words).  Some have decided they can't do this and would
rather complain about my "censorship" than change one word from all caps to
lower case where it really isn't needed to get the point across.  

It isn't surprising when those who use aggressive words in their posting 
become aggressive at me when I reject their post. 

I believe based upon the large majority of input I receive that this is what
most everyone wants me to do.  If everyone wanted to go back to being 
unmoderated - I am happy to go there - but previous attempts did not work 
out so well.

I hope those of you who complain about censorship will think about the big
picture instead of trying to blame ME for it.   This is just a job - I try
to do it the best I can.  

Tree