Topband: Fw: "Censorship"

[David Raymond]

We have had censorship of this forum since its inception.  For those that 
wish to have their message heard, the 160m and 80m reflectors on QTH.NET are 
posted automatically and are not filtered, edited, nor censored.  While 
those reflectors are not very active, they do have a fairly large following.

In the meantime, personally, I think Tree does a reasonable job of managing 
this reflector and keeping it in "balance," which must require an awful lot 
of ongoing time and attention.

73. . .Dave
W0FLS
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tree" <tree at kkn.net>
To: <topband at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 11:35 AM
Subject: Topband: "Censorship"


>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
>