Censorship at the KivaFriends Forum

[Guest]

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[Jill]

I can’t say that I’m particularly sorry about the recent vaporization of a notorious thread and of some of the troubling communications that were burning some of the pages within it.


I am, nonetheless, writing to invite a discussion, if anyone might be interested in pursuing, an exploration into a formalized and I’m hoping relatively democratic mechanism for determining what, “legitimately”, one or more of the moderators ought characterize as just so undesirable as to be worthy of his or her maybe/maybe not unilateral wave of the vaporizing wand.


I, personally, have had someone here suggest that something I’d done or written might be grounds for banishment from some  (this?) Forum or another, and I will tell you that I felt as though I’d been essentially threatened for something that didn’t warrant that kind of communication at all, and, at the time, I felt really troubled by it.


If I am the only one, here, who feels a bit concerned about the possible parameters of a censoring inclination, please just leave this post unresponded to.   Note, if you would, that I am not particularly directing this at the recent obliteration of the thread.   It merely provided the impetus for my opening up a subject I’ve long been thinking about.

[Nicole & Hiren]

Jill!! WONDERFUL post! That is exactly what we need--a dialogue and then some parameters. Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this!

 

Best wishes,
Nicole

[RichardF]

As a general principle, I support moderators using their discretion to manage the tone of forum discussions, particularly in the context of personal attacks.  In principle, I support moderators taking actions up to and including nuking of topics and permanently banning members.

Although it's more than a discussion board, Wikipedia has a reasonable set of expectations for interactions among participants, such as Civility, No personal attacks and Dispute resolution. 

I'm not saying we need something like that here, in fact, I believe such formalities would be overkill here.  I'm just saying the moderators have some resources available to them, from a number of places I'm sure, to help them set the tone for what goes on here.

[Dagfinn]

Jill - I for one concurr with you.  I just had the unpleasant experience of being brushed off tonight as I in a personal email to the moderator pointed out that I found the way he chose to deal with it to not be in the spirit of Kiva and its transparency I so much praise.

I for one do not need a big brother secretly decide what is the best for me.

I hope this was an unfortunate mistake and that free speach will remain free also here.  It may well be that threads should be taken out but not secretly, that is my view.

Now I await his judgement on whether to clean myself out of here as well . . .  Oh what a nuisance an oustpoken freedomloving Scandinavian can be to the politically correct among us

Thank you Jill, Dagfinn A.

ps; just corrected my typo's

[dh]

I found the moderator's threat to temporarily banish anyone who might respond to his announcement, and perhaps question his actions, particularly troubling.

[Dagfinn]

Exactly - as well as keeping it a secret what it was all about!

Dagfinn A.

[Henry]

I agree DH, and have edited the post to reflect some of this.

my use of those words had nothing to do with 'my actions' being discussed.  It was my wish the topic direction be ended.

[Sengbe Pieh]

My thoughts exactly Dagfinn & dh.  I think a healthy exchange of ideas/opinions is important for intellectual growth & development. 

Geoff

[saabnet]

As a general principle, I support moderators using their discretion to manage the tone of forum discussions, particularly in the context of personal attacks.  In principle, I support moderators taking actions up to and including nuking of topics and permanently banning members.

I have to say that I do too. For one, definitely not every single post is going to be appropriate for the site. I posted something that I thought was funny but contained a lot of foul language (an external link) and was politely asked by a moderator to edit it out, which I did. In hindsight, I thought this was a completely appropriate thing for the moderator to do and I was like, what was I thinking anyway...

As everyone knows, I run a very active online community too. I went through this same issue early on and before anyone could make a posting asking what the policy was, I wrote one up myself explaining what the mission and purpose of my site was, what was appropriate content, what was inappropriate content, and what could actually get you restricted from using the site. It has been very helpful in setting expectations for site users.

My site, unlike KF, uses a true relational database for fully threaded discussions so when an inappropriate message does appear, it can be deleted without affecting the rest of a thread. Also, I am the owner of the site and its only moderator which makes it clear that all blame for deleted content lies solely with me. I make it very clear in the footer on every bulletin board page that the site is most definitely not a free for all site - NOT everything goes. I'm not expecting that everything goes here either.

-Scott

[Jan & John]

I am only registering my confusion at this.  This is my one and only forum and I am new to the concept.

I came home today - read the whole thread - saw a disappointing post and a later on harsh reply - but then other KF people stepped in and the tone calmed right down again...

Next time I looked - the thread was gone.   

My personal opinion is that some posts should just be left to fade into oblivion.  I think deleting this has just caused concern and uncertainty and probably a whole bunch of people shaking their heads and saying 'wha happen?'  I know that now I am not sure exactly what the rules are here.

jan - who really shouldn't have returned here today