PeanutGallery wrote:Burnaby49 wrote:guilty wrote:Could you stop re-quoting the retard's profanity please?
I agree. The verbatim quotings of the comment go past the site's rules on unnecessary profanity. So I've deleted them except for NW's original quote which I think is acceptable in context.
My apologies, I didn't know this site and a rule about unnecessary profanity, although having said that I do try not to swear.
Profanity, for it's own sake is out. I've posted quotes as objectionable as NW's but in context, relevant to the topic under discussion. NW's quote was at least somewhat to point since it was a response to his comments abut the Hampstead Heath issue. Repeating it after that was unnecessary. It is largely at the discretion of the moderators how these issues are handled and I decided to use my god-like powers to delete the quotes but leave the postings intact.
There are few formal stated rules but just guidelines to keep things civil and at least semi-professional. The two big ones are the ban on discussions of religion and politics.
A little background for you UK contributors who weren't here for the great purge of 2012. I joined up in late 2011 and Quatloos was largely focused on its mission exposing of scams, tax fraud, sovereigns, freemen etc. We even allowed flame wars, some of which got quite vile. One contributor, in particular, seemed to post here for no other purpose than to be grossly offensive. When arguments got out of hand they were transferred to a specific section called "Flame Wars and Other Pissing Contests". Great fun I suppose, I didn't participate in them.
But it all went to hell with the 2012 American presidential election. Things just somehow blew up into one partisan acrimonious argument after another about Obama and Romney, some of it very offensive. Political squabbling overwhelmed the site and threatened to destroy Quatloos's reputation as an objective investigative source of information on it's primary goals. A lot of previous followers just stopped reading it. So Jay, the site's founder and owner, took action and had a purge. All the political postings were deleted and many contributors who participated here for no other purpose than to argue about issues irrelevant to Quatloos's purpose were banned and all their postings, on any topics, deleted. I'd say over half of the listed contributors were purged. The individual I noted above was one of them. Along with that Jay did some housekeeping and deleted the mass of casual posters who had just dabbled a few times but had contributed nothing.
Then the moderators (I wasn't one at the time) got together and set up some firm rules about allowed topics and contributor conduct to get things back on track. No flame wars, no politics, no religion are the primary ones. Topics are expected to stick to the intent of the site. In my opinion entirely beneficial. I pretty much dropped out of the site in mid 2012 because of all the pointless arguing and political ranting. None of it had anything to do with why I'd been contributing. Also offensive racial, sexual and religious comments are right out and can get you banned entirely if egregious enough.
Religion, as a general topic, is out for the same reason as politics. Again, in 2012, posters started totally pointless religious squabbles. They often got quite heated and were irrelevant to the site's purpose. However religion is an acceptable topic in the context of scams and Freemen discussion but only in respect to how religion is an integral part of the scam. If you read my Ed Belanger postings it is all about Christianity and the King James bible because these are the foundations of Belanger's ploys to entice suckers to follow his scams. I don't given my opinion of Christianity or any other religion but I discuss how Belanger uses it to manipulate people like the Volks into screwing up their lives.
One issue that has divided the moderators is the banning of certain contributors. Philosophically we are against it, the site welcomes diverse opinions. You won't get banned here for arguing in favour of scammers like Ceylon or disagreeing with other posters as long as you keep it civil. The relatively few posters who have been banned after the Great Purge were not kicked out because of their opinions but because of their conduct or because they were just trolls. Even those were the subject of much moderator discussion and warnings first.
As you can tell from my postings some laxity is allowed as long as it doesn't touch banned topics. I'm often off topic babbling on about beer or aircraft, or my recent New York trip, but just as aside, not as a primary discussion. I try to add value rather than give my opinions.
So those are the basics. As you British posters are aware we moderators take a very light hand on policing opinions and behaviour which is why many of you probably post here. I've only used my moderator powers three times, this one, a flame war I deleted, and a third deletion of postings at the poster's own requests. But I'm lurking in the background watching.