Well said, Phil. Those are my sentiments exactly. I used to spend a lot of my forum time here. Now it's mostly spent on electro-tech.philba wrote:Mr. Al,
I am all for moderation being light and not stifling free interchange. However, I see this board as being unmoderated. I draw this from the fact that name calling threads have been allowed to persist and that that no one has ever been banned for a violation of the rules other than spammers. In fact, I'm not even sure anyone has even been warned though I could fully be wrong.
Let's look at an example board that has moderation: electro tech. While the moderation is fairly light, runaway threads get closed and abusers get banned. Not a lot but it keeps the focus on electronics and related issues rather than personality. I think it's no accident that it is a significantly larger and more robust forum. The recent rant and compressed air car threads would have been long ago closed. I would much prefer to see that level of moderation here. With out it, n&v forum will continue to be an also-ran board - people that want to discuss electronics mostly don't want to be the subject of verbal abuse, especially if it's unrelated to electronics.
I take little comfort that I was the target of the only deleted posting (I was called a racist name even though I'm not a member of that racial group). Had that happened on any other board, the poster would have been banned. This was not the first time that the poster used racial language. As it was, nothing would have happened to the offensive posting had I not reported it to the editors of N&V. To be clear, this was before there were any moderators.
Personally, N&V is way down on my list of forums due to the dynamic that exists here. Wading though bulldog determined defense of ludicrous opinions is simply not interesting to me. Trolling, baiting, racist remarks, name calling, character assassination should all be grounds for banning. If that happened, this board could become something worth spending time on.
Phil
Ron