konstantinl Wrote:
Since you, as administrator, have never produced any written rules concerning moderation it's perhaps a little unfair to be critical of me applying "unwritten quality standards".
I'm the administrator, not the supreme rule-giver. My opinion, though, is that if something is not against a rule, it should be permitted, or a rule should be made. The terms and conditions that users agree to when they register state "You agree not to post ... material that may violate any applicable laws." In addition to this, I've specified a clear rule against distributing copyrighted materials. We also have consistently moderated spam, and while there is no explicit rule against spam (outside of the fact that it may be illegal in some jurisdictions), I think it is a rare example of content that everyone can agree is unwanted. Apart from these examples, I've only taken down (upon request) threads that might affect someone's personal life, and in one case a particularly mean-spirited thread which I later restored because I decided it's not a good idea to start drawing boundaries around what are acceptable topics of conversation.
I don't think it's enough to say that arbitrary action is only taken rarely. If enough people think that this type of topic is unacceptable, then someone should make a clear statement of what general characteristic identifies it as a ban-able thread, and then that ban should be consistently enforced.
