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Two classes of membership here?

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clean:
40hz, I kindly ask you if you could you comment on this site's policy / background or refer me to a page detailing these? As one of those posters who's done thousands of posts here, you might be best apt to inform me, and I'm sure many not-yet posters here ask themselves some of my questions, too, so clarification would certainly be welcomed by some people.

- Some people with many posts here often express very strong opinions and get away with it, they ain't banned and not even reprimanded - so it seems they have the "right" to do so

- I jumped in here, some days ago, not because of virtual kvm's, all the less so because of a given offering, but bec of another thread which treated censorship on bits, and MANY people here had been very astonished by this - this was TOO MUCH for me to not speak out, so I related my censorship history with bits, tongue-in-cheek, but the real reason was my having been TOTALLY CENSORED HERE: Some time ago, under another avatar, I had dared to make some posts where I had related bad experiences with software, and instead of triggering other posts on these subjects - perhaps with better experiences than mine -, I got deleted my posts within minutes, AND got my "account" deleted, i.e. no further posting possible, without getting the slightest explanation, which would have perfectly been possible since I had given my real mail account (which is certainly not the case with this current account that will probably be deleted within minutes from my clicking on the "Post" button.

- At the time, I had been totally surprised by that move, since I had thought to write about subjects of not too remote interest, and since I had not in any way been agressive, cynical or something in this order; on the other hand, this current "censorship at bits" thread here had made me laugh out loud, since people who do heavy censorship themselves shouldn't complain about them being censored elsewhere, right?

- You speak about "mouser" - who is "mouser", did he ever gave his name, or is anonymity important to him? I suppose he's the creator of this forum, right? Allow for another question: Why is he considered "God" or similar, here? Has he done exceptional things? Get me right, please, I'm not suggesting he didn't, I'm just in total absence of knowledge, so I'm asking.

- Then, is he funding this forum? It seems that for the financing of the servers, this forum relies upon public funding, by donations, so there might not be any (more) funding by "mouser", or is there? So here again, I haven't been successful in getting why "mouser" is considered "above it all", instead of this forum being sort of a democratic one.

- When I see the kind of speak of the "very frequent posters" here, addressing newcomers or "infrequent posters", I see sort of condescension and patronizing and which does NOT seem to be related to the respective content of the respective postings of either side, but simply to a "rule" or something that the former would have the "better rights" as the latter ones - of course, I don't discover this phenomenon in any thread and any exchange of posts, but it appears rather often and much more frequently than being coincidental or unintentionally.

- So what's going on here? What is the reason behind "unworthy" contributors here being treated like schoolboys were fifty years ago in civilised countries, especially in view of the fact that, as said, "regular" posters, the "masters" here, are allowed LOTS of "strong opinioning", so there does NOT seem to be a general rule of utmost complacency and attenuation, etc. that'd apply to everyone, far from that?

- What is the general idea behind this allowing to freely discuss things for a minority here when for everybody else, it's permanent self-censorship in order to avoid reprimands or even kick-out?

- This being a discussion forum with lots of participation, it seems to me that the questions I ask here are of some relevance, since for many a potential poster to such a forum, it's a question of adhering to such rules that need some explanation, or to shut up to begin with. There are many countries in this world where people ain't equal, and much worse, but for a forum where you'd instinctively presume equality among the participants, this blatant non-equality in the treatment different classes of participants are granting each other, mutually, seems astonishing and worthwile a little more info about the underlying reasons for all this than you can get by simple observation, hence my request to get some background to all this.

- Is there a chance go get this, or will the censor act first?

mouser:
Some time ago, under another avatar, I had dared to make some posts where I had related bad experiences with software, and instead of triggering other posts on these subjects - perhaps with better experiences than mine -, I got deleted my posts within minutes, AND got my "account" deleted, i.e. no further posting possible, without getting the slightest explanation, which would have perfectly been possible since I had given my real mail account
--- End quote ---

In the 7 years we have been online, I don't think we have ever deleted anyone's account for any other reason than them spamming advertising.  That's something we are pretty proud of around here.

Could you message me and let me know when this was supposed to have happened and some idea of what you were meant to have posted about and what username it was?  I will try to find the deleted posts and see what this is about.

When discussions start to go off the rails or become personal attacks we occasionally step in and try to get people to get back on topic or stop arguing politics or religion, and sometimes in the worst of cases lock the thread or move it to the public "Basement" forum section, and we occasionally edit a post to remove personal information like phone numbers, but we've never deleted posts just because we didn't like them.

It's always possible something happened by mistake or an over-eager moderator got you, or that your posts were incorrectly assumed to be spam.. but please do shed some light on what exactly was deleted.

As for me, my personal information is available on any site that shows registrar information for the domain, or on our About Us page.

I'm the one who started the forum, and I tend to be the one who makes "final" decisions if/when they are needed -- but they almost never are -- we tend to have very consistent agreement here among the users and the moderators about having a very light touch on the forum, except when it comes to spammers.


A note about different "classes" of membership.. You'll see under username labels that we actually do make a few different kinds of distinctions between users -- mostly between those who have donated to support the site and those that have not.  But we try very hard to treat everyone equally here.  If people are treated differently it's inevitably in two different ways:  First, we have higher expectations of long-time members who have made lots of posts to treat newcomers with respect and to act in a way that reflects well upon the site, and try to cut more slack to new people who don't know the informal etiquette of the site.  And second, it's inevitable that brand new members are scrutinized a bit more carefully for being spammers; the internet is filled with spammers and we delete a dozen accounts every day from bots that sign up just to spam the site -- that's the nature of the internet and it's part of what we have to do to keep the place clean.

cmpm:

lol....too funny, clean
even I know his name

unless $ is not related to the software on site, then it would not be "public funding"?
'above it all' hm... yeah he's in charge, it's his site, but more below it all
supporting the prime directive...lol

tomos:
hi clean,
good questions.
You make a lot of presumtions there though.

Brief-ish response (dont have enough time to go into too much depth): I think many of your questions are really for the forums moderators to answer.

Normally, the only stuff that is censored here is spam. OTOH there are quite a few moderators and on occasion they may get carried away.
There's certainly no "heavy censorship" here.

Some of your questions relate to individuals imo - if you or anyone else are treated in a patronising manner by an individual or individuals - that doesnt seem to me to be the responsibility of moderators, I dont think at any rate :-\
I know a vibe can get going in a forum where people might act similarly, I guess you could call it a collective thing. I havent noticed it here that much, occasionally all right.

Normally if I have a problem with someone, or something they said (and it's off-topic), I'll try and sort it out by PM (with some people that might be a waste of time. Judgement call). I guess everyone has their own way of approaching things.

I know you were involved in a thread lately where a lot of people (me included) reacted very strongly/over-reacted - that was because there has been a history with that topic there of what could only be called shouting matches - where nobody wins and everyone gets sick and tired of it.

LOL, again, I'd say there is always a group thing, but you are projecting some comments made by some individuals on the whole group or whole forum - I'm talking about your comments [about] mouser.
Mouser founded the site, his software is the main software here (bigger apps). I dont really have anything else to say there - I respect him a lot, he's no fan of censorship either ;-)

[posted without reading the other comments]

Renegade:
Well, tl;dr, but skimmed...

I think one of the problems is seeing a first post. There's a natural assumption that someone is spamming. It happens quite often. I can't count the number of times I've reported spam to moderators - usually fashion and shoe spam.

Just brush it off and jump into the fun~! :D

So, welcome to the party~! ;D

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