For those of you new to forums the idea of censoring topics might seem an insignificant thing or not see a problem about it being a thing to joke about. To anyone who has been around forums for a while they will understand why this is NOT a joking matter.
This is particularly true for John, Bruce and I as one of the guiding principals of The Detecting Hub is that this is a free speech forum where we allow our members to debate and discuss topics free from interference.
Obviously slanderous or illegal comments, spam and serious bad language or abuse towards someone else will see us intervene. So far, in the last 2 years, we’ve only been forced to do this twice and both times it wasn’t a big deal with the members involved being fully understanding of the changes we made. Both members are still here and active too so we know we caused no offence. Whilst this doesn’t mean we are a soft touch (I can assure you we most certainly aren’t) it reflects the way in which you, our members, have treated the freedom we have happily given you. You don’t abuse our trust, which is what we were hoping for when we set this place up. In fact we were only saying to each other last week how lovely it is that we basically don’t have to moderate the forum content at all.
I needed to say all that because if you knew our history on another forum you would know that it is a sensitive topic for us. As moderators you must act within the rules the forum owner sets, even if you don’t agree with them. In the case of the hub we are joint owners we set our own rules and so the forum reflects our personal values. We are passionate about these values and anyone insinuating we don’t completely adhere to them is not just questioning the forum’s management style it is also questioning us, as individuals. So at all times anyone questioning these values will get a robust response with the humour button switched off and we will not apologise for that.
We’ll reset the teams humour button this evening and normal service will be resumed
