jimvanson Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 I'm pissed beyond words. Pissed that several idiots re; those elves, that represent the good that is suppose to be part of photo.net can dictate how one is think and thus express oneself. This being pissed came about when said elves hacked the first line of the critique I wrote for this weeks POW. The critique began something like "After a couple weeks of bland choices the elves strike back with...". I can not believe that said elves took offence to something like "bland choices". I've been a part of photo.net for several years but I will not continue to contribute if idiots can edit without reason, at will. Power corrupts but said blandness that the elves choose to surround themselves with blinds them to the fact...reply requested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briany Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 This seems like over-censorship to me. Had you been cursing them and rambling on and on, it might have been justified. But I don't think that your opinion, succinctly stated, needed censorship. However, I'm not an elf, I don't know their reasoning, and Maybe it could be argued that it wasn't relevant to the critique of the photo.. but then again, off-topic one-liners are nothing we haven't seen here before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimvanson Posted April 14, 2003 Author Share Posted April 14, 2003 Over Censorship, it is beyond that. The first comment anyone made on this photo's critique called the photo bland...the critique stays. I call the choices of the elves over the past few weeks rather bland and my comment gets hacked. There is no notification, no reasoning and no indication that editing has taken place. What next elves? Are you going to start manipulating patrons photo's because there is something in them you don't like? Change a little skin color, maybe? I'm really pissed that this can occur! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altaf Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 It is their site and they can delete anything they want to, get over it. You have no rights here other than what they want you to have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 I don't know which of the POW moderators edited your comment. However, what they are trying to do is to keep the discussion on the topic of the photo rather than on the policies or taste of the elves who select the POW. Your implied criticism of previous week's choices seems a relatively mild one, and I wouldn't have edited it myself, but technically it was not on-topic in the POW discussion. The moderators are human and make judgement calls and it isn't hard to find cases where they were too quick or too slow to edit comments. Even so, the POW is much better for being moderated than it would be otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 I don't moderate the critiques, just some of the Q&A forums. My policy there is not to edit anyone's words. If I think a post is inappropriate I usually delete all of it and invite the poster to resubmit - unless it's clearly just looking for trouble, when the invitation to resubmit isn't offered! In this thread Jim calls the elves "idiots" (...if idiots can edit without reason...), which really isn't a good way to start out. A voting process does tend to sometimes yield a "least offensive" image. Some elves may love an unconventional image, some may hate it, so it may get a mediocre score. A more connvential "good" image may outscore it because nobody hates it. If it's the second choice of everyone it may score higher than an image that gets a 50% top and 50% bottom scores. There's not much you can do about that except have just one person pick the images - and hope they don't pick the bland ones! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimvanson Posted April 15, 2003 Author Share Posted April 15, 2003 Brian & Bob...thxs for taking the time to answer for the actions of one who should not be in a position of responsibility. Said idiot, and I used the words idiot and pissed in the previously posts, posted here and not all over the POW site, purposely...I wanted to see if they too would be stricken. This person is dictating what we are allowed to read. By doing this he is molding opinion to the way he thinks. For him to take some trivial remark that I wrote about elves so seriously that he slashes it sounds to me as if they are someone whose opinion can not be trusted when a serious problem arises. We here are constantly goosing about those patrons that rate and don�t leave comments. That is just what this gnome is doing. He awarded my comment a 1+1 by chopping off its beginning and then like a bedouin sulks off into the night without a trace. That�s what pisses me off. He doesn�t like what I say, he retaliates. We are not talking about a serious incident that requires moderation. No. We�re talking about someone who may be staining everything that passes his desk. So what do I do about the way I perceive this? Do I stop contributing, pack up my gear, and hike off to photoSiG nirvana (nirvana if they ever get their 4 new servers working). I came to photo.net in 96 or 97. I used a different name/email back then and dropped it when I started using p645n. I only used photo.net for the forums until about 6 months ago when I tried digital and was able to post to the photo section. I believe I�m a contributor who gives more then they take. I believe that Phil envisioned a community made up of such contributors. I also believe that Phil (who thankfully now has a life) would be aghast over the ability one has to censor on this level. I think that he would feel as I do on this issue, after all is this not a case of...first they came for the Jews... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmj Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Jim, I think you're overreacting. We are not "retaliating", we are not "gnomes sulking off into the night like a bedouin" and we are not "staining everything that passes our desk." I understand you said these words in anger because of what happened, but please try to understand that this is not a sinister plot to shape photo.net to someone's personal ideas. As explained by Brian, moderators attempt to keep the discussion focussed on the photograph. And, as far as I know, we are all volunteers who may have precious little time to do this. If you got hurt in the process, then I can only say that it is very unfortunate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimvanson Posted April 15, 2003 Author Share Posted April 15, 2003 Patrick...it is not the we's I have a problem but rather one. You have someone with the power to dictate policy running around controlling what people read. He does so with absolute immunity, he can not be called to task; in fact most people would never know he was around pulling the strings. So my problem is with that impunity. So add that to my belief that if you edit the public should be informed. I�m past the point of caring he did it to me, I�m stuck on the point that he�ll, you�ll, we�ll keep doing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Jim - I still think you are way overreacting here. "First they came for my POW comments...then they came for me" just doesn't really apply and it's stretching credibility a bit. Actually you don't know it's just one moderator. Maybe a team of moderators working in secret are deleting 50% of what gets posted. Since you never see it, you'll never know. You'll just have to take my word that that isn't what's happening! I probably wouldn't have moderated out your comments, but I'm not about to 2nd guess moderators who spend all their time moderating gallery comments and try to keep things focused on PHOTOGRAPHY. They are far more aware than I am what type of comment tends to start flame wars and they are in a much better position to decide when the benefits of moderation outweigh the problems it may cause. At least you've brought this to their attention, which is good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think27 Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Jim -- What happens when one person starts going off about "elves choices" -- the forum becomes a discussion about whether the "elves" are right or wrong. It no longer becomes a discussion about the image. There is more latitude on the POW forum now than there was a while ago -- as Brian wisely loosened the restrictions (heavy handed ones that were put in place originally by Phil - by the way) about going "off topic" or making repetative comments. <p>The difference between the POW forum and other forums is that it is a high profile page and as such becomes a battle ground of opinion/ego/and oft times very nasty comments. Where other forum's can have more latitude - I have found that the POW page goes off into never-never land quite easily as it is viewed by sooo many members. In fact, I spent about 2 hours fixing the page today as it became very inflammatory to the point that the POW recipient wants to pull his images from PN. <p> I have found that there is so much editing and deleting to do that it is not easy to respond to everyone when an edit or delete is done. Also I have noticed that when an edit is done with a "moderator explination" -- it causes more harm than good as people start to discuss censorship -- even though the author of the edited comment agrees with the change!<p>When a delete is done - there is a convienent little box to offer a reason. The author is usually contacted and an explination is given. When an edit is done -- You would have to go into the person's home page - get the e-mail address and write a note. We are volunteers and it can get very time consuming. As to fairness - you walk a fine line. However, I must point out that I have a ton of e-mails from everyone from Tony Dummit to Doug Burgess and yes, even Marc Guggenhiem - all of whom have been subject to edit/deletes that tell me I do a good job and they agree with my decisions. I'm sorry that you felt otherwise. I hope you understand that there is lots of time/experience that goes into the decisions that are made based on the past. You'd be surprised how easily the POW page can get out of control. I like to catch potential hot spots before I end up having to spend 2 hours going through every comment to keep continuity in a thread that has gone astray. Hope this helps. Feel free to e-mail me if you'd like to dicuss this further... By the way, if you had said that other POW images left you cold but this one was great...That would have stayed.. All opinions are respected on the POW page. If you read the guidelines it does say no elf bashing along with many other rules for posting.. Cheers.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michelle_cox Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Just a thought... I agree that, with this being a private site, the moderators have the right to edit whatever they want. The thing that bothered me in this is that it seems as though a comment was partially edited with no notice to that effect. By doing that, you're not just deleing what someone said; you're changing it. So the person has their name attached to something that isn't the same as what they wrote. If it's possible within the confines of the system, perhaps when a moderator edits a comment, a notice could automatically be added at the bottom to the effect of "This commented moderated on DATE at TIME". That gives notice that the comment may not completely reflect the original author's intent without adding more work for the moderators. Yes, there's the issue of people starting to discuss censorship within the thread, but those could simply be deleted outright as they would be completely off topic. In addition, if it's possible, having the system automatically fire off an email to the person with a link to their comment would be good. Then the person could review the comment and decide if it still reflected their meaning and delete it if it did not. Both of these suggestions would require no extra work from the moderators (other than stamping out any censorship discussion), but would require some extra programming. Anyway, that's my $.02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think27 Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 If a comment states: <p> <em>I don't agree with so and so and I think he needs a new pair of glasses...look again. The background is actually perfect for this subject and the technique used is etc etc etc....</em> <p>I delete the part that says "....I think he needs a new pair of glasses...look again...." and I leave the fact that he disagrees with so and so and the meat of the comment remains the same. How does that "change" the comment? It doesn't really. The author still makes the main point which is his/her opinion. I just take out the inflammatory attack. I'm very careful not to alter the part that pertains to the image - thus the meaning of the comment. <p>As to making some sort of statement with a date stamp or something that something has been edited? What a mess that page would be ;-) <p> Furthermore, I think it is much less upsetting to members that we are not following the original guidelines which said that if ANY PART of the comment went against guidelines -- the whole thing would be deleted. Sure the commenter could, would, and does get invited to re-post (hmmm - provided they have a working and valid e-mail address which many people don't) -- but then the response comes in later in the post and looses it's orginal place. <p>I have found that any time there are multiple "moderator edit" notations on a page.... 1)The member that was "edited" feels badly because he/she was edited and no one knows why - it almost carries a negative mark against thier contribution. 2) The very "moderator edit" remark or notation is a distraction from the members comments and critiques. <p>This, of course, is only my opinion and since I've gotten many e-mails from members saying thanks for the good job.... I think I'm handling things in the best way possible with the amount of time I can volunteer. However, if enough people are unhappy -- I'm open to suggestions. I have not had that indication thus far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
domenico_foschi Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Mary , you should ask for a job in the Bush administration , your talent is wasted in this site . I have tried to answer to your e-mail Mr. Brian mottershead , but seems like evrytime i try to send th reply it comes back to me . So , here it is and i hope you are going to read . TITLE : POC ( Prisoners of Censorship ) I insist , i want to delete the images from the site . It is not the criticism of people who do not like my work that bothers me , but the malice of some individuals . Also i do not approve of your policy of altering or deleting altogether posts . Has happened yesterday, has happened today , and has happened in the past , especially regarding some threads of how some photographers viewed the conflict in Iraq . To see the threads deleted from one day to another , ( one in particular that was evolving in a very civil and educating discussion ) , has been a testimony of how narrow is the concept of democracy for too many individuals, and how dangerous is editing ( and how legal is it ? ) . Yes , I know that it doesn't have anything to do with Large Format photography , but a photographer , an artist, is also a human being and what happens in the world has an influence in his or her work . If you have appreciation for art you will understand that the raw material for an artist is LIFE and what happens around him- herself . But then again , the bottom line is what really counts ..... Please let me know how to delete the remaining images , best regards Domenico Foschi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Domenico, you could have deleted your photos in protest at the moderation policies at any time in the past. You didn't. In fact, you could have refrained from uploading them in the first place, but you continued to post photos and to participate in the forums. Now that you have the spotlight, you protest. Too bad we gave you the spotlight. So be it. The reason you can't delete the POW is a technical one: it didn't occur to the programmer who wrote the photo deletion code that the POW photo might be deleted, and there are constraints in the database that won't let it be deleted until other things, like the POW discussion, are deleted first. I will need to remove the photo by hand. As for your comments on censorship on the site: last month (March 2003) there were 41,000 posts in the forums, and around 35,000 other types of comments, mostly on photos and presentations. Fewer than 50 of these were deleted or edited. All in all, less than 1 post in a thousand was subject to some action by a moderator. Nevertheless, we regularly must defend ourselves against "censorship". Please read the Terms of Use. The forums and other sections of this site are moderated, which means that the site appoints moderators to ensure that posts and comments are on-topic and are not abusive. As the statistics above show, the moderators exercise an extremely light hand, on the whole. However, if anybody has the notion that photo.net is a site where you can post anything you want, you are misinformed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 "It is not the criticism of people who do not like my work that bothers me , but the malice of some individuals." - Domenico Foschi. <p> Great... I'm very sad to see Domenico pull down his work, but I am glad to see he posted this sentence before leaving. When was the last time that I told Photo.net that verbal abuses would kill this site...? I read Domenico's POW yesterday, and I can say for sure that I agree about "the malice of some individuals". Some made intelligent and at least polite negative comments about the POW, but some were obviously there to be insulting and to show off. Which is why I have posted yesterday the rudest comment ever in the POW forum - thanks a lot to Mary for deleting it, by the way... <p> For as long as photo.net will tolerate such behaviors, my participation on this site will be NIL. I had it. <p> There are on this site people who have insulted others on numerous occasions and who are still allowed to proceed with their malicious actions. <p> Not only do I support, generally speaking, Mary's strict moderation of the POW forum, but I would suggest this: if anyone posts 1 insulting comment - which is very different from posting a critique -, he gets a warning. At the second insulting post, a 2nd warning. At the 3rd, he gets bounced off the site. <p> WHY THE H*** WOULD ANYONE ALLOW PEOPLE TO BE RUDE FOR THE SAKE OF BEING RUDE OR TO BOOST THEIR EGO THAT WAY, DAY AFTER DAY, ON PHOTO.NET ? That really beats me. <p> So, now we are losing what I considered to be a great photographer. We lost at least 2 more for the same reasons in the past. Let's go ahead and lose them all. <p> The trouble is that when someone has a globe on his shoulders and behaves the way he did this week, there is certainly no hope that regular members would do any better. And I find truly fantastic that someone with 0 uploads, 0 comments and 0 ratings left on the site can post the rudest thing in the POW forum and still be a member of this community the next day. CONGRATS ! <p> It's not less censorship that you need, it's MORE censorship, and to kick out for good those who take pleasure in being rude. Now this being said, and for as long as photo.net doesn't do anything to bounce verbal abusers off the site, I'll stay out of all discussions. As simple as that. <p> "If anybody has the notion that photo.net is a site where you can post anything you want, you are misinformed." said Brian. <p> Well, no, Brian. All the contrary. If people have this impression, it's because it is true that people can post anything they want. All they risk is to have their comment deleted, and that's why people allow themselves to be rude. As I said before, if there is no jail and no punishment for those who break the rules, people will break rules. Don't just blame them, blame yourself for letting it happen. <p> Regards, and all the best with your site. I'll be back the day I'll see that abuses are under control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 There are users on this site who would be considered "expensive". By that I mean they consume a totally disproportionate use of moderator s' and administrators' time either by disrupting forums or by causing large amounts of email complaints to be sent to photo.net. Frankly, some of those users we can afford to lose. Some have been banned from the site already. Some have been suspended. I'm not suggesting any of this applies to anyone participating in this thread, just pointing out that the situation exists and action is taken from time to time. This isn't, and shouldn't be, a common event. I'm going to use the word "censor" below even though "moderate" or "edit" is a more approprite term since people get much more upset by censorship than moderation or editing. If I pick the most pejorative term, people can't complain I'm minimizing the activity! We can't win. If we don't "censor" people scream. If we do "censor" people scream. Like Goldilocks everyone wants "just the right amount of censorship" and, of course, the censorship to apply to "those other people", not themselves, and mostly to opinions they disagree with. Some people may chose to leave the site. That's unfortunate but it happens. There's only so much the moderators and administrators can do. You simply can't please everyone all the time, and if you try too hard to do that you'll end up running around in circles and pleasing nobody. The squeeky wheel should not always get all the grease, especially when grease is in short supply. All you can do is make the best site possible for the most people. As long as more people are joining than are leaving, photo.net is probably doing OK. We don't want anyone to want to leave, but we have to face the fact that that will happen, accept it, and carry on using our limited resources to try to make the site as rewarding as possible for those who chose to stay and support the site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Marc's comment illustrates perfectly the dilemma which Bob describes. Marc is one of the many people who would like us to delete many more photo comments and ratings than we do, or prevent them from being made in the first place. We regularly receive proposals, for example, that "unqualified" people shouldn't be able to comment on the work of the good photographers. Unfortunately, we do have a trickle of excellent photographers who leave the site because they cannot abide some of the stupid comments that are made on their work and that of others whom they respect. This is moderated site, but it is lightly moderated. Even if we wanted to moderate it more heavily, we couldn't do so because of the sheer volume of posts. We don't administer tests to people before they are allowed to comment and rate photos. You don't have to prove that you are a cultivated, reasonable person to post here. And it does not seem that stupidity is a great impediment to obtaining an ISP account. That means that if an excellent photographer posts photos in the Gallery, he can expect that his work might, and probably will, attract the comments and ratings of some idiots, especially if his work is not mainstream or conventional. Some of these comments will come to the attention of the moderators, and might be deleted, although stupidity alone will not get a comment deleted. So, if people do not have a thick enough skin to be able to shrug off the comments and ratings of stupid and malicious people, I would suggest that they might not want to post their photos on the Internet for comment by anyone with an ISP account. In Domenico's case, it would appear there is absolutely no way that photo.net could win. He takes down his photos simultaneously protesting the malice of some of the comments and censorship by the moderators. In fact what seems to have prompted his departure is that Mary deleted a malicious comment or two about his POW, as well as his response, which was in kind. He reposted his response to the deleted posts, which Mary deleted again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 I perfectly understand what you are saying, but obviously, you have both missed the suggestion made above. Here it is again, cut and pasted for you, just in case you decide to reconsider this "We can never win"...: <p> "I would suggest this: if anyone posts 1 insulting comment - which is very different from posting a critique -, he gets a warning. At the second insulting post, a 2nd warning. At the 3rd, he gets bounced off the site." <p> Now what can possibly be wrong with this suggestion...? The fact that some people won't like it...? Why wouldn't they like it...? Because they don't want to be forced to be polite...? They can still say exactly what they want, but they would then have to watch the way they express it, that's all... This is not censorship, this is simply making sure that a minimal level of courtesy prevails in all debates. <p> There just can't be anything wrong with that. I don't understand how you could possibly prefer to delete the same people's posts times and times again, while people get annoyed and while others even leave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougityb Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Marc, Welcome back! If Photonet would leave just one POW unmoderated it would be vividly evident that moderation is a necessity. That the need for it is an issue is a PR problem, one of educating the membership. The true question is where to draw the line. Is it possible to include in the confirmation page a strong, bold type notice to the effect that the POW is moderated and certain comments deemed off-topic, rude, etc, will be subject to censorship? Even a, I don't know what it's called, but a sniffer that detects certain words and indicates that the inclusion of these words will subject the comment to intense scrutiny. The same way the code filters out "font" and "div" tags. Marc's punishment system, I guess it would work to a degree, but should only be applied to the POW, maybe. Let's face it: Photonet is not here to change human nature, even if it could. Just like the proverbial Poor, there will always be idiots, brats, babies, sourpusses, jackasses, saps and bullies among us, together with those who struggle at written self-expression. There are many ways to respond to being censored: Glaring over my shoulder with grunts and complaints as I run away with all my pictures is one extreme. Rewriting my thoughts with more acceptable language is on the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Marc, my suggestion would be that you might invest the energy you expend on advising us on how to run our web site by starting your own. If you base your site in the U.S., you can probably get a colocation agreement with sufficient bandwidth for, oh, $3K per month. (Actually, according to many "experts" in our forums we are idiots for overpaying so much. Send them an email: they might let you in on their secrets.) For probably less than $40K, you could get all the hardware you need, less maybe if you get some good deals on eBay. If you like, Philip Greenspun and ArsDigita made most of the software that runs photo.net open source, and there are many places where you can get the source on the net. Or if you want something a little less idiosyncratic and more mainstream, consider an Apache, php, and mySQL solution. All of that is available for free, and lots of people have developed forum engines. You might then find it easier than we do to get people to help you with the software. By the way, ff you do go with Oracle as the database, like we have, you should plan some more money for software licenses. You should maybe put your photography business on hold for a couple of years, since you won't have a lot of free time. Then all you need to do is round up some people who will work a few hours per day for free to moderate your forums and Gallery section and help you run your site. It sounds like you would be interested in a more active moderation policy than we have here, so you should probably plan on, say, thirty or forty volunteer moderators. After those few years, you might find the correct combination of features and moderation policies that will result in significantly more than the 7 million hits per day that photo.net gets. You might do better than 3 million photo views and 50,000 visitors per day or the 75,000 text posts or 35,000 photo posts per month, not to mention hundreds of thousands of photo ratings. You might do all this while achieving a higher quality of information, commentary, and photography than this site has. Maybe you will even get people like yourself to become subscribers of your site. Perhaps you will discover that a heavier hand on the banning button will be the key to achieving all these goals, but I suspect that there will be some other key ingredients as well. Once you are successful you will have the satisfaction of having a big photography web site, although you probably still won't be making as much money as you do now from photography. On the other hand, things might not turn out that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 I'm sorry. I wrongly assumed that this forum called "Help & Feedback" was meant for photonetters to make suggestions. Since no help and feedback is needed, I obviously shouldn't have posted in this thread. My apologies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Suggestions are always welcome. However this situation is a bit like the coach of the Dallas Cowboys getting advice from fans. There are 10,000 "Monday morning quarterbacks" who can tell him exactly what he did wrong last week and what he needs to do to win next week. Of course they don't have to do it, their ass isn't on the line if they fail and they don't know what the long term game plan is or any of the other details the coach has to deal with every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
domenico_foschi Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Let me intrude here for the last time . In my behaviour there wasno contrdicction. Brian you say that from one side i wanted to pull out my images because of the malicious critiques , and on the other side i complain about the censorship and editing that has been going on . I don't see any contraddiction . I never asked you to cancel those provocative comments , i never complained with you about those , even though some of those comments where hurtful i will fight for the freedom of those people ( and mine ) to say what they want . I decided to go because i didn't want to go through that , If there was money involved i would have stuck there : - ) , I wasn't going to subject my work to the ridicule of some people What i complained about was you censoring and editing of all the comments and my replies . Mary Ball said that she edits sentences that my cause a fire . That is a little too much , i feel . Here we are sanitizing a little too much , and the ideas of the people who partecipate are being distorted at best . Where is it going to stop ? I understand that you are walking in a landmine , and i do not envy you in this instance , but i beleieve that censorship at this level is straight from Orwell . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnlund Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 I prefer the level of discussion on photo.net to other sites because of the moderating. It's not quite as chaotic and flame-ridden as Usenet, but it's not as restrictive and stiff as a print magazine, either. Sometimes I wonder about the reasons for a particular instance of editorial intervention, but I can't imagine a system of moderating where there wouldn't be differences of opinion. It's unfortunate that even well intentioned participants often need to notice and guess about why a posting/thread gets removed to learn the finer points of the moderators' policy, but I understand that this is due to a heavy workload.<br/> <br/> The very selection of <b>the POW is an editorial decision in the first place</b>. If it weren't the highest user rated photo would be the POW, right? (Actually, that could be a neat contrasting co-feature for the front page.) Is editing the POW "letters to the editor" for topicality so horrible? There's nothing wrong with controversy and debate, but when a high-profile front-page section becomes hostile it de-rails discussion and deters participation from a broad audience.<br/> <br/> I�m amazed by the attacks the elves endure. They're not perfect, but I admire it when they respond to open hostility and sarcasm with good manners. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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