It's a bit like democracy, not a perfect system, but the best we've tried so far.

With the greatest of respect it is nothing like democracy (not even its supporters make that claim for it) – it simply does not work and it is the only thing tried so far.

If we only had one person making value judgements and censoring what they considered as not suitable on our forum and responding to complaints about what other's post – it would be bad enough but there are a number of people doing this and not communicating. The Memorial Thread and this one are but two examples of the way the current system works – or rather does not work because the clones do not consult together, and act as we are told they are supposed to.

I can't see that anyone would like any form of censorship but it is not the fact that I do not like this form of arbitrary unaccountable censorship (especially of the BS section) – the blind acceptance of which I also consider to be dangerous. But I have not just objected or made general statements - I have produced the evidence in this thread that has clearly and finally demonstrated that the system does not work. And that the way many people honestly believe it is supposed to work – is not actually what is happening. I have also made many positive alternative suggestions.

You may have expected this to be the start of a sensible debate on how things could be improved - but amazingly we still have people blindly supporting the current system and ignoring the evidence of how poorly it is performing, how counter-productive these measures have been and completely ignoring the separate section set aside for BS or off-topic postings……..Perhaps we can start this sensible debate now?

From the earliest days of our forum there were two main problems – neither confined to this forum. These were quite different problems but the same blunt instrument was and is still being used to combat them – as if they were the same problem.

The first problem –- was abusive postings. After requests to Max to do something – the Guest idea was born – and that solved that problem didn't it? We now appear to be in agreement that the only answer to this problem is to ignore and to encourage others to ignore these abusive postings. After all of this time, this still appears to be too difficult for many of our regular posters to manage.

The second problem was off-topic threads.

We now have a separate BS section where off-topic subjects are confined. This measure alone you may think would finally put and end to this second problem and for control? But no – even though anyone opening a BS thread will not surprisingly find BS – the need to control our contributions to our forum to a shape that is acceptable to our Witchfinder General's personal concept of order and control - continues - even in the BS section!

Like many other posters, the BS section does not really attract me very much but I can see no need to use exactly the same controls in this section as are thought necessary on the main forum. It has a useful function as a safety net – but it has to be permitted to operate as such. Perhaps anyone complaining on the Help forum (or elsewhere) that they are offended by anything they open on the BS section can simply be told not to open these threads? Then our clones could confine their censoring actions to the main forum or better still hand back their edit buttons to Max?

When janitors start to see their job as deciding what pupils to exclude - instead of keeping the school tidy – perhaps it is time to thank them for their efforts and say goodbye?