Actually sometimes I wish there were MORE censorship here, some way to weed out banality and insipid attempts at humor that aren't funny; some way to filter out the intentional lure, the troll, the gouging and the come-ons which are meant only to embroil others; some way to block the inanity and kill posts which are intended to distress others.

But that would not be the Mudcat, would it?

No and it would not be the real world either. Many of us would probably agree with your aims but it is a knee-jerk' - 'wish list' if an understandable one.

Achieving any of it - is not done by a easily stated wish for MORE censorship. As in practical terms this means placing your trust in someone elses judgement to remove just the things YOU don't want and leave the things YOU do.

That is what I mean by censorship just creating and adding to the problems.

Unless you give-up and go elsewhere - there is no easy short-cut to you making the choices on the forum. To you deciding what to open. To you deciding what to ignore or what to respond to. Inviting censorship to do this for you - just means that you are denied more and more of these choices. And there WILL be more censorship you will find you may not agree with - as it is like flood-water - you can say when the level is plenty high enough for your liking - but the water tends to keep-on rising anyway.

The answer to all this is simple and many posters simply get on and do it. Perhaps more posters (and our volunteers) can be encouraged to follow the fine example that these posters are currently setting.

You ignore what is not to your taste. You don't ever respond (especially in kind) to obvious provocation and you do not ever encourage others to do this. There is nothing funny in doing this - the idea that there is any humour in this - probably causes of most of the forum's problems.