Ron - Our bouncers are simply posters like you and I (except the masked ones) who were encouraged to have a say in the way our forum appears. All posters to our forum were encouraged to see and support our forum in a similar way – even if they were not all favoured with edit buttons..

Rather like the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm - posession of this edit button seems to lead them to now consider themselves to be more equal than others.

It is not a question of our host making changes or not. I question why any 'moderator' who is not seen to be committed to supporting our host's continuing open invitation for the public's contributions and making this work - would now wish to continue.

For there must be some question if they can be seen by our forum to be making their best efforts for our forum. It may be thought that those who openly call for a change to memebers only posting may have an agenda of their own.

I suspect that if our host considers this to be a minority concern on our forum - he may well see no good reason to make any changes. But it is difficult for anyone to tell if this is really the case. As any poster who is seen to post anything but uncritical support of our 'moderators' - is considered to making a personal judgement of the individuals concerned (even the anonymous ones).

Again you tend to support the principle of 'moderation' as an immovable 'done-deal' - whatever its effects - when my concern is more with measuring the effectiveness or the counter-productive results of this particular brand of 'moderation'.

It seems that where there may be choice between obtain the same result through its imposition and other methods - the former will always be the preferred option – whatever the reaction. As think the following example demonstrates.

Please combine threads?.