I do wish people would stop climbing all over my analogy and go off and build one of their own......*Smiles*

Of course, when you put graffiti on a wall you obscure the previous graffiti. If someone doesn't like what's up there, they don't need to try to get someone to go cleaning the wall, they can just write something over it. It's all essentially temporary, provisional.

The Mudcat doesn't work that way. Unless it gets removed, it stays there. Someone paints a swastika on the wall, its there for good and all, unless it gets formally scrubbed out by Joe and Co.

The point I was trying to make here (and obviously failing badly) was that on our forum, perfectly acceptable posts get rubbed off along with the graffiti. When they have the bad luck simply to share company with 'offending' posts in threads that are deleted entirely, because our volunteers can be bothered to delete only the graffiti.

But in a world covered in graffiti and an internet that surrounds us with all manner of unwelcome things, yes it would be nice to find a place where we did not have to put up with any of this. But as always, there is a price to be paid for this illusion. Even with automatic filters - there is a danger of filtering out the good along with the bad and relying on the personal judgement of other human beings to do the filtering - is just as problematic.

Seeing swastikas may not be very pleasant but we do know the implications of such things and not seeing them or filtering them out, does not mean these things don't exist. We also well know that these sorts of things are mainly done with the sole intention to shock and cause a reaction. But knowing this does not appear to prevent us from obliging with this very reaction. A reaction that does not prevent it, but that only ensures that the same childish attention seeking tactic will be used over and over again.   

But the main diffence with grafitti on a wall is surely that even if if should be left alone to stay there uncensored - the 'offending' post is contained in a thread, on a discussion forum, on a website and on the internet? You don't have to log on, use that site, go to the forum or to open that thread. And if you do open it and you do then choose to read it, you can choose to respond, not respond or you can ignore it.