That was not a song that was deleted, The Shambles. It was a taunt masquerading as a song. And it was an invitation for others to contrubute their own taunts and insulting verses.

Thanks Carol, for responding to the issues raised.

You may well be right - but now has the song has been deleted there is no evidence to support your value judgement that posters are currently encouraged to make on the worth of another's poster's contributions. It may well have been an invitation to others to contribute to the thread, as you say but this does not mean that folk cannot decide for themselves whether they wish to take-up this invitation or not. They are not thought to be able to make this choice for themselves, and now they cannot decide, for the decision has been made for them, with this value judgement and imposed editing action.

I am just asking for an example to be set that does not first encourage this us to judge the worth of each other's posting and secretly report it to Joe or Jeff. But one that simply encourages us all to address what is said to respond or to ignore it. I think you may accept that this current example and inconsistent editing action and some poster's frustration with this - may at least be partly responsible for this song being posted in the first place?

But I am not defending the posting of the song, am just evidencing that this instance, (that Joe refers below) was Joe excusing imposing deletion on this song, as being a straight-out attack - needing 'no value judgement' and different to Catspaw's post here that did seemingly require this value judgement. A post that by Catspaw's own admission was an intentional offensive personal attack! For without the value judgement - that you and Joe both made upon its worth - the song in this thread was just one for (possible) addition to the DT.

"I don't make value judgements on stuff like that. If it's an attack and somebody calls it to my attention, I'm obligated to delete it. Sorry. -Joe Offer- "

And the following from the HELP forum thread linked to below.

I'm an equal-opportunity deleter. I don't care who's attacking whom. I don't go scouring the Forum for personal attacks, but if I find it, I delete it. { the quote goes on the mention the names of posters whose posts he has both deleted]. I never doubt Joe's good intentions but perhaps whether he is an equal-opportunity deleter or not – is not a value judgement for him to make - but it is perhaps one for Max and us?

http://help.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2684&messages=2

The following quotes demonstrate that our volunteers claim their fight to protect us from personal attacks does not protect us from personal attacks from our volunteers - like the following selected examples from Joe Offer.
Shambles, go whine somewhere else, or maybe we should start threads about you and the sheep or something.

But Shambles believes in this sort of thing, so I think that maybe this would be a good opportunity to smear his reputation. Shambles, I'm sick of you and your shit.

Ah, Shambles - we make an exception for you, since you seem to think it's a good thing to have personal attacks. We want to keep you happy, after all. Your whining is so annoying.

I am sure that value judgements will be made that I really deserve far worse (a point also made by Joe). But it is not the nature of the attack but where it originates. Is this kind of thing really the best example for our volunteers to be setting? If abusive personal attacks are supposed to be discouraged and the prevention of this is the whole justification for their existence and for their imposed editing actions – perhaps it is not the very best example and that it is time to set a better one?

Just the smallest indication of even a little movement towards this - would be a welcome start.