I (and others) obviously do not see that this it is an unreasonable request to make at all, and have stated their reasons.

And two years ago, those reasons were assessed by the people who would be doing the work. They decided then that your reasons were not compelling, so they said no and gave you their reasons. That was two years ago. You haven't changed your reasons since then, or provided one piece of new evidence. Why should they then have changed their opinion?

what 'harm' it would do to our forum?

"Harm" - none. "Good" - also none. You think different, but (as you've probably noticed) you've been unable to persuade the people who would have to increase the amount of their own time that they'd spend doing this. Since it's *their* assessment of how long *they* would be spending on it that counts, your opinion is irrelevant.

And your clear implication from that last post is that if it doesn't actively harm the forum then it should be compulsory. Now you could request that the moderators jump up and down on one leg and sing "Clementine" before they delete a post. It wouldn't harm the forum for them to do that, but they're pretty unlikely to do it.

As for "qualification", my only "qualification" is believing that they're doing this because they think it benefits the forum and doing it as lightly as possible (quote for that), as opposed to your assessment that the only purpose in doing it is either to play mind games with Mudcat posters (quote for that) or to conduct campaigns of victimisation against people they don't like (quote for that).

Graham.