Dear Joe....

Of course I'm normally in favour of free speech ( or free thread, whatever..) but I don't really care how many people are responding to it ( which is why I'm not adding to it here ) please get rid of the stupid "genitals" thread!!

All the best........Harry.

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Well, Harry, I thought long and hard about it, but decided to leave the thread alone. If Mudcatters hadn't responded to the thread, I most probably would have deleted it. Once you get a few responses, you have to deal with cries of censorship if you delete them. In the case at hand, I decided it wasn't worth the fuss. I make a guess on each situation I consider, and I'm sure my guesses are wrong sometimes. I am NOT consistent in what I do, because I don't want the trolls to be able to predict my actions.
If I delete a thread, I have to put up with the consequences - and one of the consequences is that it often goads trolls into more activity. If you're on the Internet, you have to put up with a bit of trolling. Maybe it's part of the price of the privilege of free speech.
We clamp down on trolls when they go overboard, but mostly we hope that people will ignore them and not feed their craving for attention.
-Joe Offer-