Sometimes, I wonder if people will ever understand the psychology of this issue.

I think it's fair to say that censorship is very rare here. We almost never delete posts from registered members, because social pressure makes the registered Mudcatters behave fairly well. Take Bobert for example. He started a thread that didn't make any sense ot me, and I posted a reply that said so. Other people posted responses that said they liked or didn't like what I said, and the matter moved on, controlled by social pressure and the Forum of Public Opinion. His behavior and mine are both controlled somewhat by social pressure, so we tend to behave in a reasonably civil manner.

Our anonymous Guests are a different matter, however. By their anonymity, they have attempted to make themselves immune from social pressure and public opinion. They enjoy saying whatever they like without taking responsibility for it. Pene and Max and I generally know who they are, but nobody else does. Therefore, it is difficult to ensure their civil behavior by the normal means of social interaction.

We also have very little problem from unregistered people who identify themselves consistently. They may not be registered, but they take responsibility for their words by using their name or a consistent nickname. Their posts are seldom deleted (with one notable exception, a certain teacher from the Los Angeles area who believes he has a sacred obligation to harass people and make them miserable).

So, the problem is with guests who use no name or a variety of names. An obvious solution would be to control them or to bar them completely. We don't want to do that, because it's a lot of work for us, and it has the effect of inhibiting the freedom of discussion of the entire Forum.

I guess I can say with some certainty that we do not intend to require people to register before they can post messages. However, if we continue to have problems with obnoxious guests, we may screen new threads and maybe messages submitted by guests, so there might be a delay of an hour or so before their messages get posted. We screen all submissions to our Links page like that now, because we had too many duplicate links posted.

I would like to notify our anonymous Guests that their posts are subject to greater scrutiny than those from people who identify themselves. I'd also like to say that if problems continue, we will have to do something to control them. I receive a lot of complaints about the conduct of our anonymous friends, and I feel obliged to respond to those complaints. If you anonymous Guests feel persecuted, tough luck. The general opinion is that people who post here should identify themselves in some consistent manner, even if they don't register.

-Joe Offer-