Well, since I believe strongly about this, let me reluctantly point out, and I mean reluctantly, for reasons that will become obvious, that although this site looks pretty robust, it would actually be easy to wreck it, if we did not have some rules that are implied. It would be very possible to sabotage this site with obscene thread titles and threatening titles containing people's names within the space of half an hour, just by posting and reposting. This could go on indefinitely, without legal recourse. People would just get disgusted and leave. I have seen this happen elsewhere. I cannot imagine the owner of this site putting up with it (if you look in the upper right hand corner of this site you will see the word "magazine"). It is an owned site, managed with exemplary style: it is only a free space as long as we play by certain assumptions, most of them dependent on our assessment of the decency of those who run the site for us.
What is being kept off this site? I don't know. Maybe the owners of this site have been lucky. I ran an environmental site for a year which was plagued with "contributions" to discussions "advocating" hard core pornography, on line virtual sex, fake invitations to discussion groups to discuss the merits of "art" photographing children, and so on. You can lose your innocence about free forums pretty fast that way.
yours, Peter T.