RE: UKHA Overmoderated?

["Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@xxxxxxx>]

> So, I'm not pushing for abolition of moderation just a slightly more
> targetted application.

No worries Philip no offence was taken or indeed even, I thought, implied
by
your post.

We do try our best to balance the opinions of the few with the many and
it's
not easy, unfortunately the quickest way to kill something is to ask for
the
thread to be closed most often and that normally stops it getting out of
hand. It's a bummer, I hate doing it and I try not to, as do all the other
moderators and I really wish I/we didn't have to but sometimes it's really
the only option for an instant result.

Unlike many forums and newsgroups we don't arbitrarily shut threads, ban or
moderate members or totally stop the OT stuff in fact, in a lot of cases we
encourage it, just browse through my own posts! ;)

But that goes back to the whole "self-moderation" thing which I
believe in
and I will ask the same again as Graham and others have asked in the past,
please, if you are responding to one of these "emotive" threads
read your
post before hitting send and try to think what you would make of it if
*you*
received that post.

The only thing that gets me is personal attacks, I don't accept it when
it's
*serious* in real life, in IRC and I don't accept it here either and I
don't
think that's unreasonable. When it gets to that stage then immediate
decisive action is taken and I don't think many people would disagree with
that, especially if you happen to be on the receiving end of it!

The whole "what HA software" thing was revived in another thread,
quite
rightly, by Graham only without the licence discussion and there was no
issues and that was perfectly acceptable and very much on-topic. The only
reason the other thread was closed was that, like a lot of threads, if you
don't close it, someone else comes in and pitches in and it all starts
again. That can still happen if someone doesn't read the whole thread
before
posting a reply but, again, we all just generally let it slide.

I really don't think we can be much fairer and as moderators we can't win,
you always end up p***ing someone off.

K.