Where's the Glasgow teenager thread gone and why?

[gilmore]

Personally, I would rather see more moderation in moderators than less. I don't mind if threads get heated. I am all grown up and can decide for myself whether I want to continue following a thread that has evolved onward to another topic, as are the usual courses of conversations in real life, or has generated expressions of definite opinion, or whatever. But I would prefer to be able to make that decision myself rather than to have it made for my by some one looking out for my best interests, as they see them.

We all have different things that push our buttons. I have read posts on here that I have found deeply offensive, but which did not seem to have raised a collective cyber eyebrow. On the other hand I have seen what I think of as quite innocuous posts by myself and others deleted and no reason given.

Nor do I mind reading about the same or similar ideas in different threads in different fora, and see no need to consolidate them. One of the interesting things about conversation is that it can go anywhere, some appealing to me and some not. If you were hosting a party and a common topic of conversation about some current event was cropping up here and there among the guests, would you insist that they all stop having separate conversations and focus on one, and that in a room far from the one you had come in on? I think not.

For me it matters little whether I agree with a post, or whether the poster is angry or sad or elated or dispondent or whatever, as much as whether I find the post interesting and/or informative. To me Nanook's are that, the latter. Threads about what silly, giggling, teenaged girls had to say upon seeing a kilted man at the mall for the first time are not. I find them quite uninteresting, I do not read them, and if it was up to me I would delete every one of them. But that's just me. Others have different tastes. And that's what it boils down to: personal taste and opinion. And the more tastes and opinions that are made to feel welcome, the richer the experience of coming here will be.

I have not looked, but there must be some way to killfile posters whom one has developed such antipathy toward that one cannot read without becoming apoplectic. If that ever happens to me, I would much rather decide for myself not to read that person's posts than to have that decision made for me.

I remember the days of Usenet quite well, and their flame wars, etc. On the other hand I have had experiences with boards that were micromanaged and heavily moderated. People stop posting on them, and they become less and less interesting, with the same fewer and fewer people saying the same sorts of tired, worn out, boring yet approved things over and over again. Fewer people seem to read them as well. They just sort of shrivel up and die.

Of course there is a middle way between these two extremes, and the point I am trying to make (and I do have one) is that in both real life and online it is far easier to stifle and stop a conversation than it is to encourage a lively and informative one.