Bryan
04-06-2009, 12:13 PM
This forum has, since almost day one, stood on and operated under a series of principles that are outlined in our forum guidelines. The intent of the guidelines is to allow for public discussion and networking that will advance the pursuit of liberty. It is unfortunate but a complete reality however that unmoderated political discussion will always devolve to the lowest level of political discourse possible. This has been shown and seen time and time again, all over the internet. One of the more recent and notable cases was the libertyforum.org website, a site that one day had great promise but its lack of moderation ultimately lead to it losing all potential value until the owner finally pulled the plug on the whole operation.
One could consider this to be an "anarchy" form of ownership. Some web owners prefer to be hands-on and will deal with problems by taking moderation action in whatever way it suites them, while this can keep things in order, it eventually falls into what parallels as a dictatorship. There are obvious problems with this.
On a number of occasions some users start some discussion thread asking for members to vote if some other particular member should have some action taken against them, be it they be banned or otherwise. These threads are both problematic for the community spirit and also miss the point of what we are about. The idea with these threads is that the fate of members should be dictated by a vote as in a democracy. As we should all know here however, democracy is just a form of mob rules and will eventually devolve to the lowest demands of the mob.
This brings us back full circle to what we are about- we are modeled after a Republic, being "ruled" by law where our forum guidelines provide the basis for our operational "law". Does it work? Yes! I have even had conversations with others on the site staff where they were not happy with some posted content but it had to stand based on the guidelines. Are things perfect? No. While we want our framework to be as solid as possible, it is clear that the guidelines are not perfect, nor is the application of them by the admin/mod team. I think it would be wonderful to strive for perfection and while we do want to get better, the reality is that this is just a web forum and there is an enslaving force spreading in the real world that we must fight- so our ambitions here must be tempered to some optimal level in this fight.
In any case where someone has some moderation action taken against them it needs to be based on an application of our principles regardless of its popularity or how it will effect the forum. If anyone holds a moderation action in contention there is a process in place to deal with this as found here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=22
My best to everyone.
One could consider this to be an "anarchy" form of ownership. Some web owners prefer to be hands-on and will deal with problems by taking moderation action in whatever way it suites them, while this can keep things in order, it eventually falls into what parallels as a dictatorship. There are obvious problems with this.
On a number of occasions some users start some discussion thread asking for members to vote if some other particular member should have some action taken against them, be it they be banned or otherwise. These threads are both problematic for the community spirit and also miss the point of what we are about. The idea with these threads is that the fate of members should be dictated by a vote as in a democracy. As we should all know here however, democracy is just a form of mob rules and will eventually devolve to the lowest demands of the mob.
This brings us back full circle to what we are about- we are modeled after a Republic, being "ruled" by law where our forum guidelines provide the basis for our operational "law". Does it work? Yes! I have even had conversations with others on the site staff where they were not happy with some posted content but it had to stand based on the guidelines. Are things perfect? No. While we want our framework to be as solid as possible, it is clear that the guidelines are not perfect, nor is the application of them by the admin/mod team. I think it would be wonderful to strive for perfection and while we do want to get better, the reality is that this is just a web forum and there is an enslaving force spreading in the real world that we must fight- so our ambitions here must be tempered to some optimal level in this fight.
In any case where someone has some moderation action taken against them it needs to be based on an application of our principles regardless of its popularity or how it will effect the forum. If anyone holds a moderation action in contention there is a process in place to deal with this as found here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=22
My best to everyone.