Topic: Oh no! I've been warned!

[Critter]

Aside from DVDCol I use about 5 or 6 other forums, although this is the one I actually talk on the most, some of the others I use for read-only. Anyway one of them is the forums on gamespot.com which is a video games site. I was on the forum there the two days ago when I noticed an extremely sexist thread with one male user stating that 99% of all females are absolutley useless and that feminism is a joke.

Needless to say I got a bit worked up and posted a couple of unsavoury things aimed at this user (who apparently lives in the dark ages). The next day I logged on to see two warning messages in my inbox from the forum moderators saying that my posts were deleted, and even though I didn't lose any points and that this was an official warning for violating the terms of use of the forum.

What made me laugh the most was the way they described why I had my messages removed.

These are the 'reasons' that they wrote.

Reason for moderation: Intending solely to annoy and/or offend other users
Reason for moderation: Clear insults of other users
 

Damn straight! I can only hope that the other guy who started it got some warnings himself. I was personally only trying to defend well... my whole gender.  

[Dragonfire]

Good grief.
Well that jerk had better have gotten warnings too.  Sheesh.

[DJ Doena]

I was personally only trying to defend well... my whole gender.  

No, you weren't. You were defending 99% of your gender!

[Critter]

Haha of course! My mistake. There may have been maybe... 4 or 5 women in the whole planet that this guy didn't outright hate.

[Jimmy]

According to l'Institut national d'étude démographique the % of the woman population is 49.7 and according to the International Programs Center, U.S. Census Bureau the world population today is 6,878,512,263.

3,418,620,594 women live on earth actually so 34,186,205 are usefull according to this guy (I supposed it was one).

[DJ Doena]

3,418,620,594 women live on earth actually so 34,186,205 are usefull according to this guy (I supposed it was one).

His momma?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The guy is not anonymous anymore.
I found his pic:

(click to show/hide)

EDIT: Oh, and there's a universal sign to answer on posts like this, which usually doesn't get a warning either:

[Critter]

 

Haha very nice. I'm glad you are all on my side here, it was worth getting those warning messages just to have a go at him. I must say I wasn't the only one though, pretty much everyone else started attacking him as well (both male and female) on the forum.

[Kathy]

I wouldn't have wasn't a precious feminist moment on that ignorant sexist pig.

[Blair]

In the aftermath once things have cooled down, I love the irony of situations like that.

Some jerk comes along and makes insulting comments. This makes others mad, so they argue back... and for whatever reason, the treatment of the situation is not equal, and often it's the instigator who gets off. In other cases it's based on the group majority (such a forum that is not political-based but allows political talk... yet 90% are on one side of the issue, so the one person among the 10% who comes along and comments gets harassed and then warned for arguing back.)

It's terribly common.

[Najemikon]

Tell me about it. I lost a forum because of such a situation! I was running a general discussion forum and one contributor was a troll who liked to cause trouble. He was tolerated, but disliked. He finally made a comment about the Soham murders that I felt was way over the line, so I -not for the first time- removed his message. He became abusive, so I banned him. Unfortunately, most of the other members felt I should have left the message up, said they didn't like being censored (only one member ever was!) and they left. 

[Critter]

I love how this place doesn't have strict rules like that. It's probably why I have more posts on this forum than any other one that I use.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Tell me about it. I lost a forum because of such a situation! I was running a general discussion forum and one contributor was a troll who liked to cause trouble. He was tolerated, but disliked. He finally made a comment about the Soham murders that I felt was way over the line, so I -not for the first time- removed his message. He became abusive, so I banned him. Unfortunately, most of the other members felt I should have left the message up, said they didn't like being censored (only one member ever was!) and they left. 

I always felt that the operator of a forum very soon isn't the owner anymore.
The people using it create a climate of their own and as long as the users don't ask for restrictions the operator (which is in most cases the admin & mod too) should use his special rights very carefully.
Removal of postings should never be  a matter of personal preferences but always mirror the wishes of the forum users. The difficult thing about running a forum is that very soon you'll read some messages you dislike but still should restrain from taking restrictive actions.
On the other hand sooner or later you will find that a message you didn't take any offense in will nevertheless cause an uproar among the users here you can and should take actions but always according to the wishes of the users involved. If you want to become the grandmaster of moderating you'll explain your actions in the moderated thread.

[Jimmy]

I always felt that the operator of a forum very soon isn't the owner anymore.
The people using it create a climate of their own and as long as the users don't ask for restrictions the operator (which is in most cases the admin & mod too) should use his special rights very carefully.

I differ from you here. The forum is the house of its creator, he is the one legally responsible for its content and he had all the power to rule it as he wants or wish because of that. I don't monitor a forum, but I have my blog and I am very strict about the comments you can post in it. You have no idea of how many post are never publish, because I don't want to whatever they are anti adult industry post from some insane religious people, illegal downlading link about the movie I talk about (link who are immediatly reported of course) or even post that disagree with the spirit of my blog. 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A blog is something different than a forum.
I agree with you that the operator of a forum is legally responsible for the content on his/her forum and therefore should remove all messages that promote illegal content and/or spam.
But if I invite people to an open discussion (within the rules I may set) I have to live with the result or I don't open a forum.
Mind you, I'm not talking about obvious violations of laws and (forum)-rules, but about the fair use of a forum.
If someone invites me to say my opinion on a topic and then removes my posting because he/she doesn't agree with my opinion or because it might (not actually does) offend other users/readers, I'd stay away from this forum.
It's something completely different if other users/readers actually did take offense (like in the example given by Sophie) then the operator is supposed to take appropriate actions immediately. This was something the operator in Sophie's example obviously didn't do.