First I want to start this post out with a link to one of my favorite organizations, the National Coalition against Censorship (NCAC). I came familiar with this organization a couple of years back when one of my artist friends was censored from a little known community gallery in Brookings, SD. A piece that was about women’s rights and abuse of women all over the world, called the Chastity Belt. The censor was surprising to me, because the piece was rather tame compared to some art I have came across, being a fan of outsider art I have seen stuff that would make a hooker blush.
I got this post off of my KELO link last night that got me thinking about stuff and I want to offer some explanations on how I moderate:
Comment:
Hi Scott, I was wondering if you could shed some light as to the ability to post here. I see that ones posting requires “moderator” approval; however, this is a form of censorship. I post and if the person who has the blog so deems they post portions of my posting. Most of the time they do not. This is a charade…the blog appears to welcome comment but in reality simply ignores postings that they are either unfavorable or their inability to form a cogent counter argument (or simply pointing out the idiocy of their position). I did see there were some spam type postings (maybe even spiders) but the much more read (and responded too…free discourse…what a concept!)such as Hemminson’s have the same problem but when one posts there it shows up! Good, bad or anecdotal! One would think that the policy would be the same for blogs of the political genre..maybe even more so. This is not the case and either needs to be fixed so as to allow free posting or take away the ability to post since it falsely appears to allow freedom of digital intercourse. Thanks for any information…
BB
First off, I do censor on occassion. I have deleted entire posts w/the comments that are attached, mostly because I worry about libel. I know what you are thinking, there is a lot of stuff on here you would consider libelous. Well, when something is presented in satirical format you have some latitude, when people comment in a libelous way, I try to moderate that. In other words, I try not censor and take censorship very seriously. I believe DISSENT is the highest form of patriotism in our country, and when dissent is censorsed you get things like illegal wars, warrantless wiretaps and torture, blah, blah, blah . . .
We do have to moderate our comments, some bloggers do it to censor, I do it to find spam about milf’s and viagra. If we were to allow spam like that we would have clogged Bloggs.
I’m not sure why other blogs censor comments or don’t allow them at all. I have noticed most of those blogs are ran by neocons or control freaks. You can write whatever you want here, I don’t care. Your comments reflect YOUR opinion, not mine, as long as your are not libelous I have no reason to delete what you have to say.
UPDATE: Furthermore, if you can’t use your real name (or recognizable nickname) when you are posting, I think that gives me latititude to delete whatever comments I want to. Your opinions and arguements would have more weight if you were using your real identity.