I'm the one raising heck about a post of mine in the General Forum at Knifeforums that was altered without my knowledge. The discussion of that, and several related issues, is now going on in the Politics and Policies Forum at that site -- the discussion moved there by agreement of everyone involved. Although some threads were locked early on, we are currently discussing the issues freely. That might change at any moment, who knows, but as of now we're having a free and open discussion of policy in that forum and on the website as a whole. I've said I won't spread the discussion to other forums as long as we can have a free and open discussion there where it belongs, and currently that's what's happening, so I'm not going to be involved in spreading the controversy. If that changes and threads start getting locked again or anything like that, *then* you can expect to see me talking about it here and on rec.knives.
I think I can talk about some general issues here since they've been brought up -- not in reference to that specific controversy, just talking about general issues that concern everyone on the net.
The Bill of Rights is relevant to restriction of free speech by parties other than the US government only in that nearly everyone on the net believes in the Bill of Rights -- here, it doesn't have the force of law, but it's one statement of some ideas that nearly all of us believe in and are willing to fight for.
The moderator of a forum can't be hauled into the Supreme Court and forced to stop violating those beliefs. He'll just find he doesn't have any members.
Everybody and his hamster owns space on the web, and many of us aren't even using ours. Everybody who's reading this has a computer and an internet connection and the ability to read and type (or use voice software). That's all you need to set up a forum. Many of us may not know offhand how to go about it, but if you can read a help file you can figure it out if you want to. If you choose the web for your forum and it expands to overflow the web space you probably get free with your internet account, you can buy more space very cheaply or get it for nothing if you don't mind a few advertising banners, at Geocities and many other servers.
If we wanted to, every member of this forum could set up a web forum, start a mailing list, start a newsgroup, and start an IRC channel, all within a week in our spare time and without paying any bills we aren't already paying. The only thing more established forums have that all those new forums wouldn't have is members. Without members -- not just numbers, members who write interesting and thought-provoking posts that draw in more members who write interesting and thought-provoking replies -- without that there's no forum.
So when a moderator or administrator thumps his chest and says I own this forum and you're only members and you have no right to voice your opinions about policy here -- we all laugh.
-Cougar Allen :{)
