Over in the other thread, I said the following in a response:
A couple of current and former mods challenged my assertion -- one privately, one publicly. To the private comment, I wrote the following response:I will point out that the mods do seem to manage to find any and all posts -- other than shipper posts, of course -- that they deem vaguely Off-Topic, and to move them to the Rubbish Bin. (That, to my surprise, was where I found my original discussion with Garnet about shipper posts.) I would like to see the mods exercising that power for good for a change, rather than in ways that seem to me to be random at best, and at worst suppressive of genuine discourse.
Sorry, but I genuinely think the mods are using the OT power inappropriately.
Take this "How Old Are You?" thread, for instance. I'm the one who pointed out in the thread that a separate "How Old Is Everyone?" poll already existed. And I have no objection to the thread having been locked after the original poster said he was trying to kill the thread. But I see absolutely no reason to have moved the entire thread into the Rubbish Bin. There were several posts in which people told how old they were; those posts were entirely on-topic. And Lester and I exchanged a couple of posts about my Sinfest avatars. But I don't see those posts as any more OT, or any more objectionable, than the "Daniel/Jonas is hott" posts in other threads.
The same for the thread entitled "J." I can see why the thread was locked, but it was explicitly stated when the thread was locked that it would be left in place. Instead, it was moved to the Rubbish Bin, where it will be of no help to anyone else who might happen to come across the administrative page and think that "J" might be a clue.
The "Mental Health Talk" thread contains some inflammatory language, but it also contains some genuinely helpful discussion.
Finally, everyone has her/his own opinion about what material is "unsuitable." I happen to get really sick of shipper discussions, and to think that they need their own section of the forum. A number of people agree with me, as the responses to my original post in that thread make clear. It seems to me that those of us who can't stand the puerile shipper posts are being forced to suffer through them simply because they're considered to be innocuous.
Are all topics containing inflammatory messages, by contrast, going to be sent to the Rubbish Bin? If so, I think we're going to be missing out on plenty of valuable information, for the very reason that the topics that are most significant are also the most likely to raise temperatures and temper levels.
That's why I object to the way the mods are currently using the OT power.
Thoughts, anyone?
