flying_neko wrote:
I would like to say something about this topic
You're welcome. 
Censorship.
This is almost never a good idea. Freedom of speech is a very important fundamental right.
Limiting the possibility to talk is obviously not our goal, we only deleted threads containing messages insulting someone.
Insulting or obscene messages are a big problem and we can not leave them online for several reasons:
there can be (and there are) young players reading messages. We received messages from parents not happy about the possibilities that their children could read them.
There are many communities around the world and everyone can feel the same message more or less offending. There is no a fixed level for this, so we have to use as a parameter the lowest one.
There are laws in many states condamning defamation, and (being us the virtual publisher of everything our users are saying) for several legislations we can be liable to criminal charges, being co-responsible.
I don't think there is any clear-cut distinction between "political" and "non-political" matters.
We talked a lot about what to post here to explain the reason of the mass deleting, and about the guide rules to list, before posting the message you are talking about.
In the end what we posted were simple guide lines.
I do think that talking about political matters (another way to call them is "great events") in a worldwide forum is never a good idea.
Among our users there will be surely people thinking very different on many arguments. The only reason keeping those users here together is the possibility to play.
Probably those users have no desire to confront their opinion on these matters with someone with diametrically opposing ideas, but if you give them the possibility to do it, a flame war will surely start.
We are only trying to avoid it.
Now I'm not talking for every webmasters here, but only for myself: this is just an hobby for me, and I like it. I like it because it gives me the possibility to meet nice people and play in a friendly environment, and this makes me happy.
Working to the site is even great fun, and give me great satisfactions.
On the other hand problems don't make me happy and if I'm not happy I can lost my motivation to work to the site. I don't want that this could happen, and this is the reasons why I vote for any solution that give me the possibility to have as little problems as possible.
This should be true for everyone here. Every users is happy to play here as long as he doesn't have problems doing it. Reading an harsh language message, or some unwelcome arguments could lead our users away, and this is not good, because the site is here only because users are here.
If we could keep our discussions focused on games, I think that everyone will be more happy.
I also don't think deleting the discussion about the Italian referendum was a good idea. There were very inappropriate posts, this is true, but I think you should have deleted only the incriminated ones
The original reason was technical. Currently we have have great difficulties on killing a single message in the forum. If there are several mesages to kill from a thread, it is much simply killing the entire thread.
This is going to change with the next forum release.
Anyway there is the possibility that after deleting a message someone will repost it. Killing the thread fix the problem once for all.
I think you could create an "off-topic" section in the Forum. This could be a good compromise.
This will be done in the end, but only if we will be able to find someone willing to moderate it.
As I already said, there are laws around the world stating that we could be declared responsible for what someone write in our forum, and this could be a big problem. We have to find a way to protect us from this kind of problems.
In the past, there have been many cases in which incorrect behaviour from someone was well handled and corrected within the forum.
Again, this kind of messages are not a problem as long as they are polite.
If someone says "dear xyz what you are doing is against the gaming etiquette for THIS and THIS reason" the effect is quite different than if someone is saying "xyz you are a cheater and a lamer, and ... (several offences follows)"
The best approach is informing directly that user. Writing a message in the forum will put an infaming mark on that user forever. Anyone in the future should dig among the old messages will knows that user was a cheater. This is not fair.
People change, and have the right to be seen as they are now. It doesn't matter how they were months ago.
This is what moderators are for. If someone is doing something wrong, I'm happy to help.
I can contact privately that user, explaining him the problem, and he will not feel this as a personal offense.
Anyway if you (all of you) are able to open a public thread on this matter not containig personal offenses, no one will say anything. but as soon as a single offence will appear, the entire thread will have to be dumped. Sorry.
Just my opinion, of course
Opinion are always welcomed. As I always said we have to thanks our users support if the site became what it is today, and every opinion is always taken in account.
Take care
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