Banned blah, blah, blah...

The following brief exchange took place on the BlueBoard January 9:

Someone—anonymous, of course—posted:

Can't help noticing that now that Pamela seems absent from the blueboard, Chris has turned his considerable ire on Frank. It's always gotta be someone, huh? 

To which my response was: 

Knight's shill would still be trolling were it not for her being banned by the moderator, and I would have continued to show her for what she is. LeFever is someone for whom I lost respect a long time ago, when I realized that he was in it for himself rather than WBAI, and when I saw how off the mark his various ideas are. I suppose I could just sit back and watch as he turns the LSB into an even greater mess. In the meantime, check out his posts and tell me if you think this is someone who should be on a governing board. The real culprit in the present imbroglio is, of course, LeFever's current "friend", Berthold Reimers, the only person on the local level who could make a positive difference, if he were so inclined.

If you search around on the BlueBoard, you will find the original, anonymous, post, but not my response, It has been removed by the moderator because we are not allowed to mention people who are denied access to the BB, reason given is that they thus cannot defend themselves. Noble as that rule sounds,it becomes a downright nuisance (bordering on censorship) when applied. A major flaw in that procedure is that we who post there are not informed of anyone's banishment, so you mention a name, however casually, in a post that might have taken up much of your valuable time, and you click on the "post" option. The software detects the dreaded name and you are informed that your message will be posted upon the moderator's approval. Chances are that it remains in limbo until you receive an e-mail from R. Paul Martin and are given an opportunity to remove the unwanted name and re-post. In some cases, that means that your amended message is delayed up to a couple of days and the immediacy of your response is lost.

In the above case, the offending name, Pamela (i.e. Somers) did not warrant moderator intrusion, but my message (note that I deliberately avoided using the banished name) was removed. The explanation came in an e-mail from R. Paul advising me to "just leave the aspects of moderation alone." So now, a worse sin than naming a banished poster is to mention the fact that he/she has been banished! 

I am adamantly against censorship, but I realize that some rules must be applied to a public forum. Here's a link to the BlueBoard's don'ts —there are 14 of them and many are routinely ignored, but one sticks out—it is No. 12:

Criticisms that the moderators are censoring too much or too little

What do you think?

When it comes to WBAI, I consider R. Paul Martin to be one of the good guys, but frivolous infringement on my right to speak freely puts a dent in that appraisal.

As the moderator of this blog, my only interference with posts is that I block spam attempts. There are about ten to 20 of those each week and they are  bot-generated and self-promotional, thus easy to nip in the bud.

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