[Souss]

Originally Posted by Lallous

Okay. Things aren't black or white. You always have to bear in mind that is FPM's official forum. It's not we don't appreciate criticism, but rather a pre-emptive measure to counter the yellow journalism and propaganda from the other side.

Does being FPM's official forum give you the right to censor? Yellow journalism and propaganda is practiced by both sides, see for example the thread about the objectivity of OTV's opening statements. But in any case, the threads that I saw deleted did not have any yellow journalism (or any journalism for that matter) or propaganda. As for preventive deletion, it seems you are creating a Bush Doctrine for online forums :P

Originally Posted by Lallous

We always try to safeguard this thin margin between censorship and freedom of speech, and the prefect example when you all saw how the discussions were with GMA's recent visit to Syria. We let everyone voice his concern.

How does being an affiliated forum affect how you apply the rules? While the GMA Syria thread was kept, others were not allowed to stay. For example, there was a thread entitled "Time to speak out" opened by xcoder which was deleted for no valid reason, and to this day there has been no explanation as to why this happened, despite repeated messages to the mod team.

Freedom of Speech is only relevant in cases where you are in disagreement with the other party. Being for Freedom of Speech only in instances where you agree is meaningless.

Originally Posted by Lallous

Add to that, some members push it too far and turn it into auto-flagellation mode, then no sorry don't expect us to sit and watch. This remains a public forum and an affiliated one too.

This is a fundamentally authoritarian attitude, whereby you think you know what's good for members, more than members themselves. So authoritarian it makes you unable to "sit and watch" members criticize their party (what you call auto-flagellation).

Political affiliation and being a public forum are not parameters for whether you respect the members or not. Here there is a fundamental choice to be made: Is this forum a place for openly discussing ideas, or is it a propaganda tool for the FPM? Over the years the forum has oscillated between both, with sadly a clear tilt towards the latter in more recent times.

Originally Posted by Lallous

Please, let's not dwell more in that issue.You made your point and we made ours.

Actually you haven't made your point. Thread deletions are rarely explained, and the majority of the time the member's private messages are ignored, as you very well know. It's been about 4 months, and I have yet to receive an explanation for why the "Time to speak out" thread was deleted.

Originally Posted by Lallous

We would appreciate if you could rather have some other consensual ideas of threads we could enjoy.

What you're saying nicely is "shut up about the things we don't like, stop bugging us about the times when we censor you, and put in some time and effort to find things to talk about that we like". I have my reservation about whether that strategy will work

If you want to attract serious, creative members, and have them be active participants, give them the freedom to say what's on their minds. Many of them have busy lives and don't have time to waste. They will not have much patience for thought control.