Censorship attempts to appease everyone's sense of appropriateness and is usually employed to ensure that no one is humiliated, insulted, hurt, or offended. But all of these are subjective and different for each member. One person's joke is another's insult. That is why broad censorship does not work.
On the other hand censorship IS required in extreme situations where a member may be threatened, racially insulted, slandered , continually harrassed, or similarly affected in other ways not mentioned here. No question that there are those times where the line is overstepped and censhorship is required. But these times are few.
Ninety nine percent of the time no one should be censored. Censorship puts control into the hands of a relatively small amount of people and forces the majority to accept the subjective desicions of the few. Clubs are set up to include everyone....and not to elevate a small few above the rest. Only through free, uncensored discussion can we learn together as a club. There should be no secrets, or "hands-off" topics that are within the scope of BRS matters, operations, finances, and topics relevant to reefkeeping.
Closing threads, deleting messages, etc are all forms of censorship that, in my opinion, should only be used as a last resort. Mediating is a better approach that has not been utilized enough in this forum. It is better to have a mediator post messages to attempt to quell a situation than it is to censor. The mediator should at least try to satisfy both parties on-line or ask them to discuss the conflict in another new thread or if appropriate, via PMs.
