What's with all the sudden thread closings? "If you had to choose," "Favorite Position," maybe others too that i haven't seen yet. I was interested in seeing how those polls turned out as even more people voted. It seems like Big Brother is clamping down... I would suggest that this forum be renamed Not-Quite-So-Free Thoughts. Its current name of Free Thoughts is an inaccurate description of it.

This bites. Censorship always bites. If it keeps up i say we all just find another message board elsewhere to go so that we don't have to deal with it.

Don't let the door hit you in the arse, Lykan.

As for censorship...well...Pofiry pays for the site. We contribute. Thus, the rules are his to make. If you don't like your drivel being closed, by all means, take your drivel somewhere else. If I minded my swearing being edited, I'd *cough* get a life *cough cough* take my swearing elsewhere.

I like his standards, so I don't leave. You don't like his standards, there is the door.

LOL That was exactly the sort of response that i was expecting from you, Xev. You've never seemed to like me, but i wish you well anyway.

I realize that the rules are Porfiry's to make. I wasn't suggesting otherwise. But i think that i was making a good point about censorship and this message forum's misleading name, and i was speaking up to see if anyone else here feels the same way.

Think beyond the box, eh Xev? Your barbed tongue reveals the inner hell you live in.

Oooh...snappy! "Your barbed tongue reveals the inner hell you live in. " :D

Lykan:

How could I like you when I know nothing about you? Silly.

Anyways, while you place the emphasis on "free" I place the emphasis on "thoughts".

Somehow, I don't see much in the way of "thoughts" in the closed threads, with the exception of the position one.

P.S: I live in an inner hell? Awww shucks. I thought I lived in an inner oubliette.

I'm not bitter about my thread being closed. All I ask is for some equal rules.

All of these, I believe, are just as pointless as my thread, if not, then more so:

http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12712



http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12744

Also, we had threads on "pissing" and other somewhat sexual/nasty threads closed, but the poll on masturbation stayed open.

My interpertation of these actions is that Porifiry wants Free Thoughts to become anything that can't be discussed under the other boards, but are still intelligent.

If that is the case, a ton more threads need closing.

First, lets get this right. Porfiry did not close the threads. We, the mods did. I would not have him blamed for my actions.

I whole heartedly agree that many threads here should be closed simply for drivel. One of the misconceptions is that the forums are a chat. They are not. They are a place where you leave your thoughts for someone else to respond to. Thoughtful posts are much to be desired.

I am not a fan of censorship. It is why these particular threads have remained open. When it gets out of hand, as these "sex threads" have done, more valuable members who do give thought to their posts tend to leave. That means you have more of the same coming down the pipes.

I have no objection to a sex thread where there is valuable knowledge to be learned. These threads do not fit that catagory when all that is contained within them are one line quips, innuendo, and crude remarks. The position thread, I had hoped would have been one such thread that would have been edcuational but it turned the other way.

You have a lot of leeway here are sciforums. We are not heavy handed, especially in Free Thoughts. That doesn't mean everything goes. There will always be objections from those who had interest in the threads closed. It is life. Grow up and face it. No matter what your position in life, or your occupation, there will always be someone who enforces the rules that will affect you.

If you can not live with that, you need to live on an island with no other human around.

Originally posted by wet1
It is life. Grow up and face it. No matter what your position in life, or your occupation, there will always be someone who enforces the rules that will affect you.


BIG BROTHER?

What is "needless drivel" to one person is "humorously funny sillyness" to someone else. I realize that it's all a matter of personal taste, and that those in charge have the ultimate say. Personally, what goes into my category of drivel is when someone new makes 6 new posts one after the other composed of one sentence each. Youngwriter's poll was certainly bizarre, but i enjoy observing how groups of people tend to handle bizarre situations -- kinda like my one word psychology test thread.

I think that it's senseless to close the entire Favorite Position thread including the poll just because people had been repeatedly posting one-liners lately on it or whatever. It makes more sense to me now why it was left open for so long and then suddenly closed down, but couldn't you have first made a post on the thread stating the sciforums rules and asked people to behave accordingly in order to remind everyone before you just closed it all down?


Wet1 said: "When it gets out of hand, as these "sex threads" have done, more valuable members who do give thought to their posts tend to leave."

I suppose i see that as being "their problem," when the solution is simple: they could stop clicking on the posts in question, and instead click on what they consider the more thoughtful threads. I see it as being their problem in the same way that i see it as being my problem if i don't like the censorship (or whatever you want to call it) on this message forum, given that those are the rules imposed by you the forum mods. But at the same time i also see it as being my right to stand up and express my thoughts on the matter, and to find out if anyone else feels the same way.


Wet1 said: "One of the misconceptions is that the forums are a chat. They are not. They are a place where you leave your thoughts for someone else to respond to. Thoughtful posts are much to be desired."

Yes, that was a misconception i had -- that it was more of a "chat" instead of "thoughtful discussion only." My mistake. Personally i enjoy a mix of both silly / bizarre / humorous posts, along with thoughtful / serious ones. Just like with life, i've found that too much of one or the other leads to imbalance.


Wet1 said: "We are not heavy handed, especially in Free Thoughts. That doesn't mean everything goes. There will always be objections from those who had interest in the threads closed. It is life. Grow up and face it. No matter what your position in life, or your occupation, there will always be someone who enforces the rules that will affect you."

I have both faced it as well as accepted it. It isn't as if i was saying, "Let's do away with this rule on Free Thoughts." I was saying, "This bites, does anyone else think so too and want to go elsewhere?" as well as "This conflicts with the name of this message forum."

And it isn't as if i complain about this all the time -- it's the first time i remember having commented on it.

Thanks for the explanations though.

Free speech? I'd like to think of it that way, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

How do you think Porfiry feels? He busts his ass and pocketbook to keep this site going; he's been reduced to begging on our behalf in the recent past.

You'd think the one thing we could do in our exploitation of his efforts is make them worth something.

It's gotta be rough when you do that much work and all anyone wants the work for is to make another penis joke.

The funny thing is that if people were generally capable of discussing those odd topics in any mature and reasonable fashion, they wouldn't be as significant.

Maybe this place is a joke to some. I would appreciate it, though, if they would take the courage to look Dave in the eye and tell them that all he's worth to them is another pussy-fart joke.

If a person can be honest about the reasons they're wasting Dave's efforts, I don't think he'd mind nearly enough. But I've now speculated about Dave three or four times, which is generally irresponsible.

Do people behave this way in a library? Why not? How dare they silence you. How about in a school classroom? It's "your right" after all. How about a doctor's office?

You may want to turn this into a junior-high restroom with "humorously funny sillyness" (sic), but some of us actually give a fuck that this place continues to exist, and we always hope that it will be used for something more than penis jokes.

There is no denying the will of the masses, though. If childishness is what people want of this site, I'm sure they can make that clear to Dave. I would just hope they think through the possible responses first.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

it's not really my problem or anything, but those who don't like the free thoughts as they are could imagine them to be random thoughts

Lykan,

I agree that you and many other members do not do a lot of complaining. It was with this in mind that I felt you deserved a reasonable post as to why. Many sites will ignore you or worse, use you as an example in that any static results in banning, to keep the rest of the members in line.

Notice that no where has such been mentioned. I understand you feel the need to express your displeasure. I guess what I am saying is no one is "after your hide" so to speak.

Banning is reserved for those things particularly obnoxious. This does not fit that catagory.

Some of your examples, I too, agree with. As I have stated, there is a lot of leeway here.

Tiassa said, "but some of us actually give a fuck that this place continues to exist, and we always hope that it will be used for something more than penis jokes."

Some of those who give a fuck that this place continues to exist appreciate the humor of this joke or that joke. They may be having a shoddy day, log on, read a joke, laugh their ass off and it brightens their day. I don't see that as being a waste of Dave's efforts.

Oh well though. If serious discussion only is what is required on Sciforums, then so be it.

Tiassa:
How do you think Porfiry feels? He busts his ass and pocketbook to keep this site going; he's been reduced to begging on our behalf in the recent past.

Here here. If I want to tell dick jokes, I find a co-worker or a friend. Or, if one can't do that, there are internet sites such as http://www.laughnet.net/archive/jokes/deadbaby.htm

I NEED this place because I have few people I can discuss "serious" things with.

Why is there always someone who never
gets it no matter how hard you try to explain?

If you want to post (and read) nothing but mindless drivel -- go to off-topic.net, where it's welcome. It's simple really.

- Warren

Originally posted by goofyfish
Why is there always someone who never
gets it no matter how hard you try to explain?

Could you explain the part again about why everyone's so gosh darned serious around here?

:p

It's more that we have IQs above the level of rotten bananas, Lykan.

First, lets get this right. Porfiry did not close the threads. We, the mods did. I would not have him blamed for my actions.

My misconception. My thinking was that since Porfiry owns and pays for the place, he makes the rules and appoints the mods, who, more or less, carry out his rules. Sorry, I still think I'm a newbie here.

You are correct in you assumptions, YoungWriter. My point was that it was not Porfiry's hand that did the closing.

Funny isn't it? Such a ruckus is caused more because the rarity of thread closings than the ability to do so. That ought to speak for itself. It is so rare that it is an event when it happens. Most new members don't remember when it happened last...

I have pretty much said and explained it so will now drop out of the thread unless something major happens. No sense in beating it to death.

what got closed anyway?

i think tiassa basicly summed it up.

i come here for my interests in science, not for favorite postion polls. thats what you really want to do, then there are plenty of other places on the web that are appropriate for that. i'm not trying to be uptight, but the name is sciforums and i do think that the polls in question were a little off topic to genre of this website

Thank you to whomever closed those STUPID, yes stupid, threads. As I have said in other threads in the Site Feedback section, sex has no place on sciforums.

Now someone go close homosexual survey.

Originally posted by CounslerCoffee
sex has no place on sciforums.



So should these "Sex" threads be closed, from the Ethics Forum:

Submissive sluts (http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11080)

why is incest bad? (http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11392)

homophobia (http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12615)

Though I think you mean the various joke sex threads in free thoughts, you should (if you do, in fact, mean that) refrain your words. Sex does have a place in Sciforums.

I reviewed all three threads. There are objectionable points within the body but the difference is that there is actually discussion and points being made within each of the threads. Something that was lacking in the threads closed in Free Thoughts. You could have as easily said random thoughts. I have stated this before. Free thoughts is not chat. Here you leave meaningful thought for others to read and respond to. That "meaningful thought" is what is missing.

If you have followed this very close, you will have by now have found the post that I made stating to the nature of sex is why we all are here and that there will be points where these cross over into our topics and conversation. This does not mean that graphic, coarse, and crude representation fits that. Which is why those were closed.

Originally posted by wet1
I reviewed all three threads. There are objectionable points within the body but the difference is that there is actually discussion and points being made within each of the threads. Something that was lacking in the threads closed in Free Thoughts. You could have as easily said random thoughts. I have stated this before. Free thoughts is not chat. Here you leave meaningful thought for others to read and respond to. That "meaningful thought" is what is missing.

If you have followed this very close, you will have by now have found the post that I made stating to the nature of sex is why we all are here and that there will be points where these cross over into our topics and conversation. This does not mean that graphic, coarse, and crude representation fits that. Which is why those were closed.

My post was directed to CC. I understood after your first post. I don't want you to get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome trying to crame this rule into my head:D

Firstly, let's not misuse the word censorship. Censorship implies an organized and deliberate attempt to remove or suppress information. The threads in question were not removed, they were merely closed. The people who participated in them were not punished in any way. This is the internet equivalent of telling you to "shut the f* up", it is not censorship.

Now, the mods are doing the right thing in closing these threads. Yes, this forum is "Free Thoughts", but it is "Free Thoughts" within the context of the sciforums community. And as is the case with all communities, there are certain implied standards as set by the community itself. If you'd really like the right to say whatever you want without any social consequence, a mental institution may be the only place where such wide liberties are granted. But tell me, what is the intellectual productivity of a mental institution?

Now, members are quite free to turn this into a frat-house, but that will merely compel me to shut the site down. You're free to push limits of acceptability (that's part of the whole process), but be respectful of the role the moderators play in the same process.

YoungWriter,

I took the oppurtunity to answer spookz question with in the same thread that I responded to yours.

As you did have an objection point to the threads that you listed I felt that it should certainly be checked into.

As far as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, believe me, I type relatively fast...

Though I think you mean the various joke sex threads in free thoughts, you should (if you do, in fact, mean that) refrain your words. Sex does have a place in Sciforums.

Wet1 got to it before I did so il just repost what he said:

I reviewed all three threads. There are objectionable points within the body but the difference is that there is actually discussion and points being made within each of the threads. Something that was lacking in the threads closed in Free Thoughts. You could have as easily said random thoughts. I have stated this before. Free thoughts is not chat. Here you leave meaningful thought for others to read and respond to. That "meaningful thought" is what is missing.

If you have followed this very close, you will have by now have found the post that I made stating to the nature of sex is why we all are here and that there will be points where these cross over into our topics and conversation. This does not mean that graphic, coarse, and crude representation fits that. Which is why those were closed.


Oh and listen to what Porfiry says youngwriter, hes the owner.

yeah except i can still type in it...

Post Moved: Site Feedback (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12962)
This thread is closed.
Except for zero who can still type in it.