What are you afraid to say?
We don’t throw people out for making simple mistakes, little errors in judgement. We’re all human, none of us are perfect, and newbies might say or do something out of ignorance or nervousness, but we would not hold that against them. (We might talk to you about it, but to educate you, not slap you around.)
We have thrown people off the board, mostly for major sins, like, oh, persisting in annoying and harassing other people when asked not to, or spamming, or running “hacks” on the system, or threatening to sue us.
If you have good basic common sense and a modicum of civility, you’ll be fine. That’s really not asking a lot.
If we see you’re doing something wrong, we’ll bring it to your attention. Probably 99% of the problems found on the board are first-time things and not repeated again. People learn, they do better, no harm, no foul.
The first rule around here is “Don’t Be a Jerk,” what’s difficult about that?
Don’t be a jerk and you won’t get banned.
Try reading the registration agreement over again. Click on “Register” in the upper right hand corner of any SDMB page. See what you agreed to when you became a member here. (Whether you read it or not, you still agreed to it.) Also click on “FAQ” and read that.
If that’s not sufficient to answer your questions, you’re welcome to drop us email; we’ll try to straighten things out for you.
As far as the “censorship” thing goes, this is a private message board and posting here is a privilege, not an automatic right. We extend you this privilege, but if you choose to misebehave it can be removed. That’s not unreasonable, but if you think it is there’s gazillions of boards out there (not to mention the USENET), most of it unmoderated.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope
No civil rights were violated in the making of this post.