But here’s the thing, DJ. The Reader has no desire to push the boundaries of free speech on the internet. Yes, pushing the boundaries of free speech is a beautiful thing, and someone should damn well do it. How about you? Why not start your own board, and you can discuss anything you want?
There are a couple of boards run by regular members of the SDMB that are run much more loosely than this one is…simply because they have less traffic and don’t have any corporate assets that are at risk if some idiot decides to sue them over nothing.
The trouble is that the owners of this message board don’t really care that much about it. Yes, all of US care about it…but we don’t put up any money for it. And so, what the community of posters would like to have for policy is not what we have. Think of it this way. The mods are protecting the boards from The Reader, not from some sue-happy idiot. We are like insects to The Reader. As long as we stay under the cabinets and don’t come out in the daylight we are safe, eating the crumbs that fall from the Reader’s table. If we start raiding the refridgerator we might get exterminated.
Before coming to the SDMB I tried two UK based message boards.
Both of these are basically run for football supporters but freely allow discussion of many non-football subjects. One of them is tied to a Nationwide League Club and the other is independent.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 denotes not moderated at all and 10 means don’t bother posting anything because it will be deleted, I rate the three boards as follows:
The problem with the Independent Board is that people are free to make highly insulting comments about your mother without redress. I can handle this, but I don’t want to have to handle it.
I preferred the Tied Board to the Independent Board but you can’t refer to:
Marijuana, drug tests
Bands named after the average volume of ejaculate
Anal sex
Slang terms for masturbation
Fellatio
Cunnilingus
And other subjects too numerous to mention.
There is a swear filter which completely disallows fuck and worse. Interestingly, the football club Scunthorpe United on entry becomes Shorpe United on display. (The board is not run by S**horpe United).
My conclusion, therefore, is that SDMB is a happy medium, in more ways than one.
Well, Rasta, just looking over your thread again, I see two things:
In your OP you had a reference to using other kinds of drugs, specifically “whippits”, which you admitted using yourself (confessed! :eek: ) and then you mentioned a “head shop”. This would tend to set off the mods’ “uh-oh, drug thread!” alarms. And even though you can specify, “This is not a thread about how to do illegal drugs”, and “I’m just curious”, still human nature being what it is, when other posters see an OP in which the OP starts right out talking about how he is “doing drugs”, they’re going to be naturally inclined to discuss “doing drugs”, whether they’re “illegal” drugs or not. Threads just seem to work like that.
If I personally had wanted to know the same thing you wanted to know, I would have just asked, “Is it possible for Joe Blow to buy nitrous oxide somewhere?” and also specified, “Just a simple yes or no, people”. The way your OP was phrased kind of made it sound like you were inviting discussion.
I once posted a GQ asking whether it was true that you could really use cold pills to make methamphetamines, and I phrased it like that, made it clear that I just wanted a simple “yes” or “no” response, and the thread was not locked, even though there was a certain amount of discussion of meth labs in the thread.
So it isn’t that the mods have a knee-jerk “no drug threads” reaction–it just depends on how it’s phrased.
Censorship is not a dirty word. DJ, say you owned a house, and somebody came along and planted a yardsign on your lawn urging people to vote for a candidate you opposed. You go out and pull the sign up and throw it in the trash. You have just engaged in censorship. Feel dirty?
The SDMB is the Reader’s “lawn”.
What would that solve? A disclaimer would not stop a lawsuit. I’m pretty sure the Reader would beat a lawsuit alleging that a post in GQ allowed some kid to grow pot, but the cost in attorneys’ fees would be high.
[/QUOTE]
Ooops. I forgot to use the [tounge in cheek] [/tounge in cheek] codes.
You see when I titled the post “A Modest Proposal” I referenced A Modest Proposal written by Jonathan Swift hundreds of years ago. As you can see, this is a proposal that is totally unreasonable, yet very humorous. That was the effect I was going for.
You are entirely too good, DJ. :o I did notice the “modest proposal” header, but the sarcasm was way too subtle for me to catch. In my defense, your proposal has been made by people here in all earnesty.
I was once in a converse situation on the old AOL “pushpin” board. It wasn’t my question that was censored; it was my answer.
Someone posted to ask, “Those of you who’ve had experiences with drugs, would you ever do it again?” Two people posted to say, “Heavens, no; drugs almost ruined my life!” Then I replied, saying that weed had been very beneficial to me, and explained how. My post disappeared, and a mod
It occurs to me that this mod may have been TubaDiva. If so, I’m not calling you out.
e-mailed me to warn me that I’d violated AOHell’s fascist Terms Of Service (TOS. Of course, that acronym found itself applied to other phrases.). She (I remember that it was a she) hadn’t reported me, but reminded me to be wary in case someone else had.
I never heard anything about it. Still, I wasn’t crazy about the standard of forbidding “yes” answers to a question. The thread was left to sink to the bottom of the board, but it wasn’t removed.