I posted a thread under “creativity” entitled “Homemade Jams to Ease your Nerves” and I was watching it for several hours. At some point, the title was changed, presumably by an administrator to read, “Homemade Jams (Music) to Ease Your Nerves” with (Music) being an insertion. This is a major censorship infraction that I cannot tolerate, and I strongly suggest that others who use this site watch what they say here - and especially, what happens to what they say.
You may reply to this, or not. It doesn’t matter to me, I won’t be reading any responses.
I don’t see that major censorship has taken place. That might have been true if your post was removed but it wasn’t. All that happened was that the title was slightly changed to make things clearer to other posters.
Are you sure the thread was deleted on account of your comment or could it have been because of other factors?
I think the question one has to ask is are threads deleted and locked for good reasons. Most of the time I can see why a thread is locked and I think the moderators do a good job on that score. They don’t get it right all the time but are right far more than they’re wrong.
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Well, I’m certainly glad you only get upset over big things. Life is difficult when every little thing sets a person off, so, good job you!
BTW, this was posted in the incorrect category. Apologies in advance for moving it to “Meta”, which deals with site related topics. Heartless beast that I am.
I really hope you change your mind about this being something to leave over. There are all sorts of people here from all over the world with varying levels of competence with English, many of which might not have understood that you meant music and so might have passed your post by.
The mods have to look after the best interests of a large, wildly varied population here, and pretty much anything they do is going to step on someone’s toes. When something like this happens, just remind yourself that it’s most likely to help someone else and not aimed at censuring you. If they felt there was something wrong with what you had done, they’d tell you so.
This is a hugely supportive community, so I hope you stick around.
The thing is some people might have thought a “thread about jam, I’m not interested in that” and not opened the thread. Thus missing out on a thread that might have interested them.
A clearer thread title made it easier to see in which way the word jam was being used and made it more likely that people interested in jam in a musical context would open the thread.
A clearer thread title actually increased the chances of the thread being viewed and replied to by those with an interest in the subject the OP was posting about. That should be seen as a positive thing rather than the negative one the OP has made it out to be.
In what way was the very slight title change stifling creativity or the original title,for that matter, encouraging creativity?
Any creativity was in the body of the post which more people with a creative bent were likely to view with a better worded thread title. A more appropriate thread title actually increased the chances of a discussion of the creative merits of the OPs pieces ie improving the creative process.
There may indeed be grounds to say inappropriate interventions have taken place sometimes but this is not one of them.
Sorry - as a general policy I try to make sure titles are somewhat descriptive of the content as a way to try to help our visitors understand the topics. This makes it more likely that our visitors click on the topics and get to read what they are interested in.
When I saw your title “Homemade Jams to Ease Your Nerves”
I thought it had to do with some sort of berry jam, as it is summer.
When I saw it actually had to do with music - I thought more people would be interested in this than jam for toast - so I helped make that clear.
We will continue to make these minor tweaks in people’s titles to help our visitors enjoy and understand the our forums.
An interesting thing about owning a discussion forum… The owner inherits a certain amount of legal liability for what is contained therein. Even if they are not successfully prosecuted over something that is said, paying the legal costs after winning an action brought against you can leave one financially destitute. A large part of the job a moderator performs is risk mitigation.
As this forum is private property there is no issue of free speech. You are on the forum owner’s property and subject to his rules, those rules largely being in place to reduce risk for the owner.
For those who think we are doing everything wrong, check out these places:
You can start your own forums for free. You can discuss whatever you like (within the rules of the hosting services and the laws of the country you live in). You can moderate them however you like. Most importantly, you can assume whatever level of legal and financial risk you’re comfortable with.
So… Go for it.
Pixel.
(Speaking as unpaid volunteer moderator AND community member.)
