AndyB wrote:We have them archived privately.
So you
have introduced censorship, a procedure normally associated with secretive regimes that are afraid to have their questionable activities revealed. Comicsuk has always prided itself on being a friendly and open forum, and this is why people feel comfortable posting here. Every so often, actually fairly frequently, as we have seen in the past, threads drift away from their original aim because a poster decides to follow up a tangential point raised by someone. Under these circumstances, nobody argues if Admin attempts to get the thread back onto its original track, or, as has happened a number of times, splits the thread to allow both the original theme and the new direction to continue unhindered. That is just common sense.
In his post this morning, Al said
Heated discussions are always welcome here, as long as they remain on topic. The one in question clearly didn't remain on the original topic, but why then did Admin not do what they normally do, and split them up? Al also said
If people disagree with other people, that's fine, we just ask that it's kept civil, and the worst case scenario is that people simply agree to disagree. Now this is why I can't understand AndyB's action. It's as if he is afraid of being criticised for not doing his duty. The fact that he is on holiday is neither here nor there, but it might have been better if Al had stepped in to allow Andy an undisturbed holiday. I'm sure we all accept that the thread had moved well away from its starting point, and was ripe for splitting, but it is not at all the case that it was uncivil or out of control. Posters were certainly disagreeing with each other, but that's the nature of discussions, and I doubt whether it escaped people's attention that these were carefully argued. We might eventually have reached Al's worst case scenario, and had to agree to disagree, but the discussion should have been allowed to continue to that point. You just can't have an open forum, and censorship of posts. It's a contradiction in terms. And in case there is any doubt about the matter, while I disagree profoundly with Kid Robson, I certainly support his right, while he is a member of comicsuk, to put his views forward without any interference from Admin.
So, I return to the thrust of my post earlier this morning. As we are still able to read the posts that were present prior to previous Admin lockdowns, the total removal of the offending section of this thread to AndyB's private archive, rather than just having it split off and then locked, is censorship, a procedure that in most people's opinion has no place in an open forum such as comicsuk. On behalf of all right-minded members, I call for it to be replaced in the
Beano forum so that any interested people can read it at their leisure.
