Mr. Boss wrote on Aug 15
th, 2010 at 4:28pm:
I'm surprised nobody took issue with the killing of cats I read in a topic a few months ago. I would have banned that person right away if I was a mod.
I don't actually recall that discusion but certainly the subject would cause a lot of emotion. Feral cats in the Australian bush kill lots of native aimals which are totally defenceless against predators. However killing someone's domestic pets is quite another matter.
Nevertheless, banning someone for a difference of opinion is something that I would be very wary of. Other than spam, the only posts I have ever deleted are those which were directly offensive to someone else on the site. Even then I PM'ed the poster and asking him to desist, pointing out that he would be banned if the behaviour continued.
We need to be aware that this forum is open to anyone. Other than our common interest in slinging it is almost inevitable that we will have a wide range of opininions of other subjects. So if you know your particular view on some controversial subject is likely to offend it may be tactful for you to avoid stating it too bluntly if at all.
I know that as moderators we can come across as heavy handed if we delete material. Also we are not always in complete agreement as to what should be deleted; it's always a line call to some degree. For example we decided some time ago now to not allow "2nd Amendment" discussion (read: nigh on open warare). By no means were all posts on this subject offensive but it was all too easy for it to degenerate into personal attacks. On certain subjects we just have to agree to disagree.
So if your particular toes have been trodden on it may hurt. You may have a legitimate grievance and we may have got it wrong to some degree. But I do ask you to allow that our motivation is to keep the site functioning as smoothly as possible.