Re: Re: Censorship

I have read my copy of F-P from cover to cover and can’t find any statement that “that other posts will be removed”. I guess the comment refers to the word “moderated”.
Every forum I have ever come across has a moderator. The club, as proprietor and publisher is responsible for the content and has to be able to take down offensive and inappropriate content. The committee, as directors of the club, carry that responsibility.
There is nothing unreasonable here and I believe the club would be running an unacceptable risk if it was responsible for a forum without any form of guidelines and moderation. in fact, i doubt i would want to be associated with a forum that didn’t have effective moderators.
I’m a regular member of 19-ish years. I pay my subscription and expect the committee, whom we the membership elects, to manage the club and spend our money in the interests of the membership. The committee are directors of the club and carry the legal liability – ordinary members carry none. There’s a process for discussing the running of the club which Martin has described. I know, however, from discussions with committee members, that there is a genuine and immediate desire to ensure that this club relevant and attractive to new members in order to promote enthusiasm for the Traction.
The forum was set up for exchange of information of car related topics – it was not designed for more than that – that’s not to say it couldn’t or shouldn’t be – but the place to discuss if and how it should be is therefore not on the forum. If we expect to discuss the running of the club on this forum – which means a public dialogue, questions and responses in real time – we would need the committee to agree on how the forum was monitored and by whom, how quickly responses were given, and what the process would need to be for discussing those responses before posting them? What would be open-forum, what would be done via the forum’s Private Message facility. It would need to be agreed how this forum-based process tied in with the established committee meetings – for example would something discussed on a forum need to be re-discussed and voted on in a committee meeting and entered into the minutes before it became a decision – and if so, what is the status of an agreement in the mean time? Etc. Since I am not on the committee, I have no more idea than any other member if any of this has been discussed at all in any committee. But I don’t expect it has because it would not have been necessary for a forum set up solely for exchanging techy type information between members. Similarly it is not a concern for the internet-only forums to which we might want to compare this one. They have no money and no club to run. But on the other hand they all still have legal liabilities for their posted content and all therefore have moderators who take action when they need to and, unlike this forum, they do ban members.
So – what to do?
Martin, who is a committee member, has invited Bazessex to discuss to attend a committee meeting and on June 15th Bazessex asked “Anyone fancy coming to the next committee meeting and putting our points forward?” Nobody replied publicly to either invitation but it seems there is agreement that a discussion at the next committee meeting would be in order..
I would also like to contribute to a discussion about how to move forward – so can we do this at the next committee meeting which is, per FP, on Sept 11th in Flitwick? Questions such as Den’s about identification should be included.
I would hope the outcomes would be that:
– a member who makes valuable and interesting contributions on the forum would feel he has been listened to
– some constructive suggestions are made and discussed
– and at least one proposal emerges that can be discussed at the AGM which in on October 23rd in Steventon

Regards
Chris (Bailey)