Stardate 20011115.1557 (Crew, this is the Captain): This site has a copy of the UBBS discussion system installed on it, which I purchased. That system gives me certain capabilities as administrator. When I first considered putting it up, I wrote
a policy statement about how I wanted it to run, the upshot being that I will wield administrator abilities as I feel I need to in order to preserve civil and intelligent discourse. That doesn't mean I'll stomp on anyone who disagrees with me, but rather that I will shut down threads which descend to personalities, and remove posting privilege from anyone whose contribution I deem to be negative. It's been half a year and we're now up to 120 members, and in that time I've had to ban exactly two people and close two threads -- all within the last two weeks. The point is intelligent and reasoned disagreement with my posts is very welcome, but drivel is not whether it agrees or disagrees with me. There have been at least three other incidents where members were out of line, but those were settled via private mail to inform them of how their behavior was unacceptable. In each of those cases it was clear that their behavior was either an aberration or a simple misunderstanding of how I want people to act. I don't want to do any more banning and closing of threads than I have to, because excessive use of those capabilities could cast a chill on the discourse and destroy what I'm trying to create, but if I do none at all, the
Clueless Comments forum could become useless for my purposes.
(discuss)
