I chose the moderators based on people who have been regular supporters of Universe Today and the forum for a long time. Most of their involvement so far has been to get involved in discussions and help answer people's questions.

They've also been on hand to remove the truly offensive posts. It doesn't happen often, but we do need to remove the occasional, truly offensive comments.

So far, I'm largely happy with the tone of the conversations that have been happening on the Forum. Bush's foreign policy is a very controversal subject, and to try and remove controversals conversations from the forum would be largely impossible; almost everyone finds something offensive.

Forums are often postocracies. Whoever can post the fastest and lengthiest gets to dominate the conversations. I'm definitely not interested in supporting what can essentially become bullying.

That said, I'm also not really interested in moderating free speech to any great extent. The moderators and I will probably start cracking down on non-space related conversations and usher them into the appropriate categories, but beyond that, we're probably not going to censor what people have to say.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
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