On Forum Moderation

[Mike Parker]

 From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until now, 
it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have always 
popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been the need 
to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, I've been 
following the loose policy that Walter has always espoused, which 
is something along the lines of "maintain professional decorum".

Granted, certain posts can really stretch the boundaries of 
"professional decorum", but I think that's perfectly fine. We're 
all adults here and should be able to handle verbal barbs now and 
again. Where the moderators draw the line is when the verbal 
jousting turns nasty. We have deleted posts in such cases, but 
again, that's quite rare.

In my own opinion, what we should not start doing is banning 
people simply for expressing displeasure with the language or 
disagreement with its leadership. Yes, I understand that there 
are a handful of people who seem to do nothing but spread 
negativity and be contrarian. I disagree with almost everything 
those guys post. But that *is not* a bannable offense, nor should 
it be.

I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual useful 
signal in all the noise.

If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. 
Even better, don't read any posts by that person at all. D is not 
a religion and there's no need to get upset or take it personally 
when someone comes here and says negative things about it. Just 
keep on doing what you do and forget about it. We as a community 
are not going to suffer from negative forum posts unless we allow 
ourselves to suffer. And no, it's not going to hurt us in the 
world at large. We've suffered worse on reddit.

If you do feel the need to reply to specific criticisms, make 
sure you are in a proper state of mind before putting fingers to 
keyboard so that you can keep it focused on the criticisms and 
not take it personal.

That said, it would be nice to have a means to lock a thread that 
has become unproductive (I would have locked the feedback thread 
by now). But we don't have that and we aren't going to as long as 
we are backed by a newsgroup.