My thoughts on forum moderation: 1. I personally prefer minimal moderation, but occasionally some is required (see below for more on this)...
2. Excessive and off-topic posting can "drown out" other posts which is essentially a form of censorship itself. Occasionally there are some users that constantly repost the same things. I think 'vPro' presented this very well. I think after a warning a suspension or ban would be appropriate. 3. I think we can agree to disagree on some things. However, personal attacks etc. are unwelcome. 4. I think non-Trisquel discussions should go in the "Troll Hole", since there is currently no other forum for such discussions. For example, the ethics of free software is more political than technical, so maybe that's the best forum for it. This forum is supposed to be about Trisquel with a focus on supporting users. In other words, I'm not suggesting that threads should necessarily be deleted, but perhaps moved or locked if they are off-topic. 5. Moderation is obviously needed to combat spam, I don't think anyone doubts this. 6. Regarding proprietary software, if a user posts a link or recommends other users to give up their freedom, I hope that other users will reply with the usual warnings - I think that's enough to help users who read the post. However, if the sole purpose of a thread is to promote proprietary software, I think it should be deleted. If a user excessively recommends proprietary software, I think they should be warned and then suspended. Deleting threads that recommend proprietary software I guess can be seen as a "freedom of speech vs. software freedom" issue, but I agree with jxself that there are other places users can discuss proprietary software so the free speech issue isn't so bad. We should defend software freedom instead. Andrew.
