I have a few thoughts on this: Firstly, I think that the system is a response to the derailing of topics, which in itself could be considered a form of censorship (of the original topic). I'm sorry Fernando, but at least some of the topics that you have hijacked with your conspiracy theories have been taken *entirely* off-topic, likewise for other users.
I guess I also agree with the general consensus that the system could be abused to hide dissenting and minority views, although I'm not sure if that has happened yet. I think that a per-user ability to hide posts of particular users, such as included in phpBB, could be useful. That way each user could decide that they don't want to view posts of a particular user, i.e. hide those posts by default. More than this, I think that users who take discussions off-topic should be asked to continue their discussions elsewhere. This is the Trisquel forum, not a General Discussion forum. I do not think it is censorship to ask users to remain on-topic. There are other places for general and non-Trisquel discussions. Andrew
