To the admins

[fencore]

So, it's not enough that you have to have your voice heard, DI, but also have your opponents not only shut down, but vilified as well?

Hm.

My approach to cleaning this thread wasn't as sinister as you claim it to be. I removed the trolling present from both sides. It was that simple. Mayhap my implication was missed, but I also hoped you would repost the information you collected as to what event it was Joe received his praise for. Instead, I've become the target of your abuse.

I'm not going to spend my time sifting through every letter of four pages of posts and editing each post, and this is for two reasons. The first is that it would destroy the evidence of what was originally said in each post, and the second being that it would be immeasurably time consuming if the moderation took that stance on all but the most necessary of items.

If you choose to believe my actions are representable otherwise, by all means, feel free. I can explain my motives to you, but I cannot comprehend them for you.

By-the-by, when a post is made invisible, you folks can't see it anymore, but for the moderation and administration it's still there. "Cleaning a thread" doesn't destroy the evidence, which is why we're actually instructed to never, ever delete posts as that would do so. As I mentioned above, it would be preferable to invisible a post to preserve its content, remove it from public view and eliminate the potential for further inflammatory remarks than it would to adjust that text and lose the original trolling to the ethos of cyberspace.

Tangentially, I find it terribly entertaining that the moderation was criticized for being lock-heavy, but now that I'm exercising the desired moderation tactic and cleaning a thread instead of locking it down, I'm being criticized for not doing so in a way as expected by a particular member. As you asked yesterday, I'm performing my duties as a member of the moderation team using my own thoughts and judgment. Not yours or anyone else's. I must have a rather high opinion of myself, though. I thought I was being quite fair.