Moderation Balancing Freedom of Speech and Censorship

[Matthew]

Website administration, specifically forums, allow genuine interaction to occur between humans around a topic. We all know that humans interacting doesn’t always result in positive outcomes. As a forum owner or moderator, we have a duty to protect our members.

What is your approach to balancing freedom to engage while also keeping your forum clean? To what extent do you control the flow of conversation? Do you prefer blanket deletion policies? Editing specific parts of a post? How do you avoid alienating well meaning members?

 

[CTS]

I feel that it is important to reflect in your tac that they are visiting a privately-held website. With that, 1st amendment rights are limited to the projected expected decorum of the site exclusively held by the terms of the administrator and supported by the moderators. But a soft touch usually course corrects fairly easily in most cases.