Selective censoring

I don’t normally get too involved with political statement but I purposely posted a little humor item about Hillary Clinton after I saw a post that made fun of “W” to see what the reaction would be . Well my questions were answered. The joke about Hillary was deleted while the joke about Bush was left in place. If you’re going to remove political posts from this forum, remove all of them. Selective censoring indicates the direction you lean

I saw the “W” joke earlier today and made me think HHHMMM. Is that suppose to be here??? RR

Where is it? I’ll nuke it for ya.

Generally, most everything political that does not have to do with fishing or the outdoors gets yanked.

This isnt the proper site for a political debate, and you will not find them here.

… Back to the fishing discussion…

Im gonna hafta agree with RKD, whats the problem with posting jokes??? Are we going to have to stop that too? And then, prayer requests???
I think rather than the ban that has been put on politics, perhaps we should have a separate forum.

Just seems to me that the idea of free speech has been forgotten on this site as of late.

I think this is the start of a slippery slope, guys…

P.S. I have absolutely no problem with prayer requests, just making a point.

I saw the post earlier today– thought hm that don’t sound like a joke to me!!!!!! but truely someone with ill wishes toward the USA

My 2 cents…

I believe the people controllong this site have been doing a good job. Nobody’s perfect, obviously one got by.

I’ll also have to tatally agree with RKD here. Remove all political posts or none. Jokes are jokes even if they are politically based, but its still a political subject.

Prayers are also a touchy subject too. We have the right to free speech, and the right to choose. I choose no to read them. Problem solved for me.

Straight from the rules:

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Participants shall not post any material likely to cause offence, that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right

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I enjoy pretty much any joke no matter how political, racist, sexist or whatever. As long as it isn’t severly demeaning.

I don’t we’ll lose many members if a slightly questionable joke gets by. If we truly like this site, we’ll help out rather than accuse and exploit.

Keep up the good work

I saw both posts earlier today. Personally, I was going to dust the GW post right away. Probably should have. Funny the HC post went first. BTW – I did not see any humor at all in the GW post. I was hoping both posts would quickly just die and be on page 3 by now…..

Here is my advice. Anytime you are writing a post and you think to yourself “to see what the reaction would be….” Probably good to just pass on the post.

Let me ask a question of IDA members. Given just these 2 choices, would you rater have these kind of posts deleted immediately or locked up so you can read them but make no reply? My thinking here is a locked up post would be an example of the posts we would rather not see here. Hopefully stop popping up. Just curious, let me know. Moderating is not easy. We really try to keep everyone happy.

-J.

I just dont think that if someone takes the time to make a post, and its not threatening, doesnt contain abusive language, and is not deviant in sexual nature, that it should be locked or deleted. Just because a moderator doesnt think something’s funny, doesnt mean it should disappear. I appreciate how difficult it must be to keep everything in smooth running order.
I remember how heated some of the debates got during this last election, but it was also very informative. I prolly learned more from that, than in any televised debate. Remember, without political debates/disagreements, this country wouldnt exist…

I say lets create new forums specifically for these subjects, and relax on censorship a lil.

Keep up the good work guys!!

I dusted the HC post. If I had seen the GW post, I would have dusted that one too. I didn’t see it, and I don’t have the time to go “on patrol” looking for posts that don’t obey the forum rules. When I stumble across one, however, I do not hesitate to pull the trigger.

Let me echo Jon’s statement: If your objective by starting a thread is to see how far you can push the rules, then by all means, step away from the keyboard.

I moderate another bulletin board/forum so I’m probably far more appreciative of what moderators are going through. First, make sure you understand that there is no such thing as free speech on a private site. You have absolutely no constitutional right to free speech here or any other privately owned and operated site. Using this site is a privilege. Second, moderators miss things and moderators are human, accusing them of bias and “selective censoring” (kind of a redundant saying since all censoring is selective) is non-constructive criticism.
If you want a site where you can make all the rules there are lots of bulletin board scripts and websites for you to set up and run anyway you like.

As for “What’s Next”- more fishing and hopefully tolerance from users.

Free speach doesn’t necessarily pertain to a private website guys. James and his people know what they want here and know what they don’t. I understand totally the fact that you have to be careful on who you are offending.

Everyone is doing a super job and should maintain that. There is sites like joke of the day etc where you can get all the crappy jokes you want.

I am of the mindset that he who wears the big hat controls the big club- if own the site you make the rules. I was/am a political post junkie and was saddened to see those post go away but I also understand that they don’t fit into the walls of “in-depth angling”. There are plenty of other sites that welcome and encourage political debate and jokes. Thanks to IDA for the great site and I am willing to live within the boundries.

James and Admins keep up the good work! I came here tonight because of the good content you have on the site.

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Let me echo Jon’s statement: If your objective by starting a thread is to see how far you can push the rules, then by all means, step away from the keyboard.

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The HC joke I posted was not an effort to “see how far I could push the rules”, it was to make a comparison as to what people see as political or politically offensive. As far as seeing one post and not the other, I do believe there were no more than two or three posts between the two. Then again I could be wrong. Maybe “we only see what we want to see”

That being said, I didn’t intend for this to become a major issue, I was just curious. I enjoy this site and have the utmost respect for James and the people who run it. Unless they decide to start a political forum on this site, I will not post anything that will be looked at as “left” or “right”

RKD-Jim;
There really is nothing wrong with the joke you posted, or the other joke either.

It is “all in good fun”.

However, what ends up happening is somebody gets “sour” over their political party being “insulted”.

Just like religion and politics don’t belong in a bar, the same kind of applies here. Everyone loves a good joke, but sometimes not everyone can see that it is a “joke”.

That sir, is why we choose to make it simple and state no politics at all, unless it applies to our beloved outdoors.

God forbid anyone have a sense of humor…

oops….didn’t mean to say that…

GOSH forbid anyone have a sense of humor.. (sorry, couldn’t resist)

AMEN

oops I mean YEAH

I hope this isn’t perceived as bitter or spiteful because it is intended to be matter-of-fact… If you guys knew how much work it is to moderate these forums, keep the peace around here, and try to keep everyone reasonably happy, they only comments we would hear on this issue are “thank you”.

Good night all…

From what Ive read, EVERYBODY appreciates what you folks do here, I dont think thats the issue.

This post isn’t in reply to anyone that has added their comments to this thread. I’m hoping to give people a better idea of what really goes on behind the scenes here. Moderating this site when we had 3000 visitors a month was easy. Now that we have half a MILLION visitors a month…. let’s just say that’s a lot of people and personalities trying to call this place home.

I would dare say that the Steering Committee members are, on average, donating 15 – 20 hours a week minimum, each, to moderating this site. Much of it is “not fun” work like talking with members to remind them of site rules, maintaining the site, training staff members & working with me (worst part of the job hands down) to chart the future course and direction of the site.

In a perfect world we could have jokes aimed at politicians on both sides of the isle and it would be all in fun and nobody would get angry.

In this world 9 out of 10 people find the jokes funny and the 10th person screams bloody murder, writes a seriously nasty email to me or the Steering Committee, and threatens to harass our site sponsors into dropping us… all because we tried to “have a sense of humor” and let a questionable joke stay on the site. If we pull it down we get hammered for being Censor-Nazis.

My point being… we honestly try to do the best job possible with each and every post coming down to a snap gut-instinct type judgement that basically tries to anticipate the range of potential and likely replies and the resulting “mood” of the thread.

Most of the time we get it right and nobody even notices. Occassionally we make a move that gets under someone’s skin. On those occassions we ask for your understanding… and do know that at our core our goal is to be as unbiased and even-handed as humanly possible.

Very well put James…

There is a joke about Hilary?

Good job Mod’s.

Wow, threaten to contact sponsors ??? I say you put out a “list” who these cry babies are, and let us take care of them…. I have no problem leaving the politics out of IDA, there are enough other subjects to debate…

big g

What I find slightly funny is that, if a person watchs…in a very short time a person can predict when these folks will make an appearance.

TADAAAAA !!!! just kidding Briank…

couldn’t resist….

big g

Here I thought this would be a discussion about Ann Coulter.

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What I find slightly funny is that, if a person watchs…in a very short time a person can predict when these folks will make an appearance.

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Is that my que to step into this discussion?

I think the staff here has done a very good job of maintaining an excellent fishing site that has a lot of EXTRAS… I enjoy the jokes that are posted (like the dog and cat diary posted today – really funny!). As to political topics, the guys in charge decide the rules.

Thanks James and the rest of the staff – you guys are doing a fantastic job with this site!

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TADAAAAA !!!!

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