You are at the mercy of the subjective judgements of the mod team, both individually and collectively, re low quality. We don't require your individual approval or any set of external objective criteria to establish our right to pass judgement, we simply assert it as that is how moderated forums generally work. However, the community as a whole may certainly keep us in line because we do rely on good mutual relations and general acceptance of our competence in order to be a healthy and stimulating environment for discussion. If you can convince enough members here that standards are "abysmally low", we would likely seek to raise them through stricter modding. Your other option is to leave and post somewhere you think standards are higher.

In order to underwrite your own intellectual credibility and your right to pass judgement, please set out clearly your criteria for "low quality". — alan1000

Did you use poor language? Insult people? Did you think that because you saw another post that seemed low brow in your eyes you could do the same?

My advice if you really want an answer is to politely message the person who moderated your post, and without sarcasm, snark, or a sense of superiority, humbly ask why the post was inappropriate. If they reply, do not argue or debate them. Listen and learn with humbleness. And do not go into the public forums again trying to denigrate the moderators and attempt to garner sympathy as a victim.

I am not a moderator or any sort of official on the premises but I observed the following.

Furthermore, I never saw your post, so the following discourse is purely speculative.

Please don't take anything I say personally.

To me this is the clue.

You don't have absolute freedom of speech in a moderated forum. — alan1000

You were most likely a bit abrasive or -- heavens forbid -- racist or sexist or anti-Marxist. Childism (promoting child pornography) is right out. So is violencism, sexual abusism, stupidism. (I've seen people escorted out of this forum for wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm with stupid".) Sellism, advertisism.

On the other hand, egotism, megalomania, personal cult, religionism, and nihilism are still allowed. For the time being.

However, discussions on genderism, anti-genderism, invisibility, and funny ways to approach the gender-gender spectrum, going along with the times, are highly encouraged.

I have seen a number of post deleted by a person who was teetering on committing suicide. He wasn't saying he would, but he was yankering and jabbering on and on about his depression, his inability to get a good night's sleep and loss of appetite. He was trying to establish a foothold where he would encourage others to be exactly the same as he was, but eventually he left in dismay because 40 (approximation) percent of all his posts were taken down.

You are at the mercy of the subjective judgements of the mod team, both individually and collectively, re low quality. We don't require your individual approval or any set of external objective criteria to establish our right to pass judgement, — Baden

You mean like in Russia and China?

Have you ever considered the advantages of the objective over the subjective in the advancement of knowledge?

You mean like in Russia and China? — alan1000

You don't have to go that far. In people's homes in the West, at private parties. Try exercising a wide range of free speech while at work (including lunch and breaks) and see how long you keep your job and get to keep talking there. Corporations are happy to fire you for all sorts of speech and ban you from the property. There are all sorts of organizations and businesses that will also ask you to leave if you continue cursing, screaming, insulting people or interfering, through speech, with people enjoying their bowling, lunches, chess games or yes, even philosophical discussions. Drop in yoga classes and meditation groups will ask you to leave for certain kinds of free speech. You get the idea. No particular private entity has to put up with everything free speech might include. Such entities get to remove people who disrupt the functioning of their activities. Gray areas abound and you could try taking The Philosophy Forum to court. But I think you'll find that it's not that you get to impose your free speech anywhere, anywhen on people, but rather that there are ways for all positions and types of speech to be expressed in the country. And, my God, the internet makes this vastly easier to do and reach people. You just may find yourself or some of your speech not welcome in other people's websites.

There are certainly people who get harrassed by the government and other kinds of authorities for exercising their free speech. There are groups on both the left and the right, in Europe and the US, say, who try to shut people out of public view.

Russia and China don't have to rely on doxxing and trolling and online bullies to the same degree. The worst cases of silencing in the West are business as usual in those countries, especially China because they are just vastly more organized than Russia. Exercising free speech in Russia is a bit like insulting Italians on a mob controlled speech. You might get lucky. In China Big Brother has the monitoring down to a science that unfortunately the West seems to be curious about: social credit systems, for example. Generally in the West marginalizing is the method. In R & C, it's all on the table as possible consequences. Censorhip is just step one.

You seem to be heading for taking a stand in a way that is probably not noble, just stubborn. Can't really know without having seen the posts in question. I think the above suggestion to ask the mod politely is good approach.

As far as the response including 'subjective'...that's honest. One could come up with objective criteria, but the application with always have subjective facets. How could it not when evaluating interpersonal relations, use of language, value of a post in ratio to disruption, when is an insult and insult, etc. I'd vastly prefer a forum where the moderators admit that there is a subjective element.

I doubt they are getting paid. But would probably respond to polite questions and challenges, even though that's part of their free time they don't need to give you.

You mean like in Russia and China? — alan1000

More like North Korea except we allow you to leave. But you like it here, don't you?

North Korea — Baden

Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)! :lol:

I doubt they are getting paid. But would probably respond to polite questions and challenges, even though that's part of their free time they don't need to give you. — Bylaw

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