Forum moderation

"moronic moderation" is a silly and unhelpful term, but I would say that the recent banning of Stuart from the forum was absolutely ridiculous and over the top. If a chair had acted like that in a meeting, there would have been a motion to remove them from the chair.Discretion should have been applied during that particular thread, and to suggest that the moderator had to abide by the rules just wont wash.

I hope you will contribute in other ways or other channels. Moderation needs more oversight.

I have to add my own regret to Stuart's departure from the forum, and can only hope it is another of his decisions where he changes his mind upon and that he continues to share his wisdom and wit with us all (and that is said in  by someone who found crossing swords with Stuart both helpful and instructive in developing his own thoughts and ideas even if they were ultimately not in accord with Stuart's views.)

I'm not so sure the block facility is a wise one.How easy it will be if instead of debating and discussing and actually responding to criticism, one simply turns a deaf ear to conflicting opinion and perhaps pay no heed to actual contrary evidence by blocking. Are we not encouraging a tendency of listening only to the converted rather than demanding that we all engage with one another, regardless of whether we agree or not.You pick and choose who you wish to listen to, and as we frequently make comparisons with public meetings, that can happen at those…the whole audience is involved in listening to a contribution or re-buttal. If the reason for blocking happens to be one of personal animousity or an on-going feud then i think the moderator has presently sufficient powers to deter this.  

Not in favour of block function, for reasons setout by Alan and mod1. 

 I think thats a bit harsh Vin but I do largely go along with your criticism of the moderation procedure on this site and consider the suspension of Stuart to be quite apalling and utterly short-sighted.Ive increasingly come to the view that the problem really centres on the abritrary ruling on what constitutes off topic posts.  I propose a radical break and that this whole rule be scrapped completely. If the drift of the discussion moves well away from the original title of the thread so be it.  What's wrong with that?  There is usually some kind of underlying dynamic steering the direction of the thread, anyway and it is far better to let the conversation flow naturally than railroad it along narrow rigid  lines. Where is the harm in doing this.  Let the contributors themselves / not the moderators – remind each other if the conversation is seemingly getting a bit too off topic in their judgement – they can always start up new threads if they are that unhappy. This will immediately and dramatically reduce the scope for conflict between moderators and contributors  and reduce the workload of the former.There is too much control freakery in the Party as it is and this is perhaps part of the reason why it is languishing.  Dressing it up in the name  of democracy is all very well but you do need to balance that with other concerns – like freedom of expression, for instance

That is  maybe because you threw 'sincerity' out of the window by renaging and suspending a party member for simply asking a question of you.  Get off you power trip and allow free discussion. 'off topic' is no excuse to suspend. Admit it and move on