Censorship and the CTC

[skidd]

Dear CTC,

I have devoted a large portion of my life to garnering experience, gaining qualification and actively advocating social welfare (I have a degree in Geography and Transport planning and won the Grebenik prize for writing).

I sincerely believe that the greatest benefits for the least costs can be achieved in transport. Nothing has swayed me from the belief that cycling is the jewel in the crown of improving society, It is simple maths. The greatest costs imposed upon society are imposed by private motor use (10% of European GDP) and the most efficient alternative is cycling, of which, in this country, you are overtly the most powerful lobby. You are uniquely blessed, in that of all philanthropic endeavours, promotion of cycling is the pinnacle. If one's objective was to make the world a better place and one were offered the raft of all solutions incorporating medical, religious, physical, economic, emotional and all other institutions in all their forms, cycling comes out top. It might not be the sexiest (far from it, it suffers public ridicule), I am sure that adopting snow leopards for children with cancer fighting with our boys in Iraq might more readily tug at the heart strings, but it is the logical choice as the first stop on the path to being 'good'.

All other things being equal, if we have perfect information, cycling would be promoted to a far far greater degree and society would gain. Lobbying for cycling because one likes cycling is fine, but in that context it is merely an interest group which attempts to bang its particular drum louder than other self-serving parties. Promoting general welfare, and embracing the inescapable conclusion that cycling is the optimal strategy for attaining it, is an incredibly compelling argument in its favour.

Perfect information is difficult to achieve, nevertheless, censorship is certainly less likely to promote its dissemination than free speech. In these forums I have had swathes of what I would call considered and accurate writing removed. The nature of what has been removed can not be debated with true insight, it has gone! If a moderator says I was rude, offensive, contravened site rules or any other of the plethora of excuses used by those whose philosophy is “I might not like what he has to say but I would just delete when he says it” it will be judged. But by cutting posts they have rendered it impossible to judge accurately. We have less than perfect information. Cycling potentially loses. Society potentially loses.

Please reinstate all posts that are not illegal. If they are inaccurate, say so, if they are off-topic by all means put them into a new thread.

If the CTC cannot provide a forum for open discussion on cycling how can we expect other institutions to do so?

Steve Kidd

[Mark1978]

So let me see, you've been abusive to another member or generally been an buttock and had your posts deleted?

(I own a discussion forum so I see this all the time )

[horizon]

Dear CTC,

and won the Grebenik prize for writing.

But not for spelling. P - lease - it's loses not looses. Thank you.

[horizon]

Now, before you accuse me (rightly) of not taking your post seriously, here's my response. Moderation in all things I say. This forum attracts my time aand attention (though some may wish it didn't, Ed.) because of the high standard of moderation. All done, AFAIK, in people's free time.

[skidd]

Mark1978

I have not been abusive

I don't know if I have been a "rude word removed" - I don't know what the word was.

Yes I have had posts deleted.

Hope that answers your question (s)

Steve

Horizon

Thanks for the heads up - I will correct it. Good to know the forum "attracts your time aand attention"

[tonythompson]

Hi Skidd maybe the posts were removed because they where so boring and your latest could be gone the same way possibly.
By the way I got the Miss Giblin prize for writing when I was 7 - that was the pinnacle of my academic career.

[Mark1978]

They remove boring posts ? - so that's where most of mine went

[horizon]

Horizon

Thanks for the heads up - I will correct it. Good to know the forum "attracts your time aand attention"

I was stifling a yawn at the time.

BTW I liked your polemic about cycling - I agreed with it all and, yes, it was inspiring and well written. But that doesn't mean that the forum is censored. In fact, given that this is the "official" CTC forum, the CTC is very accepting IMV of the criticism that gets thrown at it.

[skidd]

Tonythompson
You say

Hi Skidd maybe the posts were removed because they where so boring and your latest could be gone the same way possibly.

Perhaps so, but that is not what the moderators say, and we will never know, because they have been taken down. Even if they were boring the issue here is that they have been censored, and that is wrong

You dismiss my already meager qualifications with

By the way I got the Miss Giblin prize for writing when I was 7 - that was the pinnacle of my academic career.

Thank you. It illustrates perfectly why we should leave posts up, in that now I can highlight your cruel facetiousness and that my work (on speed cameras) was deemed the finest from 16,000 in the Social Sciences at Leeds University and, boring or not, lends some credence to the merit of my writing (in spite of the spelling

[horizon]

skidd: this forum has a good track record (seven years?) and the moderation has been consistent during that time. But of course, if something is censored (i.e. removed by the moderators) it is hard to discuss it. I am not aware of your posts that may have been removed - others seem to be. I am wondering if you alluded to them along the lines of "My post was about x topic etc" we could see what the moderators' points of view were.

[skidd]

Thanks Horizon,

The Andrew Mitchell thread at http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=68432&p=586529#p586529. There are several posts which I have no other record of.

[meic]

Posts were also deleted from Kwackers, Edwards, Hexhome (spelt correctly I hope) and myself.
Possibly Gaz too and I dont think that any of us are complaining about the moderators actions.

[Si]

Points of order...and I am here attempting to write in a factual, non-judgemental way....

The posts were not removed due to their boring nature.

When signing up to be a member of the forum people agree to the rules - thus they have already agreed to having their posts removed if the moderators think that they need removal. If anyone does not want to follow the set of rules that have been clearly posted then perhaps this is not the forum for you, and there are plenty more forums out there with a much laxer view of moderation.

There was no reason why anyone could not have discussed the topic in question without breaking rules - and if someone had achieved prestigious awards for writing I'm sure that they could have phrased their views in a way that got their point across but did not require that the moderators waste their effort on trying to sort out the thread. As I have said many times before - most people get moderated not for the view that they hold but the way that they have expressed it. If you can express the view in a friendly, respectful and polite way then your views often have to be pretty extreme to get moderated.

As it is, this thread has already started to see the occurrence of petty name calling and sniping - things that this forum is not about (but exemplify some of the problems with the original thread). We, the moderators, thank those who offer us support but please don't offer us support by behaving in an unfriendly or respectfulness way towards others, no matter how much you think that they have brought it on themselves, as this leaves us in a tricky situation - hypothetically speaking if someone were to come onto the thread and insult Skidd for what he has said and we do nothing about it then he would be in his rights to ask why; but if we did do something about it then it would only cause those, who see any form of censorship as the devil incarnate, to see evidence of further wrong doing by the mods. Heads you win, tails we lose.

[thirdcrank]

I'll suggest that a fairly basic rule of communication is that clarity is mainly the responsibility of the sender rather than the receiver.

On that basis, anybody tempted to post on the lines of "tell me where I said that" (or any of its subtle variants) should first reflect on what it was that they wrote which has been misunderstood and how it happened. Then, they may feel it's appropriate to re-phrase or explain their point in more detail. One advantage of this approach is that if the confusion is contrived rather than genuine, things are more likely to be defused rather than escalated.

[horizon]

Thanks Horizon,

The Andrew Mitchell thread at http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=68432&p=586529#p586529. There are several posts which I have no other record of.

skidd: I never followed the original thread but I've now read your (remaining) posts. My impression is that the moderators tried to prevent the thread falling into a mire of personal arguments. It can be very frustrating if your very valid points get sledgehammered when the thread is "cleaned up" but I think Si said it all in his post in the thread - basically there is collateral damage - since the mods are not paid the salaries of surgeons they cannot be expected to work like them. I have also lost posts on a closed down thread. My advice FWIW is to cut your losses and persevere. And as Si suggests, go to a less moderated forum but those for me are minor versions of hell.