Let me think...
In the last few days, I've personally deleted comments about "filthy mexicans", "wetbacks", "faggots", "homos", "dikes" and a couple different cases of posters calling each others names. Looking at what the other mods have dealt with in the last couple of days, they've deleted members calling each other things including "idiot", "moron", "faggot", "nazi", "fascist", "fascist wingnut", "*******", "*****", and others.
In the last week, we've dealt with people trying to entrap members to sell them illegal guns, straw men purchases, how to build bombs, how to build a machine gun, how to illegally import a gun, and other stuff. Those got deleted too.
In the last month we've banned big bunches of undercover stormfronter mullet nazis, trolls, and recidivists.
In that same time, we've allowed threads to run about topics that are guarenteed to turn into flamefests, in the vain hope that they would actually, maybe just this once, turn out okay, even though we've seen them crash and burn repeatedly. Ironically, the guy questioning our abilites has a giant red Ron Paul in his signature line. Those threads have been insanely heated, but we've managed to keep most of them open.
Some of your pet topics that you love to death? You think they're really important? Well, at that same time we're receiving complaint e-mails from twenty other posters about how annoying those threads are. We close them, we receive twenty other e-mails about how much we suck. Go figure.
Some topics get clamped down on, and you guys might just have to take a deep breath and look at it from our perspective. That topic might be your most favoritest topic in the entire world, but if the previous ten times we've had that same topic, it degenerated into a flame fest, name calling, or general stupidity that makes THR and gun owners in general look bad, we're gonna be tough. It isn't personal.
I've been a mod here since THR opened. In that time I've been called every name you can think of. In one 48 hour period, I was called a nazi, a fascist, a liberal, a neo-con, and a liberal, all for my actions, in the SAME THREAD. I'm still trying to figure that one out, since those things tend to be mutally exclusive.
If a mod clamps down on your topic, it might not be because of you personally. It might just be because some of the people on your side, are not exactly helping your cause. They may, in fact, be huge idiots, who are making THR and gun owners look stupid.
There are threads on here where I've been the bad guy, and clamped down on them hard, and tried to steer them in a direction that didn't make us look like mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, imbeciles, and these are threads where I AGREED WITH THE ORIGINAL POSTER!
We've had a bunch of nonsense lately about bashing some groups. You may love to bash that group. That may be your hobby. You may be the captain of the (fill in the blank) bashing squad.
But if we have other THR members who belong to that group, then we can't you bash them. Because then, when they want to bash your group, we would have to let them.
Some of you say that you're sick of the "if you don't like it, go to a different board" attitude.
Guess what? We're not trying to be mean. But at the end of the day, THR is one thing. It is Oleg's board, and we're going to steer it in his direction. We can't be all things to all people.
I'm being sincere when I say that there are a lot of other really good boards out there. I'm sure that one of them will fit your style and personality. We're not in this to win a popularity contest. We don't have ads, and we don't get more advertising money by how many times people click on this board. (in fact, it costs us more money, which is mostly paid by the mods, and donations from the general membership).
So if you want an unmoderated board, they're out there. If you want to discuss a topic that we don't discuss here, there is probably a board built for that.
But if you like the people at THR, and you want to discuss that topic with them, you're just going to have to trust us. We've been through this before. Believe me.
And just because you personally haven't seen a thread complaining about how we do stuff, just means you haven't been here much, or you aren't paying attention. We get these threads about once a week.
Then you'll say, but if you're getting so many complaints, you must be doing something wrong. Nope. We've got 10,000 active members. It is impossible to make all of them happy all of the time. That is just math. Any action we take will offend somebody on one side of that bell curve.
If you've got a specific problem, other than a general "the mods suck and r mean to me", send a PM to the mod in question. If you really hate that mod, then send a PM to Oleg. Believe it or not, we really do care about people's opinons.
And for the guy who's talking about being threatened with a banning... We don't like to ban people. In fact, I think we're often too damn nice. Normally when I see a member post something about how some mod "threatened" them, when I check the records (and yes, we do keep records of every warning) there was usually a pretty damn good reason.
Well, I hope that helps. Now I'll wait for the inevitable e-mails that tell me I'm a jack booted, cop-apologist, anarchist, fascist, liberal neo-con, baby seal clubber.
