Removed drug related post.

[dyalander]

Earlier this month a mod removed a post made by a user stating that they hade used an illicit drug but had a positive experience. Most of the other mods had no problem with removing the post.

I raised concerns, which another mod shared - stating that removing the post extended beyond the rules in their current form:

- There may be no direct references to methods of obtaining drugs illegally. Any post containing such references will be edited or deleted.

When composing the rules, the sort of post in question was discussed and it was decided that we word the rule as it is above because poeple on this forum should be allowed to talk about their experiences with drugs so long as they are not fascilitating the breaking of any laws. THe same way that it would be okay for a user to say "I once ran a red light and got away with it and I got home quicker and I think ignoring red lights when possible is fine" it should be okay for users to say "I once took pixie dust and it made me bust out the greatest pixie sets ever, I think pixie dust is brilliant."

While personally I would strenuously disagree with those statements those disagreements should be made in reply to the posts, not by removing them. Furthermore if the other mods have concerns that this policy is not tough enough those concerns should be raised in this section of the forum - mods should not simply go beyond the rules then say "well I think the rules don't go far enough".

I have asked the mod to return the post and they have refused on various grounds and I encourage them to answer the concerns I have outlined above here. I also request again that the post be returned to the boards.

[Jeremy]

I absolutely agree with you Dyalan.

Indeed I brought this same issue up in the topic about Matt Cross being an admin. People should be allowed to talk about their real experiences, no matter what the experience is so long as they use civil language.

Certainly given the demographic of this forum, I think open discussion about things like drug use can be positive and censoring achieves nothing. We should certainly have the right to question things in society like drug laws and base our questioning of those on our own experiences.

There is no question that lots of people have a great time on drugs. That's a known fact. You wouldn't find anybody who would deny that. What is the possible point of censoring such a comment? We all know it anyway. There are pros and cons to drugs and the best thing to do is to make an informed decision based on the evidence. There are a lot of mature and intelligent people on this forum. If somebody started promoting drug use and saying we should all do drugs I think there are a lot of people who would bring up good arguments against that, and the people who are unsure would learn a lot.

Instead if you censor such a comment you merely exclude the chance of a conversation about it here - you don't do anything to address the issue of drugs, you don't protect anybody and you don't help anybody.

The other thing, of course, is that saying that you had a great time on drugs is not a comment that would be censored (at least in Australia) in any public media. You could say it on prime time national TV, you could say print it in a news paper, you could say it in parliament and nobody would attempt to censor the comment. Lots of people would disagree with you and attack you for making the comment. Nobody would say that the media shouldn't have covered it. Imagine tomorrow George W Bush comes out and says he does cocaine every day and loves it. Can you imagine any news organisation censoring that? It would never happen. Why should modified have harsher censorship laws than our countries laws?


Real experiences should never be censored, even if they are disgusting or the experience was illegal.

[Jeremy]

Also mods who can't follow the rules or don't know what they are shouldn't be mods. It's not a hard job. If they don't like the rules they should resign - plenty of other people have done just that in the past and it's a demonstration of integrity. Staying as a mod and enforcing your own rules rather than the forum rules is being a dictator and has been the cause of all the serious problems this forum has faced in the past.

Whoever this mod was, put forward your case for why the rules should be changed and if it's agreed upon the rules will be changed. You have no right to just censor anything that you don't like.

[dyalander]

I have moved the post into the discussion section.