my disappointment about mjd

I'm sorry you fucked up the thread about the referendum on Sunday.

You don't display the same kind of zeal to clean up Antimoon from Adam's shit.

I'm disappointed.

Would it be possible to post the reason for "disappearing" certain threads and posts? A few times my posts have been deleted and I don't know whether it's because there was something unacceptable about my post or whether a whole page filled up with garbage overnight and was deleted.

Too bad about the referendum thread -- it was interesting.

I noticed that too. I wasn't sure if was because my posts were scorned upon or because my isp was mistakened to be a troll's, sincethat I erase all my cookies and history to be a step ahead of computer crashes and because of websites pages that don't always open. Albeit I'm not a regular poster.

Greg,

mjd is not a paid moderator. We should appreciate whatever he is doing or whatever he can do within his limits. Atleast he appears on a daily basis for clearing up some mess. What about Tom and Michal? They never appear and don't give a damn to what's going on Antimoon's forum.

Read the rules and you can see why the thread was deleted. As for me not cracking down on Adam, his pushing that thread was one of the main reasons I deleted it. He ruins many threads because he baits all of the staunch pro-EU members with all his off-topic patriotic posts and they all fall for it. So to accuse me of being easy on Adam is pretty ridiculous. I have to delete something he wrote nearly every day.

I think I am quite fair to everyone who posts on this forum...even Adam. If it has to do with languages and isn't purposely inflamatory, then everyone can say whatever they want.

Whether an off-topic thread is interesting or not doesn't really factor into the equation. I can think of lots of potentially interesting discussions that don't fall within the scope of this forum. However, there is a purpose to this site. If you want to discuss the EU and debate Adam, find one of the many other forums out there that that deal with politics, the EU, etc. From what I read, it didn't seem to have anything to do with language. If it did, then please accept my apologies, but I saw no evidence of it.

Read the rules before posting. Don't bother responding to off-topic threads because they will be removed.

Not to pick sides with anyone, but I agree with mjd's comments here. This site is about language. Sure, a few posts that originally START out dealing with language sometimes get sidetracked, but even then it's not usually too big of a deal, or often the posts return to the original topic or some other language-related issue.

I think things like the EU referendum are very interesting topics, but when a post *deliberately* starts out from the very beginning with a *non-language* purpose on a site that explicity requires topics to be about language, then people shouldn't be too offended when their post is pulled. Also, unlike other non-language issues, expressly controversial political topics often quickly get nasty with insulting, unacceptable posts from people who can't control themselves.

There's a difference between language topics that occasionally touch on political issues in a few posts (because language is linked with culture and politics in many ways) and ones that on purpose start out dealing with non-language political subjects.

I'm really not against anyone or picking sides on the issue, but I think it's fair that a forum that's explicitly about topics A, B, and C can reasonably pull threads full of inflammatory and irrelevant (to the forum's purpose) topics about P,Z, and *.

OK fair enough, mjd.

I couldn't have put it any better, Kirk.

Je vois que cela n'a pas changé beaucoup

For those who want to be sly, why not run a language topic with a non-language topic on the same thread. That's what I try to do :)

Granted, mjd is doing all he can on this forum. The problem, I think, is that since this forum doesn't have a sophisticated set-up like some others I've seen, and there are no categories of topics, there can't be a category for posts that are unrelated to the primary focus of the forum. I think such a category serves an important purpose. When you "talk" to people on a regular basis, there's a tendency to want to talk to those same people about other topics, as well, and not just hop off to some other forum that happens to be there for the purpose of discussing that topic.

However, as long as antimoon.com has this set-up, threads will disappear. I'm still puzzled by why some of my posts have disappeared, though.

What I find hard personally is trying to split politics, social circumstances etc from language topics - they are all so linked.

I noticed one thread that vanished even though it was a legitimate language topic. However the topic starter decided it would be cute to give the topic an anti-French titlle, which is probably why it got the ax. I won't mention names, but the topiic starters initials are A.D.A.M.

Of course language and politics are often intertwined; thus, discussions that touch upon language and politics will not be deleted. A problem arises when a discussion goes entirely off the deep end and ends up in a mudslinging match that is totally unrelated to language. Sometimes discussions need to be reeled in. For example, a discussion that starts out about Italian and then ends up in a 10 page discussion on the AC Milan soccer club. Naturally, I take these on a case by case basis.

Topics that are purposefully inflamatory serve absolutely no purpose, in addition to usually being ridiculous. I also take these on a case by case basis and evaluate them carefully before deleting anything. An example of such a thread would something like "Why the French language is useless"....unless there were an actual argument being made in the thread, such posts are only meant to start the mudslinging matches I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, people often seem to lack self-control on Internet forums and there will always be those who choose to respond to these type of posts. You're not going to change a troll. Don't be surprised when responses to trollish posts also get deleted.

As for the thread in question, there really is no argument to be made. It was entirely beyond the scope of this forum.

Deborah,

I apologize if any legitimate posts were accidentally deleted. I don't recall deleting any of yours, but sometimes it happens.

(PLS CHECK MY SENTENCES)

if possible I would like Rose to join the discussion as both of us are aslo doing the upload process.