Censorship etc... have at it

Ding, ding, ding! Thank yeeeeew!

(btw... Yes it is.)

Bruce

I think that's a good proposal. Maybe raise this topic again after Marcus gets settled in ...

I've come around to that way of thinking about pics as well. Maybe even a homegrown video section.  I'm sure there will be lots of ideas and suggestions forthcoming.

However, as it has been mentioned here a few times as well,  I think an unmoderated section (aka spat zone) is not a good idea.  That said, amongst the rubble of the last few days, I'm thinking there might be a bit of validity to the notion of a geezers heart beat here - not because we often see posters using the word about themselves, but because there is an insulation from the broader social experience out there - but there can be vibrancy and relevance within a moderated environment.

If I understand correctly, Marcus gets to decide whether this place is a 'simple' public service (and for whom) as I suspect it probably started out being in Charles' livingroom, or whether it's a business enterprise with different goals.  How TAY evolves will be shaped by those goals - it's an exciting time.   I've only been around here for a couple of years, but I appreciate very much what it is and how it got here, so I'll say my thanks to Charles here.   I have the sense that there are some interesting chapters ahead just waiting to be written..

I also commend Marcus for his courage and foresight to let this thread air out. At the end of the day, I think it's been a good thing.

Okay, I'm closing this little experiment up.

I appreciate the fact that, though it got dragged down into the ugly in the middle, the discussion finally came around to how folks feel about the site's tone and what it takes to maintain it.  My goal, as I've said, is to moderate as lightly as possible in the future, but TAY is what it is in large part because of the respect and tone that the discussions typically have.

With the intent of educating myself in the past week, I've been reading over the moderation logs and going through the lists of deleted posts.  It surprised me to find that there's really not that much there.  With the exception of my (admittedly overzealous) work on the Skyline post that started this, there are perhaps 5 or 6 posts in the last year that have been deleted for "incivility".

This tells me that, as I guessed, it's the community that we have here that really sets the mood.  The "norms" for the site and the behavior of the users do most of the moderation before it gets out of hand.  In my eyes, this is ideal -- it means that the majority of the users want things to remain that way here.  With few exceptions, that's what I'm reading in this thread and in private correspondence.

With regard to the other big concern brought up here -- the picture limits -- I'll be thinking about some changes there, but I'm going to let things settle down for a little while and get to know the site better before making any changes. 

So thank you all for discussing this and thanks for spending time here.  It will be a long time before I can think of this place as anything but "Charles' site", but my first week on the job has certainly been a fun trial by fire.