Enough with the hypothetical,this one’s real: The moderator of one of your favorite online forums declares that if you post things he feels are dangerous to read, he will censor them. He may or may not tell you when he does this. If you post such things repeatedly, you will bebanned.
Does this count as blackmail? Does this count as terrorism? Should we not comply with him to prevent similar future abuses of power?
Have you considered that not everyone feels as strongly as you do about moderators deleting posts in online communities?
To those of us who think that moderators deleting stupid or dangerous content can be an essential ingredient to maintaining the level of quality, your post comes off as silly as threatening to kill a kitten unless LessWrong.com is made W3C compliant by 2011.
(That isn’t to say moderation can’t have problems—after all, lesswrong’s voting system is a mechanism to improve on it. But it’s a far cry from “can be improved” to “must be punished”.)
Have you considered that not everyone feels as strongly as you do about moderators deleting posts in online communities?
To those of us who think that moderators deleting stupid or dangerous content can be an essential ingredient to maintaining the level of quality, your post comes off as silly as threatening to kill a kitten unless LessWrong.com is made W3C compliant by 2011.
(That isn’t to say moderation can’t have problems—after all, lesswrong’s voting system is a mechanism to improve on it. But it’s a far cry from “can be improved” to “must be punished”.)