So what's your thoughts on Free Speech on forums? I respect and allow free speech but some people like to take advantage of it and cross boundaries. How do you deal with it?
Haven't made a interesting Thread in awhile so thought I'd post this.
Everyone is entitled to speak their mind. Being a little bit offensive is fine in most cases.
There is that line that a person must cross (that you determine on a case by case situation), once the line is crossed then the member needs a one-on-one with a staff member.
There's no such thing as free speech, unless you're alone in a room or something 🙂
Every community requires some kind of limits on what people can say in order to get along. My forum has rules against insults, controversial topics--religion and politics specifically {it's an all-ages RPG, and debates of that nature have typically ended badly and since we put that rule in, things have been better} and no talking about self-harm/harming others or sexually explicit topics. Other than that stuff people can pretty much discuss what they like. "Free speech" it is not. But what it is enough freedom to allow people to enjoy the kind of community that it is, and that's what matters.
I agree with Acorn, if you allow free speech on your forum, it will soon be overrun with spam ads, hate messages, flaming, etc. It will get to a level where the only visitors you will have will be spam bots and you won't have a community.
I've seen a couple of Admins claim that they don't have rules on their forums, however for the reasons outlined above a forum needs rules if it is to survive.
The forum I am TRYING to get started allows I think, as much freedom of speech as one can allow. We are going to be a debate centered general discussion forum--pretty much a forum about ANYTHING.
And we have one board specifically for those who want to get into slug-fest debates. However, on the other boards we will be expecting members to be very civil and respectful of one another and each others opinions.
I will say that I've modded forums where things got out of hand. The admin was pretty crappy and let members get away with too much. She would often say something is a banable offense and not follow through--and frequently people would post complaining about the rules and dissing the mods. The most that happened was that the topic would be locked, which is BS.
I think a forum can have freedom of speech to some extent--but there HAS to be at least some boundaries, otherwise your forum will cease to be fun, and become even worse then the wild west! I've seen it happen first-hand.
