[midoridensha]

Censorship is necessary for a civil forum. If you don't censor, you get 8chan, a place full of nothing but vileness. All the shitty people congregate there because no one will censor them or ban them, and all the decent people leave.

Of course, we usually call this "moderation" instead of "censorship", but it's mostly the same, except it isn't done by a government.

So the quality of any forum just comes down to the quality of the moderation. Good moderators keep out the off-topic crap and general nastiness, shitty moderators ban people for saying they don't like the company's new game.

[betamist]

One man's nastiness is another's joke, or opinion. What people don't understand is that if you are ok with the idea of a so called "moderation" that's more on the limiting side, some other group of moderators will come later and apply he same rules but from the different side, and your sides ideas won't see the light of day. It's a very simple concept that people have forgotten why freedom of expression is the first amendment. The problem imo is that it doesn't translate well to online communities that are open to anyone. I'm sure people have thought about this endlessly before, but I don't know if there's any progress.

[midoridensha]

Online communities are communities like any other: they're a product of the people in them, and the people that control them. You may find some are more to your liking than others. There's no perfect way of doing moderation. If you don't like any kind of moderation at all, you're free to hang out on 8chan with the neo-Nazis.