I could not disagree more. Yes, the users play the dominant role in posting, and they should do so responsibly. Censorship implies that there is a higher authority which is unethically restricting people or users from saying things that go against their thinking.
Free speech, free thinking should be encouraged. But, you can have your free speech and still not interfere and be disrespectful of others.
For me, it is simple. The author of a thread deserves to have his thread respected. He or she have a thought or a question. This thought or question does not impede anyone else's ability to post elsewhere. Let's take SandeevP's thread on Problems After SBS 2011 Upgrade, which by the way is a pure thread. He has asked the community if they can help him with HIS problem. He should expect MOST of the posts to be relative to his question.
SandeevP cannot use his AC. CANNOT use his AC. Amazing Charts' support has been unable to help him.
Please understand me. I am not talking about a couple of jokes that stemmed directly from the thread as long as they do not steer the thread in the wrong direction.
But, how would you feel if you asked a question and knowledgeable users posted in hopes of solving the problem and then a hijack completely interrupted. It usually is a tangential post based on something in the previous post. The author says, "This is really killing me. It is almost more than I can bear."
Another user, seeing the word bear, can't resist saying, "Speaking of bears, did you see the game last night? Unbelievable!
Next user: "I know. Who would have thought they would have beaten the Seahawks." (Just making up a game) I would have thought that Jay Cutler's being injured would have been a huge problem.
First user: And, the Seahawks at that. They are the frontrunner for the Superbowl.
Now maybe someone jumps in and says, OK, let's get back on track. I doubt a new user is going to feel comfortable asking two vets to take their football story somewhere else.
Is there a reason other forums have stricter rules? Yes. Because they work. These aren't stuffy, boring rules which cause censorship. Here they are mostly rules which are unsaid, because it is obvious that interrupting the flow of a thread is rude. Now, as you said, our board is different than some. And, some threads are different than others. A great example is Top Posters or What's Up With NewCrop (or whatever the name was). In the Top Posters, it wasn't more than two posts were submitted before all of the other posts were comedic. Probably, because David had said his peace and wasn't looking for sympathy. In the NewCrop talk, that started off very quickly as a bitch/vent session that spiraled down to who was wearing what gown. But, that was OK, because of the type of thread it was and how much steam had gone out of it. In SandeevP's SBS 2011 thread, it is still going strong. His last post, still on topic, was about AC support uploading his databases.
I am not going to delete any post unless it is denigrating or obscene. And, I am certainly not going to go around stating, "OK, boys and girls. Enough of this hijacking."
Policing ourselves so that threads stay on topic is all that we need. I agree we don't need rules to do that. But, posters, mostly new posters, sometimes have to be what hijacking is and why it isn't helpful to do it.
I come on the board at least three times a day. Like everyone else, I scan the MRPs to look for interesting topics. Most of the time they are interesting, educational, helpful and on topic. I rarely see posts that have inertia, are staying true to the topic get hijacked.
I think part of this entire discussion is the strong word hijacked. If you don't know what it is it does sound frightening. I didn't learn the term hijacked on Experts Exchange or UBB Forums or Technet, I learned it right here the hard way.
Another thing that shouldn't be done in forums is posting in the wrong forum. But, that is not something that is ever talked about here. Most of the time I don't even notice what forum it is in. It could be in 3rd party vendors, and I wouldn't care. Where it is important is the very large boards where the experts only watch certain forums. So, it is a waste of time to put a SQL Server question in an Exchange forum.
So, there you go. It is not about censorship at all. Censorship would be if I disagreed with your post, and I deleted it.
