First of all, I recognize that some level of moderation is necessary. These are the easy calls: obvious obscenity, incorrect placement, unsourced articles are perhaps among this category.
I have seen on Free Republic a significant number of materials pulled that I could not imagine a reasonable explanation for this action. I have had civil discussions with people on threads where flaming was going on between others, only to have the thread pulled. I’ve watched articles I was interested in posted, been distracted for a few minutes, only to return to find the article gone. I’ve posted articles that lasted less than a minute. I’ve watched passionate posters banned for their words.
This has led me to personally reject the label “Freeper”. I suspect I do not deserve the title in that I find this heavier hand – one used to prevent the introduction of select ideas – is not about civility. It is about “Conservative Correctness”.
If I were to offer suggestions that would change my somewhat hesitant impression of FR, my first suggestion would be that materials that are dropped be replaced with a graphic that says “CENSORED” and the poster’s name be retained. This would give everyone an opportunity to realistically determine what frequency of censorship is happening and who is being censored. It would also give us opportunity to privately contact the censored party to determine what it is they are trying to communicate through the posting.
My second suggestion is that a list of reasons for censorship be compiled and the appropriate reason be posted for each occurrence of censorship. In other words, if a thread were pulled because of the use of profanity, the thread would show “Censored because of use of profanity”.
Thirdly, I think the moderator who pulls a thread or posting should be identifiable as well. That way readers would be able to observe potential behavior patterns of different moderators. Certainly moderators using their own judgment are likely to bring some perspective to their decisions. If the FR public can see that a particular moderator is using one category over and over, it would give the body of FR the opportunity and perhaps the motivation to correct bias.
So a censored posting might be: “Jack Barbara CENSORED because of use of profanity by Moderator12”
I make these suggestions in good faith. It is not my intention to promote chaos or to prevent intervention where intervention is necessary – my intention is fairly increase the level of accountability of those who generously take on the role of censor – accountability to the FR participants.