Censorship and editing - split from some political thread or other

[sidneykidney]

No. If I remove what you said, I don't change the content. I only prevent people from seeing it.
But editing would be a form of censoring.

Can you go over this for me one more time Bruno. I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic. I genuinely dont understand.

If I make a post like this (for sake of argument):

"Shaving is such fantastic fun"

and you remove everything so the next visitor doesnt see my post, you arent changing my contribution to the thread? You say 'I only prevent people from seeing it'. Does that mean that it is still there but can only be seen by mods and Admin? If so thats ALOT of spam that admins/mods still see in the threads....

And you say censorship isnt editing? I cant help disagreeing.... unless you can convince me otherwise.

EDIT: Thank you for splintering the thread.

[Bruno]

Well, if I remove your post, that would be censorship. But the post is still there, it's just that only mods and higher can see it if they want to, and they can restore it as well. Supers and admins can also physically delete stuff (every trace of it is gone) but we don't do that to avoid situations where we can no longer know exactly why a moderator action was taken.
But my main point is that by removing it from plain sight, we don't edit your post.

Now, if I were to edit your post, that could be censorship.
For example, if you say 'zeepk rules' and I remove that statement, then I am leaving your post in place, but I change your words to remove parts I don't agree with. That would be censoring.

Since changing people's words without their consent can cuase problems (which is understandable) we never do that. If we feel the need to change a post, it gets removed temporarily, and the poster gets notified.
We explain what was the specific problem with the post. The poster can then post the same post again minus the objectionable part (we usually include the post itself) or he can PM back to say 'ok, go ahead and remove that part) and we do that.

[sidneykidney]

Ah right. So when you remove a post it isnt actually removed, just unviewable to the riff raff. That makes sense now. Yes I see now. I understand your explanation. Many thanks Bruno.

[majurey]

I know this is gonna come back and bite me (as someone who works in the publishing industry), but I have no problem with censorship on a privately owned forum.

But I do disagree with your definition of censorship, Bruno. Suppressing content from general view (only accessible to privileged eyes, i.e. mods and above) is definitely a form of censorship. The suppression of any form of communicative material is censorship, irrespective of the method of suppression: deletion, hiding, selective editing -- these are all ways to suppress the original communication. It can be legal (e.g. supported through the courts) or illegal (pharma companies selectively editing or changing the final draft of medical research which they've funded, for example). But the principle is the same: you prevent people from reading something and it's censorship.

But like I said, I personally have no beef with that on something like SRP.

[Bruno]

I see your point, and I agree.
Following the definition of the word, we do censor by a) hiding and b) editing
But we don't edit things ourselves, and that is one of the more important rules regarding moderation in the conversation.

This way, the poster has the option of leaving the post deleted, or rephrasing it to something that he himself approves of. So at no time do we ever put words in someone's mouth, so to speak.
I think this distinction is very important because in the end, your words are your own, and noone else's.