Still seems awful stifled to me at the moment.
Maybe Democracy was the wrong word to use but we get a degree of freedom to post before 'censorship' and are/were fairly free to have some discussion.
This Forum has been moderated since it opened in 2009.
I started this thread to clarify this fact in the spring of 2011.
I was the sole moderator in the beginning. I have since recruited other moderators. All of us serve at the pleasure of TIGHAR's executive officers and the board of directors.
If you have something substantive to contribute to a thread, either by way of research you've done, by reasoning about data already in hand, or by exercising some authority that you have earned elsewhere in your life (e.g., the Ph.D. work done by the late Howard Alldred in oceanography or the late Kar Burns in pathology), your posts will probably remain in the Forum.
If you are simply passing the time of day with friends, the pleasantries will very likely end up on the cutting room floor in due course.
If you begin a new thread on a topic that already has a long history, your contribution will be merged with the old thread--if, in fact, it differs in some interesting, informative, or authoritative fashion from extant posts.
If you wish to complain about the moderation policies, you may write any of the moderators, the TIGHAR executives, or the board of directors. You may not create threads on this topic in boards devoted to TIGHAR's projects.
If you cannot abide the thought that posts in this Forum are reviewed for content and tone, then you may create your own Forum elsewhere on the internet. You may provide
links to such free-for-all Forums in the Chatterbox.
Until such time as you are appointed as a Forum moderator, you may not rewrite these rules. Take 'em or leave 'em.