No one said take it away. But at some point, criticism becomes trolling, which was my point. It would be helpful, of course, if panzerman were to demonstrate that he understand what the thread is all about.
Imagine if standard practice was to not introduce religion to people until they were 18 and hence had somewhat of a grasp of how to think for themselves. Would religion still continue to have such a grasp on many people??? The only way for religion to continue to work is to shove it down your throat before you know any better and threaten you with a horrible afterlife that cannot be proved if you try and leave once you're able to critically think. Now granted, believing some trading mumbo jumbo isn't exactly nearly as dangerous, but a waste of time and money is fairly taxing. But the more I think about it, the more I'm for this. It will give those guys who keep complaining about trolls, who sometimes are trolls themselves, a world of their very own in their own private threads and perhaps both sides can co-exist peacefully. If you don't like a thread called "Learn how to trade with my proven indicator" because its all crap and you've been blocked from posting in it, you can always start a "ANTI - Learn how to trade with my proven indicator" thread.
I was not objecting to what you said, I was writing my post and hadn't seen yours. I don't disagree that at some point, criticism stops adding value. My contention simply is that the task of keeping things in check belongs to the mods, not to the whims and fancies of assorted people.
And mine is that the task of keeping things "in check" belongs to those who understand what is being discussed. Also helpful is an understanding what "debate" means.
Then we will have to agree to disagree on this. And if you are implying that the mods lack that understanding, I can't say I've seen any problems with what Magna does. Where we do have a problem is uneven moderation. Case in point, I got blocked for a week for swearing, recently one poster called another a c**t (not in the basement) and nothing was done. With a handful of mods and this uneven standard, how much worse will it be when everyone gets to decide independently?
Expecting all moderators to have a thorough understanding of every topic that is discussed on every thread is at the very least unreasonable. As for everyone deciding independently who is ineligible to participate in their threads, I assume you don't belong to any book clubs or discussion groups of any kind and that all of your parties, including dinner parties, are "open house" and that if you have any daughters who intend to get married that you will open the reception to any and all homeless people who are eager for a meal.
Let's not forget that so called trolls may and will start threads concerning system threads from which they have been excluded and probably will exclude the person/s that stopped him from posting in that thread. I want to make it crystal clear, I don't really give a fuck, as my livelihood doesn't depend on being able or unable to post on a message board
Fortydraws said that the ones objecting are the ones worried about being blocked. I was in two minds whether to explain my position, but since you have now weighed in and you are both intelligent chaps, what the hell, it's the weekend. My objection is on 2 grounds, quality of ET and principle. Let me start with quality. More than a few people put the late Jack Hershey on ignore because they thought he was a raving nutter. I never did. I regarded him as an intelligent man prone to rambling and I would read his posts to the point my eyes glazed over and then I'd stop. One fine day I was looking through old threads and there was one debating the usefulness of indicators. No, not the recent one, this was years ago, ET is sometimes like the movie Groundhog Day. Jack chipped in with a cryptic comment that indicators can be predictive. He was questioned on it and gave some settings for MACD. I am very familiar with MACD so that intrigued me and I tested the settings. One thing led to another and I ended up researching settings on 2 others indicators. Months later, I have an indicator that will give me an entry on a market turn before Price Action does. No, I'm not going to discuss that, nobody needs to believe me, I didn't join in the recent thread and that's the way it stays. My point is that all those people who had Jack on ignore would probably not have hesitated to block him from their threads given the chance. He would not have had his say and I at least would be the poorer for it. Multiply this many times and that means we could all lose out on interesting thoughts. On the matter of principle, this may not matter to most people. It is easy to be cavalier about free speech when you live in America. I live in a region where there is no shortage of thin skinned despots locking up people for saying and writing stuff. Go and live in Singapore or Malaysia, not visit, live, and see what controlled media does to people's minds. I try telling some Malaysians their country is racist and you'd think I'm trying to convince them the earth is flat. Things are slowly changing there because of alternative media, though a hell of a lot more people are paying the price for voicing their opinions. So no, I will never endorse anything that gets in the way of freedom of expression. This is not to say I do not think a measure of control is warranted. I'm sorry to say this but if you look at the quality of some posts, you can't help but wonder what sort of intellect can come up with stuff like that. It hardly fills me with confidence that those people will have the ability to decide who should post on their threads.
There is a difference between a forum and a free-for-all, just as there is a difference between discussion and arguing. Unfortunately there are a number of people on forums everywhere that don't know the difference. Or know and don't care. Click: Social media has become a toxic place where the loudest and vilest rule. That’s not what the Internet was supposed to be.