However, I would like to point out that I do more here than just keep the forums free of illegal activities and flame wars. I help people upload avatars and fill out their profile. I help people to locate stories on the story site. I point people in the right directions when they have questions concerning topics that might have been addressed on these forums before. I do quite a bit here, because I care about this site and want it to be a good, well-run place for the members and the guests as well.

That being said, my decision to delete or move certain posts has already been explained. Threads such as those about who will win the world series or happy birthday threads from months before, I don't consider to be a huge loss, as the sentiment can be reiterated when the event rolls around again this year or the next or the next.

As for my moving threads about to areas of the forums that they better belong, what's the problem there? I'm organizing things. My articles on BDSM, for instance, are now all in Knowledge Base, because they are designed to aid peoples' knowledge. Picture threads have gone into Sexual Fantasy, because they are pictures of peoples' fantasies. Someone mentioned earlier that Personal Pictures could have gone into My BDSM Life and they are right, but for the essense of continuity, I left all the picture threads together.

I'm not just arbitrarily deleting things, either. Topics concerning BDSM, sexual fantasies, relationships or advice, I have left alone, just relocated to other areas. In some cases, I have left redirects in the forums to show that they have been moved to make it less confusing for people looking for their favorite threads.

Although, I must ask, in all honesty, when is the last time any of you have taken a look at page seven of the Generalk Talk forum? What was on there? Would you miss it?

Well, I'll tell you what was there. For the most part, every thread there was from more than a year ago. Some were from 2001. None of them had replies with the last several (and by several, I mean at least six) months. A great deal of them had zero replies or only one reply. The loss in these cases was minimal. To label it as censorship is a bit over the top, too. In most cases, there wasn't even anything to censor, just a rambling idea.

Someone before has mentioned about multiple threads on the same topic. I have not encountered any of these so far in my cleaning of General Talk, but when I do, I will not just delete the older threads. I will instead join the threads so all the ideas are maintained. I don't want to take anything out of these forums, except the barest of necessity. And to be honest, I don't see the need for seven, ten or eleven month old happy birthday messages, except to just add another dead thread to the mix and to cause more clutter.

Perhaps I should have kept the flaming threads, locked them and stuck them into a dungeon area where all the bad threads are kept, but I didn't think to do this until after the idea was brought up ealier by Curtis. In any case, threads containing personal insults and derrogatory remarks will eventually disappear in most cases at any rate, because when we ban members, we also tend to delete all their posts at the same time. (Seen anything from Whipit lately?) By the way, I used "we" in that last sentence, because this is what I have been told by Jinn to do when a member is to be banned. Although, normally, Jinn does it himself.

The moderators are not just here to make sure all the kids play nice and that people only post good humored things. We're here to make sure people know where things are, to make sure people know what's allowed and what's not and to enforce the Code of Conduct.

Maintenance is also important. Like anything else, things that are not properly maintained tend to break down. If left for another year or two without some maintenance, the two or three threads that we have that repeat questions and idea previously posted will quickly turn into twelve or fifteen threads. It's just confusing. All I'm doing is a little winter spring cleaning.

Trust me when I say that these changes are not meant to offend and they're not meant to imply that some peoples' ideas are less important than those of other people. If I really thought that way, I would not have deleted 149 of my own posts. Yeah, I kept track. All I want to do is to make sure this place remains organized and easy for new members to find what they're looking for and to make sure the older posters can look in a forum area and find topics relating specifically to that area. It's not about censorship and it's not about beggering things up. It's just about making things more easily accessible.