Of course Moderation superuser authorities here, known and cloaked, cannot see themselves as wrongful SPE “wardens” abusing “prisoners”. If they could, it would not be SPE.
Joe and I set up the Old Forum, and it ran for over a decade, with never any heavy-handed moderation (except when Rod briefly acted as a self-righteous super-exasperated Moderator). Truly we did our part to welcome and promote open AWE far more patiently and productively, in almost 30k of pioneering posts, full of key domain art.
Thankfully there was never an issue with Topics in the wrong Category, hidden topics, deletions, and all similar distractions, not just because such features did not exist, but because our mission was RAD (Rapid AWE Development). Balky Netiquette policing never trumped technical maximization.
Moderation here has proven it would rather see sound content like Cosine Functions and kite-related Analytic Philosophy go away, rather than generously tolerate such posting in the author’s intended Category. Crucial AWE Categories do not even exist, while junk categories are frozen in and given priority.
Moderators here simply lack the lifetime experience and wisdom JoeF has showed in editing kite tech since the '60s, and archiving all AWE knowledge faithfully beyond anyone else. JoeF is still editing and hosting AWE content online, which Moderators here seem unaware of, in calling for yet another Forum, rather than moderating helpfully like JoeF.
I stayed away from here for a couple of months, to see what would happen with less frission, and posting statistics dwindled to days at a time with no posts, with more moderators than non-moderators posting. That’s what censorship does compared to free expression.
The myth of a popular AWE Forum by too many moderators with too many tools is busted. The highest function of an AWE Forum remains technical, given the historic urgency to create AWE.