Moderating Free Speech

Moderation is powerful and important in life, whether we’re talking about how many times you return to the breakfast buffet, partaking in your libation of choice, or when you are publishing, which is what you’re doing every time you post something on the Internet.

Should someone be allowed to moderate what you say or write?

Last month I talked here about the danger of social media, specifically how these giant entities are picking and choosing which stories and people to censor, apparently based on politics. That shouldn’t be allowed, I believe, because these giant companies like Facebook and Twitter, while they are private companies, are more like utilities in how they’re used and how powerful they’ve become. So should I be allowed to post whatever I want on Facebook? Of course not.

There are people who frequent certain areas of the Internet who consider themselves “free speech absolutists.” They use that ideal to post anything and everything you could imagine—and you don’t want to imagine. Every website should have a limit, a moderated limit. Disagree? If you favor absolute free speech with no limit, does that include porn? Child porn? Of course not. So that brings me to moderators, the people who try to keep others in line within a website’s rules and limits. If you were on social media during the recent election, you saw moderators abuse this power with one-sided “Fact Checking.” That selective moderation is unfair and not what I’m talking about.

There’s another place on the Internet where moderators do their best to keep outdoorsmen type folks in line, and that’s at forum.gon.com. Originally the Woody’s Taxidermy Forum, and still known to many as Woody’s Campfire, this message board is now part of GON as the GON Forum. But we just pay the light bills. This community thrives—and that it does is all on them.

The moderators at Woody’s run a tight ship. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get censored for having a thought or idea. For example, members of the Forum have always had free reign to criticize GON. So that’s an example of how thoughts and views are not censored on the message board at forum.gon.com. But does that mean this message board is a place for free speech absolutists? Absolutely not.

The message board at forum.gon.com is moderated by real people—if you had to boil the group down by description it would be sportsmen, southern, conservative. That does not mean they’ll boot you from the forum for saying thoughts that differ. But you can’t curse. You can’t go at someone personally. There’s a civility that the moderators keep, a family-friendly atmosphere that Woody Coffee demanded when it was his forum, and that’s continued now by the community.

Woody’s is about to turn 20 years old. What began with a few dozen has grown to tens of thousands of registered users who stop by to check in with virtual friends, many of whom became real life friends. They share tips, they talk sports, they debate politics. And like any space on the Internet where people can basically type whatever they want and hit send and publish that thought instantly, this place too can get ugly. The difference at forum.gon.com is moderation. It is the moderators.

If pot-stirring and pushing buttons is your game, don’t waste your time visiting. If you break the rules, you’ll soon find yourself banned, for life. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big-money advertiser in GON magazine or a personal friend of Steve Burch. If you get banned, you can’t call the GON office and get your forum access back. We’ve lost advertisers and countless subscribers over this.

We leave the forum to the community and the moderators. I hope that makes sense and is very clear. There’s an article coming soon about the 20th anniversary of Woody’s Campfire. When you read that article, meet some of the characters who are part of this community, when you learn of the kindness and goodness that has come from this group, you’ll want to visit. When you do, be good. This place is super good, but there are rules. They are not hard rules to follow, but following them is required. And if you get on there late one night and do something stupid that gets you banned, for goodness sake don’t call the GON office.

Consider this an invitation to visit this forum, but also consider it your first warning to behave.