@tt400: I'll try to address the issue raised, but I should start by stating that I'm not the one who edited the posts you mention.
tt400 wroteNowhere does it say I can't post long text or scary pictures. Why do my posts warrant being edited if they don't break any rules?
It's an interesting point. The rules aren't exhaustive and consist more of guidelines than strict laws. We cannot possible foresee all the possible cases we want to ban from the forum. Moderators become moderators not because they apply the rules (a robot could reasonably do that), but because we have faith in their judgement. I don't know who deleted the picture, and I haven't seen it, but I assume that it was offensive enough to be removed. It's a good example of the kind of "grey area" that is very hard to translate into rules. That being said, if you feel that it shouldn't be removed, you're encouraged to challenged the moderation
privately (at least at first). Answer the PM back. Say you disagree. Get the discussion started. You'll find we're very reasonable people with a good sense of humor (most of the times).
Edit: I just realized another one of my posts got deleted. I'm going to rewrite the contents of that post just for the sake of this discussion. The post said: "Society has a stick up its ass." How does this violate the rules? Also, someone added a new line at the bottom of the rules that only makes things more vague.
Also not me who deleted it, and also haven't even seen it. As mentioned, I can guess form the title that this falls under the section of "rants" which we explicitly forbid here. We don't disagree with the general sentiment of these threads, but we honestly feel that LebGeeks is not the place for it. Again, if you feel that it was unfairly removed, it should be challenged by PM. Talk to the moderator who intervened. Listen to his side of the story.
And remember, the staff ultimately gets the final say in what should be done. We work a lot on defining the role of moderation, and how it can enhance LebGeeks. We're open for criticism and suggestion, but we also have a better grasp of the global picture.
Edit 2: I'm not trying to justify any of my deleted posts. I'm simply trying to get the point across that if we want to avoid future threads like this and future confusion, maybe the rules should be more comprehensive.
Are you suggesting we have hundreds of pages of very specific bullet points of what's allowed and what's not? Should we make you "Read an Accept the End User Agreements" before you create your account? That'd be ludicrous. Instead we simply ask you to trust us and not hesitate to come to us when you disagree with something. The past few years, improving the rules has consisted of removing rules, not adding any. We reached a point where we feel the "
Rules" do a good job of conveying what we're going for. The rest is just up to us :)
When I first started moderating this forum (4 years ago!), I went in a delete-frenzy week where everything that stepped out of line was removed. An old very active member wrote me a PM that said: "sensei moderator can direct flow of discussion to normal way without moderator privileges." I really liked this sentence and since then do my best to keep any moderation action to the minimum. I know the other mods do the same.
Hope this answers some of the questions you guys may have.