Over the last few months several people have called for people to be censored on this forum. I think I should make it clear where I am coming from. I hold very divergent views about the world we live in. As a result my own views were censored on several forums I was a member of. With a group of like-minded friends, we established the International Education Forum.

The administrators of this forum are therefore fully committed to the idea of free speech. This includes freedom for those who disagree with us. In fact the administrators often disagree with each other. There is no officially agreed policy on the JFK assassination or any other topic. We are therefore reluctant to censor anyone from posting comments on the International Educational Forum. The main exception to this is that we will remove swearing and racist comments.

We hope people will always be polite to others in discussion. Most people are, however, we do have a couple of members who tend to be rude to those they disagree with. Although we dislike this we do not think we should censor their posts or remove them as members.

I am an old fashioned liberal who believes the best way for getting at the truth is to let everyone have the right to post their views on the forum. Some people post illogical comments that are clearly false on this forum. I leave it to members to make their own judgements on these issues. As I believe the forum is visited by intelligent people, I am confident that they reach the same conclusions as I do about these postings.

I have asked all members to post their biography and to add it to their URL. All posters have done the first of these things but some have not done the second. This results in some members accusing others of not posting their biographies.

See the following for details of how to do this:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1471

We also would like people to post their photographs as avatars. We believe this will reduce the hostile comments people make and receive.

John Simkin (Administrator)

I am in full agreement with John's comments. They are essentially a restatement of the Forum Guidelines all members agree to when they sign up.

There is space for a wide plurality of views and opinions on this forum properly expressed.

I agree with John and nobody has ever called me a liberal (old fashioned or otherwise) and gotten away with it

I certainly don't regard you as a liberal, Derek! The forum guidelines are simple and straightforward. John is right not to give in to the demands for censorship.

Generally speaking, I am not in favour of censoring people's opinions, but we have recently had a few cases of blatant and aggressive rudeness in this Forum, emanating from someone with an apparent desire to wreak havoc - Andy and John know who I am talking about. In such cases, I think we have no option but to shut them up, as the public display of rude messages puts off new members and may cause established members to seriously consider whether they wish to continue their membership.