I must say we've had far less civil threads here that ran for much longer without getting closed. Nor did I read much of "the usual Europe is best" sentiment in there.
I don't know how to say this without screaming censorship, which I don't want to do, but personally I am getting a bit annoyed at the frequency with which threads are closed at the moment; some of the more prominent recent deletions (from the commentless disappearance of the "sicko" thread to Magus' user account) also seemed somewhat problematic to me. Certainly I can't tell Stephen what kind of a site to run, but site owners (and moderators) have a choice to which extent they want to impose their own values and worldviews and ideas of a civil discussion upon the medium in which they invite others to participate. The moderators are doing a good job, but IMHO a bit too much of it.
Where is RFF going? If this is meant to be a sanitized lens discussion site, then at least as far as I'm concerned, much of my time here is being wasted. If, on the other hand, the point is to have a community of various people united by a common interest, then the occasional item of dissent is inevitably going to crop up, and just clamping down on that with closures and deletions is not a long-term solution.
Maybe I'm just repeatedly reading the wrong threads.
Philipp
