There was a line about pornography that I think came from a US supreme court justice: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." The discussion of the political implications of photography (photos from a political point of view, how to shoot demonstrations by political groups, the use RF vs. SLRs, etc.,) seem to be to be perfectly proper in a forum like that. If Ruben were to post a series of photographs showing clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, I would have no problem, particularly if he said, "I did this, and then I did that, and then I went to the DSLR because I found the RF didn't give me a long-enough lens, and if you cover something like this, you always want to stand in this place..." If, on the other hand, he said, "This photograph shows what a bunch of animals the Israelis (or Palestinians) are" -- then I would have a problem. But as in the case of pornography, you can't really come up with a definition that would tell you that one post is okay, and another is not -- but surely you know it when you see it. You know that we're no longer talking about photogaphy, but about a political point of view. I would much prefer to keep that off the forum, and I can't think of any other way to do than to have the mods do it...try to walk the line between the overly-sensitive and the anything-goes points of view.
On the Luminous Landscape a couple of years ago, Michael Reichmann went to a bullfight in Spain and posted about the experience and the photography. An animal rights guy, or maybe two, tried to turn the whole forum into a really violent and ugly animal-rights brawl. That eventually got tamped down, but it was pretty unpleasant while it was going on. Really don't need that kind of thing here.
JC
