Why the censorship?

RDM_83 again

Cold War Kid wrote: »

RDM, wouldn't it make sense to close other threads started while the long one was ongoing, instead of having more than one at a time?

"Would you take in a refugee?" isn't a title with a positive spin on migration; it's a neutral title.

I don't mean to be so argumentative with you as you're a reasonable poster, but I honestly think you're reading into this the wrong way. The reason I'm arguing with you actually is because you're a reasonable poster, I wouldn't even bother otherwise. I just don't think there is censorship when hundreds and hundreds (possibly thousands) of posts being utterly scathing towards migrants were allowed, and can still be read (they'd be deleted if it was censorship). So what if the title and opening post were more positive towards migrants? That wasn't long falling by the wayside.
You've got to see the bigger picture too - it's not just the mods deciding "Right, we'll close the thread", it's about the style of posting that has led to this decision (including by those who are favourable towards this migration). Posters have a responsibility in how a thread turns out too. Threads that will inevitably descend into digs at each other, personal abuse, and vitriol towards genuine refugees... who'd want to keep those open?

Why was the Drowned boy thread left open and other threads closed before it, including threads in the gap between the month long thread and the start of the Drowned thread.
I'l admit there is poor posting on both sides but the fact is I can show that threads that are started from a pro agenda are treated differently to ones that show it in a negative light even factoring dates.
Take a look yourself why are those threads not immediately closed and get back to me if you don't think there is bias.

weisses

Cold War Kid wrote: »

Yup, it can be done, by both sides. The people talking about "censorship" are actually referring to not being able to be as inflammatory as they like.

That's a bit rich coming from you considering the mod warning against you in the thread in humanities ... Something with pot and kettle comes to mind

Cold War Kid

weisses wrote: »

That's a bit rich coming from you considering the mod warning against you in the thread in humanities ... Something with pot and kettle comes to mind

I said someone was gloating at that man whose children drowned - and they were, repeatedly. Nothing controversial there. The mod gave me a slap on the wrist for being off-topic but I stand by what I said.

Funnily enough, they didn't appear to be censured, despite the claims being made about Boards and those who are opposed to letting in asylum-seekers.

I wasn't being inflammatory - I was simply responding to someone who was.

SpaceSasqwatch

K-9 wrote: »

We seem to be having a relatively civil discussion on the European Union forum, though advertising that probably defeats the purpose.

dont think RichardCrean or SSLguru are reading this thread so you should be ok :pac::pac:

K-9

KomradeBishop wrote: »

In fairness, it's fairly 'convenient' how pushing certain topics away from a forum, kills discussion on those topics - i.e. sending off topics to die on a near-empty forum - or, by happy accident, moving-topics/reorganizing-forums restricts certain posters from those topics, that they previously had free reign in...

There is explicit censorship on certain topics on Boards (that's pretty much been directly said to me by mods before) - I don't know if that's the case here (doubt it, I'd just say it's a pain in the hole topic for mods) - but there is definite political censorship.

Topics or threads will get moved to more appropriate forums, we'd move the odd one from politics to the cafe as an example. That some posters might be banned from the cafe is totally the posters fault and nothing to do with the politics mods at all, as we're different and independent mod teams.

That's the whole point of forum and indeed thread bans, they are inconvenient and frustrating, fit for purpose in other words. Would be a bit pointless having no consequences otherwise.

K-9

SpaceSasqwatch wrote: »

dont think RichardCrean or SSLguru are reading this thread so you should be ok :pac::pac:

That's unfair though!

There's 2 sides to it and as it would be naive to think that racist posts/posters or just grossly offensive people/trolls aren't about, the other extreme side definitely exists.

Insect Overlord

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Why do you bother posting in feedback, its never constructive and always is exactly the official line (and I have been in a too frequent poster in feedback :-\ for a long time so have seen the "official" line change substantially on a number of things)

I'm glad you made this post, because you have effectively proved my point.

Nobody tells me what to post here. There is no "official line". Same goes for how the AH mods are dealing with threads. Nothing to do with the site's owners/investors/whatevers.

I like to point out bulls[size=" 2"]hi[/size]t when it's posted in Feedback because it saves people from having to respond to it. Calling a spade a spade, as it were.

K-9

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Why was the Drowned boy thread left open and other threads closed before it, including threads in the gap between the month long thread and the start of the Drowned thread.
I'l admit there is poor posting on both sides but the fact is I can show that threads that are started from a pro agenda are treated differently to ones that show it in a negative light even factoring dates.
Take a look yourself why are those threads not immediately closed and get back to me if you don't think there is bias.

OK, you've gone to a lot of bother and time there.

General point, and it has come up on politics before and proved true IMO and experience, the more anti immigration side attracts a racist/xenophobic element to it and that by its very nature, will attract more mod intervention.

Does that mean there's a mod bias? No, unless acting on racist type posts is somehow biased. The other side don't tend to come out with racist comments so aren't going to get banned/carded for that obviously enough.

It's an unfortunate side of being on one side of the debate but that happens often and not just on immigration threads. I've been on the same side on debates with some posters I'd rather not be, but there you are.

To prove my point, say AH appoints a mod from the more anti immigration side, that doesn't stop the racist/hateful comments at all, they'll still be made, reregs will still rereg alleging liberal bias etc. etc and actually creates an opportunity for more accusations of bias, the anti immigration mod banned me eg.

KomradeBishop

Cabaal wrote: »

There's also a huge amount of tin foil wearing posters on boards that love to come up with crazy conspiracy's about censorship,

I was accused by several posters on the broadbasnd forum of censoring topics on three mobile and I was told I was working for three mobile several years ago, the posters were so paranoid and got so disruptive on the forum that DeVore eventually stepped in to warn them that if they continued they d be site banned. That ended it.

These paranoid accusations where completely baseless in every way, but that didn't stop them from claiming censorship and utter such nonsense.

Sometimes people only see what they want to see, they ignore the reality and prefer to create conspiracys....

Ya there are a lot of posters who cry censorship when it doesn't actually exist - though in the case I put forward, it was directly/explicitly stated by a mod.

Over time, you also get a feel for the political biases of various subforums as well - however I would put that more down to (probably unconscious) personal biases, rather than censorship; there are more than a few mods who (having just gotten to know a bit of their background over the years from posting), I reckon have a big enough conflict of interest between what they do professionally, and what they are moderating, to affect their judgement (though likely more unconsciously than otherwise).

Point is though - it does happen, and it's not a topic worthy of being brushed off with the conspiracy theorist label - even though there are some instances that come across that way.

SpaceSasqwatch

K-9 wrote: »

That's unfair though!

No its not , those 2 scumbags were posting islamophopic racist sh1te , posting links that were misleading and often proved the opposite of the point they were trying to make.

Note the mod specifically mentioned the xenophopbic aspect of the thread that lead to getting it closed.

KomradeBishop

K-9 wrote: »

Topics or threads will get moved to more appropriate forums, we'd move the odd one from politics to the cafe as an example. That some posters might be banned from the cafe is totally the posters fault and nothing to do with the politics mods at all, as we're different and independent mod teams.

That's the whole point of forum and indeed thread bans, they are inconvenient and frustrating, fit for purpose in other words. Would be a bit pointless having no consequences otherwise.

Well, I can't really discuss that, only say that I'm talking from the perspective of After Hours.

Pelvis Parsley

One thing I have to say in favour of boards, unlike left wing happy clappy hotbeds like thejournal, it doesn't have an editorial policy at all, save erring on the side of caution on perhaps more occasions than it needs to.

It's a happy side effect of the "network brane", where the running of the site is effectively by committee, all views and none tend to be encompassed. There are downsides to such an approach too of course, but none come to mind on this occasion.

I don't think I ever remember an instance in which a thread was canned or otherwise fecked about with in pursuit of one political or sociological view over another, and that's a fair achievement, given the amount of discussion here over the years.

jackofalltrades

It's strange that some serious topics seem to be tolerated and moderated well in AH, where as others get closed or moved to different forums.

I think effectively banning all discussion on the current migration crisis in AH and moving it to a very quiet forum comes across as censorship.

Why not just create one super thread and strongly moderate it to keep the idiots out.

Another thing I'd like to see is posters that make anti-Irish comments in immigration threads to be infracted.

jank

Many topics of the day are discussed in AH like marriage equality and abortion rights. These are all technically humanities yet not once in all my years has an AH topic been pushed to this far corner of boards.ie, so why now?

What should have happened was that all discussion of it was moved to the politics cafe forum from day one, isn't that what its there for?

As has been rightly pointed out, why all of a sudden is this topic now banned from AH as of a few days ago when it was discussed there all this time from as far as I can remember for years?

If the AH Mods are sick of having to deal with it and pushing it to the nether regions of boards.ie is a way of a) getting it out of sight and mind and b) pushing it to a location in a hope that the topic will just go away, then say so.

Otherwise people will make up their own minds.
In summary its a bit of a strange decision imho.

AlekSmart

jackofalltrades wrote: »

It's strange that some serious topics seem to be tolerated and moderated well in AH, where as others get closed or moved to different forums.

I think effectively banning all discussion on the current migration crisis in AH and moving it to a very quiet forum comes across as censorship.

Why not just create one super thread and strongly moderate it to keep the idiots out.

Another thing I'd like to see is posters that make anti-Irish comments in immigration threads to be infracted.

In retrospect,describing the AH-Humanities migration as Censorship may be inaccurate,if we consider the term in it's usual context.

What I do find noteworthy is the "numbers game" by which the Med Migrant issue is being managed across ALL sections of the UK/Irish Media.

Currently AH has 261 active,whilst Humanities has 15.

There appears to be an unwillingness,not Boards specific but across ALL Irish media,to restrict or reduce the opportunity for well informed debate or even ill informed discussion of this hugely important issue.

The analogy of AH being the Public Bar of Boards may well be a tad common,however,if any Publican sought to move regulars engaged in discussing the Med Migrant crisis to a quiet backroom,there would be at least eyebrows raised.

For a topic,the outcome of which,will doubtless present huge challenges for Irish,European and other cultures to be subject to overt manipulation of the discussion/debate processes at such an important juncture,raises a bit of suspicious uncertainty in me.

The more open discussion and debate we can engage in NOW,in advance of legislative changes,rather than LATER,in the aftermath of such changes,represents,to me,a far more democractic path to advocate.

Overheal

jank wrote: »

Many topics of the day are discussed in AH like marriage equality and abortion rights. These are all technically humanities yet not once in all my years has an AH topic been pushed to this far corner of boards.ie, so why now?

What should have happened was that all discussion of it was moved to the politics cafe forum from day one, isn't that what its there for?

As has been rightly pointed out, why all of a sudden is this topic now banned from AH as of a few days ago when it was discussed there all this time from as far as I can remember for years?

If the AH Mods are sick of having to deal with it and pushing it to the nether regions of boards.ie is a way of a) getting it out of sight and mind and b) pushing it to a location in a hope that the topic will just go away, then say so.

Otherwise people will make up their own minds.
In summary its a bit of a strange decision imho.

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Decided to actually look at this and see was I imagining it, so I wasted 45 minutes of my saturday afternoon by running through the last 12 or so pages of After Hours (this brings us back to 24-08-2015 21:54 ).
And look at the threads and see how they are treated.

Going to call them either Pro (indicating pro a more relaxed asylum/immigration regime)

Neutral

Or Anti ( indicating highlighting issues with current asylum/immigration regime or calling for it too be restricted)

This is an assessment of the OP, And I also noted if they were closed quickly or left open for a while, and the reason for closure.

What I saw was that of threads that are:

Pro, both threads were left open for a decent amount of time.

Neutral, three threads, one open for a long time, one left open (but forgotten about), one closed

Anti, Four threads, all closed with minutes to hours.

So Yes I do see a consistent bias in what threads are left open and which are quickly closed

Here is the list, I may have missed one or two but don't think so.


Ireland to assist in migrant crisis in the Med.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057429500&page=279
Neutral
Extremely LONG running thread that was closed on 30th
Reason: MOD: Since you just want to use the thread to insult other users, there's no reason to keep it open




Irish Navy ferrying migrants Libya to Italy, no vetting whatsoever
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057485989
Anti
CLOSED QUICKLY due to other thread being “a mess of of topic fighting”

Calais 'migrants' - stop using that word
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057471835
Neutral, well sort of confused about the English language.
Left Open with the last post on the 27th, actually curious if the thread will be locked if a new reply occurs

Would you take in a refugee?
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057486884&page=8

Pro to Neutral
Left open for 2 days, closed on the 2nd , Reason: links to politics café and Humanities

Where are we going to put the refugees?
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057488305
Anti
Closed within 2 hours, Reason: link to Drowned thread and humanities.

Haunting Image Of Drowned Boy Sums Up Consequences Of 'The Syrian War
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057487274
Pro
Left open for 2 days, Closed for reason : Mod Between sweeping generalisations, off topic posts, xenophobic posts, etc. etc the thread is well and truley done.

Arab Gulf Countries are Hippocrates
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057487813
Anti
Closed within hour: Reason: link to humanities.

Migrant crisis 2015 superthread
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057487616
Neutral:
Closed quickly: referred to politics cafe

Refugees acting like spoiled children
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057488540
Anti
Closed quickly:
Reason: post in Humanities.

I would assume the mods left the earlier discussions open for the same reason most discussions are left open: the topic is given a shot at flourishing. Evidently it turned nasty and/or was too much of a headache to moderate, and in the latter threads started in september, started locking and redirecting to humanities/politics as a judgement call. That's moderation; don't see the problem here. AH allows for a broad range of topics but that shouldn't be mistaken for an unrestricted scope, and largely that scope seems most governed by what people can talk about civilly. Its not a case of the mods 'not feeling it,' AH is a very busy forum, the mods are right to stop a situation that would only turn into an infraction-factory in turn resulting in a lot of banned users; either way, people will complain about something.

Cold War Kid

jackofalltrades wrote: »

It's strange that some serious topics seem to be tolerated and moderated well in AH, where as others get closed or moved to different forums.

I think effectively banning all discussion on the current migration crisis in AH and moving it to a very quiet forum comes across as censorship.

Why not just create one super thread and strongly moderate it to keep the idiots out.

Another thing I'd like to see is posters that make anti-Irish comments in immigration threads to be infracted.

I agree with you on the ridiculous anti Irish crap that can be quite prevalent, although I don't know about infractions. But there were two super-threads on the current migrant issue and moderating them became too much of a headache. There's only so much that mods can do - it is voluntary in fairness.

jank wrote: »

Many topics of the day are discussed in AH like marriage equality and abortion rights. These are all technically humanities yet not once in all my years has an AH topic been pushed to this far corner of boards.ie, so why now?

What should have happened was that all discussion of it was moved to the politics cafe forum from day one, isn't that what its there for?

As has been rightly pointed out, why all of a sudden is this topic now banned from AH as of a few days ago when it was discussed there all this time from as far as I can remember for years?

If the AH Mods are sick of having to deal with it and pushing it to the nether regions of boards.ie is a way of a) getting it out of sight and mind and b) pushing it to a location in a hope that the topic will just go away, then say so.

Otherwise people will make up their own minds.
In summary its a bit of a strange decision imho.

With respect, I don't understand the determination to find something sinister in it. Threads that turn into a sniping mess going around and around in circles have always been locked eventually.
I'd imagine the fear was that the same would happen in Politics Café, as it's considered the After Hours of the Politics category, hence the choice of Humanities, as far less silliness is tolerated in there.

Criticism of muslims is constantly constantly going on on Boards - rightly so of extremists, not so much rightly so of ordinary peaceful muslims, some of whom suffer under the extremists (although that's another discussion). I find the censorship allegation very disingenuous.

The Hill Billy

It was mentioned above that AH is like having a chat in a bar. As in real life, you'll always get a few 'characters' spewing their usual racist bile & disrupting what is otherwise a healthy & civil discussion amongst the rest of the regulars.

Also as in real life, if you take these characters out of the bar & away from their 'audience' to discuss the same subject you'll find that they can be a bit more reasonable & can put their argument across better without using their usual generalisations.

There has been some success in this regard already with moving discussions to Politics Café. I fail to see why moving similar discussions for similar reasons to Humanities would be such an issue.

Nodin

Given the tone and content of some of the posts currently extant on the site, it's safe to say that the censorship regime exists more in the mind of the beholder than anywhere else.

The Randy Riverbeast

Now an anti immigration thread was moved from AH to politics cafe, a fairly popular forum, instead of being locked. Therefor the mods are showing bias as they didnt lock the threads like the others.

jackofalltrades

Cold War Kid wrote: »

I agree with you on the ridiculous anti Irish crap that can be quite prevalent, although I don't know about infractions

If you'd get a warning or a yellow/red card for a racist comment about another group then it should also apply to similar comments about Irish people.

But there were two super-threads on the current migrant issue and moderating them became too much of a headache. There's only so much that mods can do - it is voluntary in fairness.

Certain posters were getting away with a lot of winding up in the "Ireland to assist in migrant crisis in the Med" thread.
I think if the same style of moderation was applied to that thread, as has been applied to other serious issue threads, then there would have been a lot less crap.

_Kaiser_

I'd have to agree with the majority of posts here... the line taken on this particular topic by the mod team seems to be inconsistent with other similarly not-really-AH topics of recent times, but which are left run if the tone fits the "generally approved" consensus

- The Bruce/Kaitlyn Jenner thread... grand, work away (mostly completely supportive of the individual in question)

- SSM.. again almost universally supportive.. left to run.

- Transgender rights/recognition thread... all in favour.. left to run

- Migrants threads.. generally 50/50 with a lot of posters expressing legitimate concerns about how this is being pushed/is to be achieved... locked fairly sharpish these days


Personally I found the first Migrants thread to be a great source of news/updates on the situation for someone who doesn't get a chance to trawl the other outlets and I can't accept the notion that the best solution was to lock these entirely rather than delete the more childish back-and-forth muppetry (from both sides) and hand out infractions/cards/bans as necessary.

On the face of it, it does come across that unless you are willing to toe the party line on these more "controversial" topics then your contribution isn't welcome.. or will be shunted into the corner where it can be ignored. My view is that everyone has a right to express an opinion - not just those who are parroting the "approved" stance on an issue (within certain obvious boundaries - outright abuse or anything unsupported by a reasonably made argument is different story).

Tarzana2

weisses wrote: »

At any time 70%of the threads on the first page of AH alone can be moved/continued to more appropriate forums but somehow that doesn't happen. So unless your planning to use this approach to all threads your point is mute imo .

Exactly! Serious issues get discussed in AH all the time, and I don't know why there seems to be little faith that this particular topic won't be discussed to a high standard. I personally love the vibrancy of threads on serious issues in AH. They are fast-moving, often frenetic and potent and display the many different views there can be on any particular topic. It's frequently fascinating to behold.

I've never understood why AH being the pub of boards.ie means only light-hearted topics may be discussed. Often my deepest chinwags happen in the pub!

Cold War Kid

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I'd have to agree with the majority of posts here... the line taken on this particular topic by the mod team seems to be inconsistent with other similarly not-really-AH topics of recent times, but which are left run if the tone fits the "generally approved" consensus

- The Bruce/Kaitlyn Jenner thread... grand, work away (mostly completely supportive of the individual in question)

- SSM.. again almost universally supportive.. left to run.

- Transgender rights/recognition thread... all in favour.. left to run

- Migrants threads.. generally 50/50 with a lot of posters expressing legitimate concerns about how this is being pushed/is to be achieved... locked fairly sharpish these days

Threads of 1,400 posts and 4,200 posts is hardly = being locked sharpish. The other threads you list have had *plenty* of comments coming from the "against" side.

Personally I found the first Migrants thread to be a great source of news/updates on the situation for someone who doesn't get a chance to trawl the other outlets and I can't accept the notion that the best solution was to lock these entirely rather than delete the more childish back-and-forth muppetry (from both sides) and hand out infractions/cards/bans as necessary.

Too much of a mess (from, as you say, both sides) to be moderating for people who are volunteering though, so were locked - it happens with lots of very heated threads.

_Kaiser_

Cold War Kid wrote: »

Too much of a mess (from, as you say, both sides) to be moderating for people who are volunteering though, so were locked - it happens with lots of very heated threads.

But that's not always true either.. Frequently a thread will be locked, cleaned up, with post deletions or bannings handed out and then reopened with a stern warning from the Mods.

I've no issue with that approach myself.. nothing annoys me more than reading through post after post of bickering between the same 2 posters.. Take it to PM FFS.

But when it results in an otherwise good thread being closed, that's where I have a problem TBH. If Boards needs more mods then appoint some. Plenty of good posters still around who might be willing to take it on if asked.

nesf

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

But when it results in an otherwise good thread being closed, that's where I have a problem TBH. If Boards needs more mods then appoint some. Plenty of good posters still around who might be willing to take it on if asked.

The obvious question though is why are you insisting on trying to have that conversation in AH when forums already exist with stricter rules to facilitate such?

jank

Overheal wrote: »

I would assume the mods left the earlier discussions open for the same reason most discussions are left open: the topic is given a shot at flourishing. Evidently it turned nasty and/or was too much of a headache to moderate, and in the latter threads started in september, started locking and redirecting to humanities/politics as a judgement call. That's moderation; don't see the problem here. AH allows for a broad range of topics but that shouldn't be mistaken for an unrestricted scope, and largely that scope seems most governed by what people can talk about civilly. Its not a case of the mods 'not feeling it,' AH is a very busy forum, the mods are right to stop a situation that would only turn into an infraction-factory in turn resulting in a lot of banned users; either way, people will complain about something.

Fair enough, but why move it to humanities? I cannot think of any other topic or thread from AH that was ever moved there. That is not even getting into the nastiness of the thread itself as many a topic in AH has gotten nasty, marriage equality and abortion springs to mind.

I think to be consistent the mods should be more active in moving things to the politics cafe forum as per the new design. E.g. when the Greek debt crisis was in full swing and things were happening by the minute we had a mega thread in the politics, politics cafe and AH forums. It made no sense to me personally.

Overheal

jank wrote: »

Fair enough, but why move it to humanities? I cannot think of any other topic or thread from AH that was ever moved there. That is not even getting into the nastiness of the thread itself as many a topic in AH has gotten nasty, marriage equality and abortion springs to mind.

I'm sure plenty of AH threads have made it to Humanities, and I'm not even talking about one of those times I pissed off the hamsters by having a thread bounced around the website (ok, just the one time)

I think to be consistent the mods should be more active in moving things to the politics cafe forum as per the new design. E.g. when the Greek debt crisis was in full swing and things were happening by the minute we had a mega thread in the politics, politics cafe and AH forums. It made no sense to me personally.

That type of situation is typical of major events or topics, like Irish Water or the RCC Abuse Revalations, Fukushima, etc. That's generally a reflection of the topic being originally funneled into politics/wherever until it reaches a spillover point and it takes the capacity of two or more forums to accommodate the traffic, when they are happening as you say 'by the minute'.

jank

Overheal wrote: »

I'm sure plenty of AH threads have made it to Humanities, and I'm not even talking about one of those times I pissed off the hamsters by having a thread bounced around the website (ok, just the one time).

Perhaps but can anyone actually give me an example?

Overheal wrote: »

That type of situation is typical of major events or topics, like Irish Water or the RCC Abuse Revalations, Fukushima, etc. That's generally a reflection of the topic being originally funneled into politics/wherever until it reaches a spillover point and it takes the capacity of two or more forums to accommodate the traffic, when they are happening as you say 'by the minute'.

Again, isn't that what the politics cafe is for? Why have two threads discussing the same thing when the politics cafe was created deliberately to try and push this type of topic out of AH into a type of cafe AH type political forum in the politics cafe.

It is just lacking total consistency and tbh have no idea what the purpose of the cafe forum is anymore. It just seems to be there for the sake of it now, with political discussion still going on in AH.

KomradeBishop

I think the core problem with moderation here - and this extends to all of Boards, so I'm not specifically referencing the migrant threads - is that when a sufficiently heated topic comes up, the moderation tends to focus on using an inconsistent hodge-podge of methods to get rid of those debates, rather than deal with the root causes of the poor quality posting (or e.g. treat bringing up a topic that causes heated debate, as the 'root cause' of the problem itself, which is nonsense and leads effectively to censorship of that topic - i.e. sacrificing freedom of discussion, for mod convenience).

It's obvious that some topics are just ones many moderators can't be arsed with and just want to be rid of - and when that happens, the focus isn't on improving the quality of debate while keeping full freedom of discussion (and emphasis on freedom of discussion, as that's what's most important on a public forum), it just becomes about taking the easiest measure that is handy for the mods, to avoid more work for themselves - even if that means doling out unfair punishment in order to do that, or even outright banning topics in an underhanded way, to try and make it easier to get rid of a trend of heated topics.

It's a very bad form of moderating, because it's easy for posters to just be deliberately inflammatory in large numbers, on topics where there is a minority view they want off the forum, to try and get mods to shut down discussion of that.

The inconsistency in mod action - and mods defence of being inconsistent - also is very 'convenient' for mods, because they can just make-up any excuse they want after the fact to justify the mod action - to save face upon receiving criticism, which is inherently dishonest, as that can be used to retroactively justify any kind of mod action.