Mods - Stop deleting and editing mine and others' posts

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Generally speaking, I think it is fair to add a tag like that indicating that a title is misleading and I will do so again. Whether intentionally or otherwise, Boo misled a lot of people and it's important that it's clearly marked as misinformation so that people know to treat it critically. In particular, the "vaccines cause autism" lie spreads over, I think, into being inflammatory and causing people offence. I wouldn't edit that information out of a post routinely, but when someone claims that they have scientific proof that they don't actually have and presents a heap of irrelevant studies that a non-scientist couldn't possibly sift through, then I think it's important to get ahead of that. Alex's guidelines on this matter is that we should edit posts which contain inflammatory material and make it clear that we have done so. I certainly think Boo was trying to be inflammatory.

I found a solution which didn't involve censoring or suppressing his views, and instead merely qualifying that others should treat it with caution. I didn't delete anything he said, lock the thread, delete the thread, or warn or threaten him, and I clearly marked that the new information was not what he had said. Nobody was prevented from adding their opinion to the discussion. Additionally, and I'm only saying this because you say otherwise, what I posted was completely factual, not opinion based.

At the time, I thought that the reaction was much more credulous than it actually was. It seems the community handled that one pretty well themselves. I didn't actually need to edit it, and probably shouldn't have done so. As a matter of principle, though, I think correcting inflammatory misleading titles is an important job for mods to do. Imagine if someone created a thread called "Fnord has died", knowing that he wouldn't post to correct it; I think it would be completely appropriate to edit the title to say "Fnord has not died". Or a thread about how Trump has declared war on Canada when no such thing has happened.

I respect that this might be upsetting to you. You are a passionate anti-vaxer, and I'm sure if I found out that one of my deeply-held beliefs was wrong then I'd get upset. However, I do think it's important for the mod team on a forum like this to get in front of bad science if the community isn't up to it. In this case most of the users saw right through Boo so it wasn't necessary.

As for the Trump thread, I removed the capitalisation because posting in all caps is against WrongPlanet's rules (and because I know that it's seen as aggressive and receives aggressive responses in return; better to get in front of that and stop the confrontation in the first place). I then removed "new" from President so that the thread would be evergreen and would still make sense in a year when Trump will not be the "new" President, and "our" because not everyone's American. I think removing "new" was the right call but maybe "our" wasn't necessary (and was therefore wrong, because mods should only act when necessary). Getting upset either way seems like a substantial overreaction. I also think those asking to be messaged before mods take actions are not considering the practicalities.

In general it seems like the backlash to minor corrections means that it isn't worth it. However, there are still occasions when it is worthwhile, but only when there is a clear rule break like posting in all caps.

I can't comment on any of the other cases because they either didn't involve me or happened so long ago I cannot remember them.

I am NOT an anti-vaxxer. I simply believe peoples' posts shouldn't be edited so much.

I think that was nitpicking, it wasn't mandatory to edit it and the title wasn't against the rules, there was no reason to change the title except for the capitalisation.

A "Trump has declared war on Canada" type thread should be locked.

I am not comfortable with editors deciding what is bad science or fact. In 1300 that the earth is flat was "fact". An autistic person is more likely to see a truth considered quackery then most type of people.

I just wanted to comment on this - I understand you "believe" some information presented is "bad science", however, that is a "personal opinion". In a debate, all parties are supposed to be able to present their information to the audience and in the end, the audience is expected to research and come up with their own decision in regards to the subject content. Any deleting of information is a "personal" decision because the person who is deleting it has come to their "belief" that it should not be there. To another person, the information may be pertinent in supporting their cause. That means no information should be deleted by anyone unless it is offensive in nature.

You guys actually have no gas-x? No simethicone either? Do they just expect you to spontaneously combust?

Never heard of simethicone either. The only UK product that springs to mind is Wind Eze. I'm gonna bow out of this discussion coz I keep flip flopping in my mind after each opposing point ( My mind = I agree with the mods , ooh you buggers , bad mod , ah not so bad , good mod , bad mod , feck this I've got better things to think about ).

I don't think that lemon is worth the squeeze; you're inserting yourself as the arbiter of what is and is not correct vs what does and does not break the site rules, and that road leads to a lot of trouble. If nothing else, adding fact checking to the normal moderation duties seems like a massive time sink that everyone would fight about anyway.