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I have noticed that several personal opinions and discussions have been removed from this site. Is this an attempt to censor people or is there another reason? Deleting comments may show weakness of an individual who made such thing and can destabilize the community. Do we not have the freedom to express our own opinions? |
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This is not a site for expressing opinions. Answers, and comments, should always be aimed at solving the problem at hand. Questions that solicit opinions instead of factual responses are off-topic (see FAQ link). I occasionally edit questions/answers or remove comments when they become too opinionated. For example, if someone writes: "Why does <x> happen? I think that those who allow this to happen are really stupid!" I would remove the "I think.." sentence. Or if someone comments an answer with "Your answer is really unhelpful and an example of the arrogant attitude of many people in this shitty project", I would remove that comment entirely. (If you a re unhappy with an answer you can vote it down, and arrogant/unhelpful answers will frequently be voted down by many people which is sufficient.) I also remove comments or even answers if they later turn out to be wrong ur unnecessary. For example, someone posts a question that lacks important information to give an answer; someone else comments "please explain what you mean with <x>", then the original questioner enhances his question - this makes the comment redundant and it should be removed. I also think that we should do more editing of answers by consolidating the answers given by multiple people into one "best" answer that will help anyone who looks up something in the future; if someone makes a helpful comment to an answer, and that answer can later be extended to include that comment, then the comment can be removed. This is easier for later readers. This medium is less helpful if the reader has to browse 25 answers to get the whole picture! I hope (and believe) that others edit help.openstreetmap.org in the same way I do. Discussion and expression of opinion shold happen on the forums and mailing lists. I agree with you that all members of our community should be entitled to expressing their opinion in an un-censored way but the medium for that is forums and mailing lists (orc IRC if you prefer). help.openstreetmap.org is for help, not for discussion. I suggest that we discuss this on the "talk" mailing list where I have just cross-posted this message: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2012-February/062119.html |
Reading Frederiks answer it seems like you are talking about opinions like "This project suxxors!11!!", those are pretty vile. Or are you talking about opinions like "I don't like surface=unpaved:leaves"?
I think that it was originally user Kozuch who complained in http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/10779/why-are-other-sites-updating-mapnik-faster-than-osmorg that one of his comments was removed. (One of mine was removed as well.) Gnonthgol then felt this was an issue that should be brought up for wider discussion.
For the record, I was the one killing that discussion. And I felt it had to be clairfied. Thank you Fredrik for a well written answer.
It is very hard to see changes in OSQA, so it's impossible to judge,