freedom of speech

I'm afraind it all seems very PC. I don't mind a bit of a heated argument but as soon as someone takes the slightest bit of offense your are dobbed in to a moderator and you have priveleges revoked or are banned.

You agree to the Terms of Service when you sign up for membership. So no, you are not allowed to speak out of those terms.

Still a nice place to be. I hate that it has to moderated sometimes, but I've been a part of unmoderated boards before and it gets very very ugly and profane. So it's best to have some Terms of Service.

Tweety, I agree with you that ToS are important, and I too have been involved in unpleasant unmoderated discussions on other boards (I, of course, was sweetness and light personified!).

However there have been a few threads I've noticed recently where I couldn't seen any ToS breach, but the thread was shut down or suspended to give us time to 'cool off'. Admittedly the topics were often potentially inflammatory, but nobody had been derogatory, launched a personal attack, or in any way flamed another poster. I also contributed to a thread that was split - I responded to the OP, but my post moved with the second post, and made no sense in that context. It was very frustrating.

That said, Chunter's thread did get a little unpleasant. It's a shame (and I'm talking generally here, not specifically about any particular posters) that not everyone takes the time to 1) consider their word choice and phraseology for optimum clarity, 2) check that they have at least two sides of the picture, and 3) respect opinions which differ from their own. That said, I think members here in general manage to do all of these, at least most of the time :)