One issue with Dawkin's approach is that he, and many other atheists, make a moral equivalence that all religions are equally bad. This downplays the positive aspects of Christianity in our heritage whl ls dwnplyng th dngrs f slm. t wld b bttr t rlz tht n th rl wrld sm rlgns nd thr pltcs r bttr thn thrs.

THN> For the dozenth time in the last two days: you don't get disemvowelled for disagreeing. You get disemvowelled for being rude.

This is a bare-faced lie. Tell me what is "rude" about the final line in the second comment on my profile (the TSA comment).

http://dynamic.boingboing.net/profile/sparkzilla

The offending sentence actually says: "It is not appropriate to use this tragedy to further an anti-government agenda. Stop your ranting and let the child rest in peace."

It's not rude. It's a plain reaction to the rest of the comments on the page and to the tone of the original post. Several other readers also expressed the same opinion on the page without their posts being mangled. Your behavior in censoring alternative opinions on the Kosovo situation was even worse.

You infect these discussions with your own biases and, at a minimum, you should not comment on threads you moderate.

This extremely defensive and poorly written "policy" stands as proof of the poor quality of moderation at Boing Boing.

I have run several large message boards going back to BBS days, with many, many hot button topics. The quality of moderation on this site is extremely poor. Miss Hayden is a moderator who clearly lets her own emotions and opinions get in the way of even-handed moderation, which is a shame because there could really be some good discussion here.

Basically she makes very little distinction between a valid opinion and abuse. In my case, I have had two comments disemvowelled for no other reason than the moderator disagrees with the opinions expressed (one was about Kosovo and the other about the baby who died in TSA care -- see my profile). They were not abusive in any way. When I asked the moderator about the deletion of I was given a bogus response, saying that my research was bad. Even if that was the case, which it wasn't, do we all have to have perfect research before we express an opinion? The purpose of discussion is to exchange opinion and facts with other users, with as little interference from authority as possible.

I wrote a letter to Mr Doctorow expressing my surprise that someone who is such an advocate of freedom of speech should allow the suppression of opinion on his own forum. No response so far.

I also think disemvowelling is a very poor way to treat people. Howevermuch Miss Hayden think it is clever, it's simply annoying to make readers work so hard to read a comment. It took me over 15 minutes to re-emvowell one of my own short comments and I knew what it was about. It is also pain insulting to those who have taken the time to comment and who are left asking themeslves 'WTF is going on with my post?'

Disemvowelling is not any kind of invention that you should be proud of. Be polite to your contributors. If you don't like the comment, simply dont publish their message and send them a mail asking them to resubmit it. Almost all will do so.

In addition, the moderator should not be allowed to comment on the topic of the discussions, as is currently done. The moderator's voice is very powerful and can easily distort the discussion.

Frankly, due to the poor moderation policy I have not felt like commenting on Boing Boing recently, and my opinion of the site has been lessened somewhat. I wonder how many other people have been disheartened also?

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting/interviewing Arthur Clarke in Sri Lanka. When asked who Arthur C clarke was he said "an extrapolator".

He told me this story which he said may or may not be true...

During the Apollo astronaut training, they had to be trained in survival tactics in case they came down in an out of the way part of the world. And one of the places they were trained was in America, in the Navaho territory. The Navahos saw this training, these strange men in spacesuits and they said "What's this?" and NASA said "they're going to the moon". The Navaho were delighted and said, "Well that's where our ancestors come from, would the astronauts take a message from us?" So NASA gave them a tape recorder and they recorded a brief message. Now Navaho is a very difficult language, only spoken by a few thousand people, and the Navaho didn't say what the message was. And every time NASA played the message to anyone who knew Navaho, they burst out laughing, but they wouldn't translate it.

But eventually they found a defector who would do the deed. It was a very short message -- "Don't let these bastards steal your land!"

Also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEh8nspzXw

It is strange that you profess to be anti-censorship, while censoring non-abusive user comments ie those with an opinion different to that of your moderators on Boing Boing's comment threads.

You really are clutching at straws. Here is the complete Wikipedia page, which makes the demographic hisotry of Kosovo quite plain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Kosovo

Anyway, you have acheived your aim and bored me now. Goodbye.

Read my post again -- in addition to the Col State info I gave you information from Wikipedia, which references many more sources on the incease in the percentage of Albanians in Kosovo in modern times. The ethnic cleansing of Serbs out of Kosovo (through high birthrates, crime and intimidation) is a plain fact.

(Why did my text display strangly?)

Teresa,

From here: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~grjan/kosovohistory.html

In 1967 Tito made his first visit to Kosovo. He purged Alexander Rankovic, who was a strong Serbian "centralist" and much hated in Kosovo, from power in Kosovo. This created euphoria among the Albanian population. More concessions were made to Albanian nationalism dealing with languages, education and other cultural issues. A veritable flood of Albanian nationalism was the predictable result. Because of immigration of Albanians, emigration of Serbs and a very high Albanian birthrate from 1961 to 1971 Albanians increased from 67% to 74% of the population.

Evn if you don't like that source, the Wikipedia article on Demographics of Kosovo gives 71% Ablanians in 1971. This has now increased to 92% Albanians in Kosovo according to Wikipedia. There's even a chart here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Demographic-history-of-Kosovo-in-20th-century.png

So as I said above, it is the Serbs who have been ethnically cleansed from Kosovo.

#7 Th rsn t s dffrnt frm Mcdn s tht thrgh hgh brthrts, crm nd ntmdtn th lbnns drv th Srbs frm Ksv, whch thy rgrd s thr htlnd. Whn thy trd t stp t thy gt ccsd f th crm thy wr th vctms f. Th rwrd fr ths rl thnc clnsng s tht th lbnns gt nw slmc stt n rp.

Th S tttd t Ksv s prvrs xtnsn f th cld-wr plcy tht rthdx Chrstns Rssns r bd. W hv nw nms nw, nd t grnt thm lnd n xchng fr thr mltncy s bd plcy.

http://www.wrldntdly.cm/?pgd=56836

I feel sorry for the child and family (and for the officers concerned), but if the child was so sick then perhaps he or she could have died at any moment. And who was to know where or when that might have happened. What would have happened if the plane had been delayed by 30 minutes - posts on BB against evil air traffic controllers? What if the child had died if the taxi to the hospital was delayed -- posts on BB against inconsiderate taxi drivers? If the car broke down - posts against heartless big-car-company Toyota?

t s nprprt t s ths trgdy t frthr n nt-gvrnmnt gnd. Stp yr rntng nd lt th chld rst n pc

swelled = swollen?