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an example from CostaRicaLiving

Submitted by phxphrank on November 13, 2008 - 10:39am.

An example of censorship & the lame excuse for it. [This one from CostaRicaLiving] ... All my writing past and present in ITALICS and the plain text is the rejection notice from the administrator of CostaRicaLiving.

Here was my original message:

"The problem with humor on the internet is that some folks don't use the kinds of signals that communicate that it is indeed humor."

I've always thought of message boards, costaricaliving especially, as good examples of Platos "Allegory of the Cave" , a short story which basically demonstrates the path from ignorance to knowledge or from unenlightenment to enlightenment. I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the story, but I'll give you my very brief, very,very basic interpretation of the story of the cave.

A group of human beings are, from their youth, prisoners, living in a cave, chained in a position so that they are forced to look at the back of the cave wall, which is in effect a large movie screen. Outside the mouth of the cave is a sort of stage, like the old time puppet stage and even further back is a large light source, perhaps a fire. Beneath the stage are the puppet masters, using puppets and other objects that they manipulate so that the illumination causes shadows to appear on the back of the cave wall. These shadows, being the only thing that the prisoners can see, become their idea of what life and the world, (reality) is about. To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. Eventually the prisoners are released to go out into the lighted world. Having spent their entire lives in the darkness of the cave, the light is at first an uncomfortable, painful experience. But those who preserver and are unafraid are eventually able to see the world (reality) as it really is. They are enlightened. I said at the beginning, very brief and very, very basic.

My point is this. A while back "eminitradingpro", chris, posted this, " I'm new to this group and thinking about moving to costa rica. I plan on investing time in reading the message boards but I figured this would be a good way to get some up to date info".

This type of post or question happens often. People trying to gather information so that they can make an informed life changing decision. I feel that costaricaliving, as a group, has a moral obligation to present these people with more than just shadows on the back of the cave wall.

In my opinion, some of the moderators of the group, in order to maintain the image of "paradise" tend to moderate and exclude posts which may conflict with this image, even though none of the posted guidelines are broken. Some tend to become especially over zealous when the subject concerns crime.

Following is an explanation for rejecting one of my posts.

We don't need a rule to stop repetitive crime thread posts. When we reach a point, the moderators shut the thread down to give it a rest. (the thread of my post had not been shut down AND more posts on the thread appeared after mine was rejected) Once such threads -and that is not limited to crime topics- do become repetitive, as most invariably do, it no longer serves anyone's purpose to string out that thread ad nauseum when nothing new is being presented that would advance the thread.

If we leave such threads open they become basically just a long sequence of 'What's My Woe" postings.

And for this reason 'crimeincr' was begun. There are no rules nor compunctions against discussing crime there. And now
that there is a sizable and growing membership there it is becoming a suitable sounding-board. That's why it was conceived and that is why we refer people's crime posts there. ( I can find nothing in the guidelines of CRL to substantiate this statement )

I've seen several attempts to slip posts back onto CRL after they have been rejected and subsequently posted over on
'crimeincr'. It is obvious that all those posters are looking for is an audience. Well, they have one now over there on
'crimeincr'. We hope they'll use it when we moderators see fit to curb a thread here.

BTW, if you want this to go to a CRL member privately you can go online and use the 'send email' icon in blue located
to the right of the message text for any post on the main message page.

If you have further questions about this action, please email me.

( I strongly feel that if this is CRL's intent (to use crimeincr for all crime posts) that this point of view should be incorporated into the posted, official guidelines of the group and not applied arbitrarily. If you are interested, I will send the entire rejection email. )

Peace

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