Swift decisive action for those 1) pushing politics and/or 2) being a hurtful pr*** could be a deterrent to keep threads on the straight and narrow. But poor moderators have to judge which degree someone is being a hurtful pr$** or political pusher,.
,…I mean thick skin and forums go together like air and lungs. Always going to be a little elbow-poking, All so very messy.
That’s one of the problems with moderating, is it just moderating ? is it censorship ? is it not strict enough ? Someone will always be displeased with the decision and while i agree deleting such topic might not be the best option, it is (at least until they can find a better way) an effective way to give the mods some breathing space.
Once again, let’s not get to heated up, wait a bit, see what the team has prepared for this “new” lounge, you can always complain later if you really don’t like it 
It is sad we seem to live in a world where it seems some are so miserable they seem to take offence to anyone who seems to be happy or does not agree with them.I am really going to miss the joke thread as I also read it every time I logged in here.I may not have agreed with or even liked some of them but I know how to scroll past and find one I like.Since this forum is worldwide there is a lot I may or may not agree with or understand but I am not going to be disrespectful.
This has been a predominately level-headed discussion (I think at least). No one threatened to rage bomb anyone else or called them an idiot 
(which is a good start) lol
Just to share some insight into the types of things that actually happen behind the scenes and why this is so time consuming. Here is an example of the type of things we see on a regular basis. In case it isn’t painfully obvious, these names are completely fake and this is a scenario based on many events in the past, not just the most recent events.
Let’s Susan posts something which is either deliberately or inadvertently offensive. Karen sees it and feels offended so they flag it. A moderator looks at, they decide that it isn’t appropriate for the forum so they hide or delete it. Now Susan is angry. So she reaches out to one of the moderators and starts a discussion about it. They go back and forth on it for several messages but Susan doesn’t the answer she wants. So she then has the same conversation with other moderators/admins trying to get them to overturn the decision. Sometimes, these additional moderators don’t realize that there is a conversation with someone else. She still doesn’t get what she wants so she either takes it public into the topic, starts flagging a bunch of Karen’s post in retaliation or both. Now it goes public, and Peggy also gets involved and now we have a three-way argument where all of them are messaging various moderators. By the time we get this all cleaned up, we have multiple moderators who have each spent an hour or more of time on it.
BTW…even if the flag had been declined instead of accepted, the same thing can happen, it would just be Karen complaining instead of Susan.
This is just one example of how it happens. Sometimes the whole thing stays behind the scenes and other times it spills over to Telegram messages.
In the majority of cases, the original post that started it all had nothing to do with EOS, Linux or even technology.
I think it is very sad to see these topics to go, as I was quite active in these… But somewhat I get it,… But also partially not?
I totally understand that politics/religion etc is like something that is a hard restriction. And I am also very much in favor of it since way too many people in current times make this their whole personality and everyone that disagrees is automatically the personified evil. This can destroy communities/distros or whatever as people like this can’t work together, should special topics randomly come up.
But what I disagree on is that a joke area, or a music area needs to go because of it. Like yes, there may be some randomly showing up and posting that goes against this rule, but I think it’s easy pointing it out (as I did like 2 or 3 times in the joke area) and then either it got deleted or consequences happened. Yes ofc I once also got puke emoji or clown emoji for it for pointing out it’s against the rules, but whatever..
I think this whole issue could be easy to combat with a few more (trustworthy) moderators who are more active in these areas, and there wouldn’t be a need to ban the topics itself, where most are active from the community that are here for a while now..
If there was a call for help I’m shure a few (including me) would have tried to help, and of course the endeavouros team would pick those that are fitting this role.
But, whatever now happens, and whatever solution the team comes up with. I hope it goes well and the positives overweigh the negatives (is that the right word? Idk)
If it was possible (i know it’s not and if it is please don’t bother) i would be curious to know how many times this has happened, probably waaaaay more than we imagine…
I see something go off about every six months…but I never frequented the joke thread and I’m sure because of that selectivity I have missed much.
I still would kinda argue if we were more adult about things (overall), this wouldn’t be a problem. You know there’s that OLD OLD OLD (older than me) meme about politics and religions being taboo subjects in polite company. I myself don’t really care about others politics or religion, those are personal choices, but others react in a combustion related manner. it seems juvenile to me..but hey, I probably do things that seem juvenile to other folks too.
I might get upset if people start talking trash about my CPU (but probably not) 
I do understand how hard this might be on moderators, it can sour my stomach being in the middle of one of these ‘wars’.
Maby but does examples you provided is just example of bad moderation! In my eyes 
Censorship is just bad!
As a sidenote I used to run an 100% Censorship free forum…it didn’t exactly go well…some moderation and censorship NEEDS to be exercised!
Would it be an idea then to scrap the “EOS Deutsch” category as well, since most forum languages are English. I can imagine that there aren’t enough moderators here either to moderate an extra language and most people speak English, whether that be their first or second language and moderating an extra language can be time consuming as well if under staffed with those who speak that extra language.
I don’t want to go back and forth here too much but just to be clear, this forum has never been a place for uncensored/unmoderated discussion and we don’t want it to be that. There are plenty of places all over the internet where people can go to debate politics, start flame wars or do whatever. We have always wanted this forum to be an escape from that chaos.
Like others, I too will miss the jokes … which have long been an uplifting way to start my day.
Alas, to those who pee’d in our community pool, this is why we can’t have nice things. 
@Bryanpwo and team: This EOS forum remains an invaluable resource for our community. Thanks for putting up with such stuff for as long as you could.
I am not as active in moderation as I once was. However, when I was actively moderating, I was spending about 10+ hours per week on moderation tasks and I was only one of the people doing moderation.
The vast majority of the time we spent moderating is mostly invisible to the general forum user.
The history there is that we used to have a bunch of different language forums and we got rid of all of them except that one. The reason that one was kept is that it was by far the most active and we had quite a bit of coverage from both a moderator perspective and a forum member perspective that was German-speaking.
Yeah but it’s just sad that we can’t have a casual joke thread without some snow flacks running it for everyone else. It’s just…. Sad turn of events 
Meanwhile, the telegram group proving why the mods have to do this … C’mon guys…
I myself am an administrator in a German community and know exactly what goes on behind the scenes. Everything that is not allowed according to the rules is posted anyway. When I delete it, I sometimes receive questions directly to my private email address, which has nothing to do with the community. There, people discuss why I considered the deleted content to be political, for example. Surely it was clearly satire…
But it gets worse. I have also received death threats. After all, they know where I live. During the coronavirus pandemic, my family and I were wished death by coronavirus. That’s not something you really want. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about it, because there are so many ways to remain anonymous on the internet.
My community has been around for almost 26 years. I have already considered simply ending it all because of these insults and threats.
Without my team, I would have given up long ago. You can’t do it all on your own. Without a reliable team in the background, it’s very difficult.
Dear team, take the time to think this through and maybe just add a few more moderators to the team to strengthen yourselves and your presence. I’m sure there are many people here who would be happy to help.
this sounds like a nauseating way to spend time.
Had no idea about the behind the scenes stuff. had no idea it was this much adult day care.
Wow, sorry this is part of the job and it’s not even linux-related.
As some members have already said, the threads that were removed were one of the main reasons many of us visited the forum. This community is special, and I’ve met people here who honestly seem like the kind of people I’d enjoy being friends with in real life.
Regarding the administrators’ decision, I understand it and, to some extent, I even agree with it. That said, from my many years of experience as a SysOp on an IRC network, avoiding certain topics doesn’t necessarily prevent discussions or abuse. I’ve seen heated debates start over something as simple as someone strongly preferring KDE over GNOME, based on ideology or differences in how each project approaches things. And unless I’m mistaken, given the current global climate, it’s likely we’ll see some intense discussions in the Open Source and Linux communities.
If the main issue is moderation, there are members here who spend a lot of time on the forum and seem available: they could potentially help as moderators. That might ease the workload for the admins. Still, I feel some damage has already been done, and it may not be easy to undo. As in many things in life, setting a precedent can have consequences down the line.
As for me, I’ll probably reduce my visits to what I consider essential. I have enough knowledge to handle my own issues, but I don’t feel confident enough to guide others without the risk of unintentionally causing problems on their systems. I’m consider myself an eternal N00b 
Anyway, I’ll still be around 
You wouldn’t believe how some users can suddenly reveal themselves and how “evil” they can be when they feel they have been treated unfairly. In the anonymity of the internet, adults become children who no longer know any boundaries. Unfortunately…
thanks for that.
Times I’ve been berated in Linux forums, including this one, while completely innocent, or for my own tomfoolery: 211
Times I cried to a moderator: 0
I figured moderators would do the right thing and usually they did.
I’m GenX, though.
Tough guys, all of us.