I agree with you Miz.  It would be stupid to leave anything on their forums that is harmful to them.  The other day I saw a thread on Fotolia about getting people to sign a petition against  the site.  It was quite obvious to me that it would be deleted as soon as an admin saw it.

....I thought I made it clear in my post: "Don't play dumb on this one...."

Cranky MIZ
The voice of reason

Miz, I agree with you on several points.  Freedom of Speech is a right which applies to our governments allowing protests.  Private companies are allowed to impose their own restrictions on speech within their property (including forums). 

I also agree it is perfectly legal and reasonable for businesses to delete posts in their forums which they feel will be harmful to their interests (although I very much appreciate the sites that DO allow dissent, and I think they are the stronger for it)

What I don't think is reasonable is EDITING people's posts beyond removal of forbidden links.  If someone speaks in a forum, their name is associated with their thoughts and it is not right to change someones words to misrepresent what they said and think.  Better to delete posts altogether than to distort people's messages. 

Well I would disagree.

First of all not all forums have censorship.  As a matter of fact post/threads are never edited or deleted on SS (it happened may be once or twice for some extreme cases).
...

It's not valid to compare the SS forum with those of their competitors. Most sites allow forum access to both buyers and sellers. Buyers cannot access the SS forum, which thus exists solely for the benefit of sellers. It's an easy guess that the SS forum would be be administered a little differently if buyers could see what sellers are writing on it.

I'd like to think that the forums are more than just a corkboard showoff. They are there as a means for contributors to communicate with each other and the site officials, a place to get answers, inspiration and friends. At least thats how they appear when you look at the structure of the forums. It seems the intention of the sites was to create a community around the site and not a brag sheet.
The forums would be more comparable to a huge lunch room/canteen, where people chitchat.
If what they want is a corkboard showoff, it would save a lot of time and effort to just shut down access to the forums for everyone and create bots using different names that post random stuff praising the site.

Of course they can censor as much as they want. Its their forum. What would you expect? Its up to them whether we think it morally acceptable or not.

Thats just lucky for forums such as this

Edit: sharply_done: also a good point. No company, say a cardealership, would allow their salesmen to go around and badmouth cars to the customers. "I only get ten percent of the salesprice as a commision if I sell this chevy to you, its crap. But if you buy this Dodge I get 15, you should go with this one instead. By the way I wanted to import a few suzukis but the boss wouldnt let me. He is dumb as an ass, knows absolutly nothing about the biz."

It's not valid to compare the SS forum with those of their competitors. Most sites allow forum access to both buyers and sellers. Buyers cannot access the SS forum, which thus exists solely for the benefit of sellers. It's an easy guess that the SS forum would be be administered a little differently if buyers could see what sellers are writing on it.

Sharply, 2 comments:
1. Anybody has read access to SS forums even if the link is not published on the buyer side; and anyway I highly doubt that buyers would spend time reading these photographers forums, they have more important things to do, LOL.
2. StockXpert has an open forum to both buyers and photogs, they had a heated thread on subs and they never censored anything or delete any thread as far as I know.  They even took into account inputs from us to change their sub model.  What a concept

talking about censorship in forums.
i think we forget that it is almost everywhere.

has anyone ever tried writing a comment to a news report on yahoo?
i did. and guess what, they not only disallow your whole comment to be submitted, but some of the catch phrase are absolute no - no, even if it is the topic in the news.
eg. say if the article is on sex, or homosexuality.
and you type in sex, or homo,... guess what?
you get a prompt on pressing SUBMIT saying: "oops sorry we cannot allow your submission" , or something like that.

so, my point is, censorship is alive and well on the web.

True, but at different level.  SS and StockXpert have -almost- no censorship at all, while Fotolia seems to be the worst among micros.

If the forums are used by both buyer and seller, the buyers may be turned off by the lack of activity by the sellers.  Bottom line,,if you don't like a sites business practices,, don't support their efforts. Just my opinion.

good point ! a silent revolt . what's a forum without participACTION?

eg. say if the article is on sex, or homosexuality.
and you type in sex, or homo,... guess what?
you get a prompt on pressing SUBMIT saying: "oops sorry we cannot allow your submission" , or something like that.

so, my point is, censorship is alive and well on the web.

Most forum software come with a set of "Bad Word Filters", these are to protect young persons, because you cannot control who reads a public forum, or who hears your spoken words in a public place, how would you feel if a young family member asked "What does that word mean on your monitor?", it is a form of censorship but these words do not challenge the companies ethics or promote thier competitors, thats where censorship comes in on some forums.

The difference is that unless a post attacts another forum user, the deletion or editing of Forum posts is to protect the company not the general public.

David