On Censorship (please don't censor this)

[Final-Fan]

The_vagabond7 said:
Ok this will be my last post (final fan posted while I was typing). Demands are different from suggestions. If you are afraid that any criticism is bannable, then by all means voice a concern, make a suggestion, ask a question. But debating endlessly about what is and isn't just, and expecting some one to somehow change something is silly. The rules are written, the action was taken, it's not being reversed. Beyond saying "I don't think that was right", or sending a PM to ioi personally detailing a concern in a non accusatory way, You're not going to get anywhere, or accomplish anything. Raising a huge public fuss over it is pointless.

I'd love to debate this, but the points I would argue are pretty subtle and you've said you don't want to spend that kind of time on this -- I can respect that.  But let's return to your "house" analogy.

The "house" analogy is indeed a bad one for this situation, and it is commonly used despite that.  A much closer analogy IMO would be a neverending convention -- ioi has organized this place and made everything possible, and he provides the stuff that keeps this site going (the VGChartz data), and he and some friends he's made among the convention-goers are responsible for keeping fights from breaking out and tossing out troublemakers.  But the users, the convention-goers, are what makes the forums a place worth visiting.  Sure the site would still be there, and the numbers would still be there, but the atmosphere and community are all thanks to the people who those things are created from.  So ioi is the guy in charge, and we should all give him the respect he deserves, but he makes decisions with the community in mind, if not any particular person.