Do you want some heavy duty Chinese-style censorship with your “crime sleuthing”? Then you will enjoy Websleuths.com. This particular “crime sleuthing” forum engages in the most egregious censorship and bullying of its members that I have ever witnessed. And it’s the moderators and administrators doing it.
SillyBilly is a Communist China-Style Moderator on Websleuths.com
True Crime and websleuth forums and websites are very popular right now. After Katie Janness was murdered in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, I joined Websleuths to discuss the case. WS (as it’s called among members) is known as one of the most popular forums on true crime online. I can’t figure out why anyone who values free speech puts up with it. Discussions are nearly impossible on their website. The administrators and moderators actually read each and every comment and edit to their hearts’ content. They snip and censor and remove words, phrases, entire paragraphs, sometimes whole posts; also ideas, links, photos and anything they choose. Their reasons are capricious and illogical and vary depending on the poster.
These moderators make actual discussion impossible with these practices. It’s not uncommon to be reading a discussion that makes no sense because you will see the <modsnip> indicator all over the place.
Eventually, the censorship and abuses there made me quit the site. I had written out a long, detailed and well-thought-out argument for something and was censored with <modsnips> all over the place. The following post I wrote was deemed “bickering” by the worst moderator of all, named “Sillybilly”. SillyBilly is a true tyrant. This “moderator” simply didn’t like my thoughts, ideas and arguments. As any good debater knows, arguments are part of a good discussion. My disagreement with an idea of another poster was labeled “bickering”. Bickering is not allowed on Websleuths, and the determining factor as to what makes one post bickering and another post a good argument is at the total whims of the current moderator. Yes, grown adults there are treated completely like children. (And members let it happen). If you openly disagree with a moderator’s decision, you are slapped with “points”. Apparently, 3 points and you’re out. I had two occasions of two of these bad points being assigned to me, with little to no explanation. And you can’t argue with them or you will acquire more of these “points” for disagreeing. Yes, it’s a forum where you are threatened with expulsion if you disagree with other members or moderators. Just disagreeing.
To have a post labeled “bickering” is ridiculous. (Why would bickering even be disallowed on a free discussion forum in the first place?) Not only that, but my post was no more bickering than any other post. The moderators on WS will decide on a point of view in one of their discussions, and if you deviate from their point of view, they will follow you, bully you, harass you, nitpick your comments, censor them, and make life for you there generally miserable. It’s how they kick people off the forum.
Disagree with Sillybilly or any other moderator’s ideas there – and you are gone. But they don’t delete you. They keep you as a member but don’t let you use your account, and they refuse to remove your posts.
They enage in Russian or Chinese-style censorship, censoring out peoples’ very ideas that they don’t agree with. It’s the worst censorship I have ever seen online from a forum of this type.
Yet the website has so many members, so why do they put up with that degree of censorship? Discussions are filled with comments like “I hope this is allowed” and “this is probably not allowed, so my apologies in advance.” That is no way to run a discussion, that’s straight up communist-style censorship. It reminds me of a victim mentality, such as battered women syndrome.
Just as bad, they allow moderators such as SillyBilly to open a fake account on the spot to anonymously degrade, harass, insult and call members names and bully them, through DMs on the site, if they don’t like specific posts. This also happened to me there.
All the “moderators” at WS should be called “Extremenators” because they are not moderate at anything.
It makes me think that websites such as Websleuths should be able to be investigated and shut down for actual human rights abuses. This is not an American, democratic free speech forum. This is a forum where it seems that at least part of the purpose of the website’s discussions is to direct the conversation into a type of conformity that does not allow any disagreement. Disagreeing people are encouraged to be harassed and bullied both in public comments and private comments. This should not be allowed on any website that calls itself a “discussion” forum.
My next steps would be to complain to their ISP and their server hosts. I will post that information here if anyone wants to check back and join me in getting Websleuths shut down for online bullying/harassment. It’s just as bad if not worse than their censorship, and all tied together with it. I don’t believe they have any right to operate as they do in this country. In Russia or China, fine, I would expect that, but not here. They are literally engaged in systematic abuse of their own members.
