Re: Explanation

So many people I see (here in the US anyway) seem to use "free speech" as a justification for excercising absolutely no self-restraint and spewing out whatever kind of garbage they want into the world without any concern for how it might affect or influence others... equating "free speech" with "screw you, I'll say and do whatever the F*** I want!", and nullifying any sense of consideration or respect for others.

Yes, I've seen that plenty, too. But like one doesn't have to take the bait when being intentionally baited, one can be patient with jerks, too.

That's something for people to decide for themselves I guess. And that in itself is the freedom... but even with that in mind I still think there should be some basic rules of conduct even for blogs, as I already mentioned. If people can't play by the most basic rules of decency, then they shouldn't be allowed to play at all. At least not on any site that wishes to maintain any degree of respect and credibility...

Yeah, we heard this argument a lot back in the days when the Debate Forums were frothing with libelous venom, elevating the concern levels of the more timid moderators (heh heh heh), and Webmaster made it so that the forums could be hidden, so as not to tempt those who would be easily lured back into the miasma.

CureZone is a tool. The authors of the material that CureZone uses and displays are the sources of the information, and all credibility or not lies specifically with them. CureZone isn't a doctor, an author, a national health hotline, or a government agency. It's a facilitator, a communication vehicle, sometimes entertaining, sometimes enervating, but it isn't a matter of being credible or not. The "Credibility Game" is what the allopaths play. Well, we're not playing allopath, so why play allopathic games ourselves?

I mean, we're already the laughingstock of mainstream medicine here. Who are we trying to kid by being "credible"? And why on earth do we have to live up to someone else's standards about what is a "good" web site? CureZone has endured quite well in spite of all the venom that some folks were sure was going to destroy it years ago.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have standards (Support Forums, for example); I simply don't think that a blog is the place to enforce them, and if "credibility" is the only reason you think such standards should be enforced, we have plenty of empirical data to show why that's not a valid reason.