As an organisation creating and managing an online community, we have a duty to maintain a balance for the good of all of our members. We have a very diverse audience and a duty to provide an impartial and balanced output for all.
We are keen to encourage lively and informed debate but we know that some Forum threads in particular can generate a lot of passion so moderation is essential.
Aware of the growing levels of online participation, many organsisations worldwide such as the BBC have introduced the following two levels of moderation for online discussions:
1- Fully Moderated:
This is also known as pre-moderation. Every comment submitted to a fully moderated discussion has to be checked by a moderator before it is published on the site. Every attempt is made to publish as many comments as possible but, unfortunately, often not all comments submitted will be published when this type of moderation is used. Many online forums already use this level of moderation.
2- Reactively moderated:
If a discussion is reactively moderated and you are a member of the site, your comment will be published directly to the site. The organisation will monitor the content of reactively moderated discussions and remove comments that break the House Rules. This way all comments are posted but some may be removed or edited later if deemed inapropriate for any number of reasons.
We currently use reactive moderation only and we want to keep it that way because it will allow many more people to contribute to the forum in a spontaneous way. However, please be aware that we monitor the forum debates closely and some posts or threads will qualify to be fully moderated if they are deemed highly inapropriate. We have an automatic system to do this.
In a country like Thailand, it is easy to cause offence and so we have to adopt strict rules that forbid any reference to or discussion on HM the King, his family and the Thai monarchy in general. We also cannot allow overtly sexual discussion or references as this is not acceptable in this country either. Other than this we allow full freedom of expression and we certainly do not censor comments purely because we want to protect those we know or who work with us in any way.
Users of the site can always complain about any comment they see on the forum, or indeed anywhere else on the site, by clicking the 'report abuse' button shown as a dark silhouette with a balloon from the mouth. This will trigger an immediate investigation into the event.
We hope this explains our policy on moderation clearly.