[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by COUNTESS

I must admit that sometimes I feel the same way. The most annoying is that similar posts are left for days and then, if I go to answer something, it is zipped away with no explanation.

As I said above, for deletions of small numbers of posts or deletions due to rules violations, we PM the poster. Obviously that means that other members won't be made aware of why someone else's post has been removed, but on the whole we prefer not to make a public issue of rules violations by individual posters unless there's a major outbreak of them.

I stopped posting on the Middle East sites, as you cannot say anything that is construed to be negative, which isn't a discussion at all. I don't know about Monaco.

Please PM me with some details of the threads you mean. I don't spend much time in the Middle Eastern forums. However, I have spent some time in the Monaco forum, and I can tell you from experience there that several posters have complained that we don't allow criticism or anything negative, and we've been able to point out post after post full of criticism; usually there's some convoluted reason why it doesn't count (often having to do with the timing of the post, whatever that has to do with anything), or there's no response at all. The usual complaint, when you get right down to it, is "we can't post no-holds-barred venom, bashing, and insult"; apparently it isn't enough to say that a particular royal doesn't look good in a particular dress or has said something inappropriate in a speech, but people feel they need to be able to say that someone is a butt-ugly disaster or a retarded moron. If you want to post that sort of thing, there are other forums. We've received enough threats of lawsuits already as it is - quite apart from which, it ought to be possible for people to carry on a civil discussion even while criticising someone. It's very easy for these threads to turn into a competition to see who can manage the most egregious insults, and we aren't remotely interested in that sort of thing.

That is also why I had hoped where we could have an open political forum, but that seems to be dropped by the wayside and "isn't her hat nice" is still the discussion of the day.

Just to clarify, which I thought I'd done in the other thread but apparently not: political discussions, as long as they're relevant to royals, are perfectly welcome. We just aren't going to let threads degenerate into off-topic politics. Experience has shown that such threads usually turn into really unpleasant war zones - hence the prohibition of political and religious topics in Members' Corner. If you really think "isn't her hat nice" is the only thing to be found in the British forum, for instance, you're managing to miss a lot of threads.