Online forum moderation ethics

You are an administrator or moderator of an on-line public forum and you receive a complaint about a thread on your forum in which the salable quality of a product is being, reasonably, criticized.

Do you:

(a) Remove the thread giving the explanation that you don't have time to deal with the complaints generated by such threads.

(b) Politely tell the complainer to stop telling them what content they should or should not allow.

(c) Have it all out in public.





Does that all sound a bit specific?

Maybe this should have gone in the pointless but does my head in thread.

Thanks blubeat.

I'm not the moderator in this case, I'm the thread starter and I refer to another forum that many of us here frequent, in fact most of the moderators of that place post here which is partly why I mention it. I have a different username there.

It's a weird and unpleasant feeling to have public discussion of an issue silenced, even if it is a relative (apple) trifle.

Actually I have no grievance with the mods - I realise it's an extremely difficult task, but that's why strong ethics are necessary.

No, it's getting air from the producers of the product prior to my starting the thread that has really pissed me off. I don't know who called for the thread to be pulled but I'm guessing it was one of those two and it can't have taken less effort to do that than it would have done to reply to my polite enquiries.

Weasels.

Thanks for the replies guys.

God this made me hopping mad at the time. I hope some of the mods at dubstepforum read this and think about why they remove any reference to the mispressed Benga record. Sad.