Yes, we do accept donations to help run the forum, but YorkieTalk is privately owned. Being a Donating Member does not give you any "ownership" of YT or preferential treatment, but it does have its own benefits.
Only the government is prohibited from restricting speech. Because YT is privately owned, speech can be restricted in any way that YT sees fit. If someone posts something inflammatory or negative towards YT or any member, we can delete it as we own YT, the server it resides on, and the database. We try not to restrict speech, but there are times that it is unavoidable. Threads may be closed or deleted by moderators or admins for any reason. Usually they are closed or deleted because it goes against YT rules or some other kind of problem. Threads are never closed or deleted for no reason. YT tries to be as neutral as possible and we do not close threads because we have a particular opinion on a subject. If we see 5 new (or active) threads on the same subject, we may close 4 of the threads as we try to avoid redundancy.
Yes, there are other Yorkie sites and forums. Most of the sites are friendly and we welcome discussion on them. However, there are some which cause us problems and we thus will not allow them any free publicity or discussion. There have been issues and problems with other Yorkie forums in the past, which is why we do not allow any links or discussions about other Yorkie forums here on YT.
As this is a community site, we want to keep the atmosphere friendly, and often times, heated threads turn into huge arguments and name-calling, which leads to suspensions and or banned users, which we try to avoid. We have tried in the past to keep hotly-debated threads open, but it never works. It always turns out ugly. So threads may be closed before that happens.
It makes YT members and YT itself look bad when someone that is a new (a new member or potential new member) is on YorkieTalk for the first time sees a bunch of name-calling and childish behavior. This is what we are trying to avoid as we want to make this as friendly and welcoming a community as possible, though undoubtedly problems will still happen at times.
Thank you for your feedback.