YorkieTalk is privately owned. Being a Donating Member does not give any members 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. If posts or threads were not restricted in any way here at YorkieTalk, there would be the possibility of a ton of personal attacks, hate speech, and many other problematic issues.
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. |