A worthwhile thread, "Dollar is Toast,"was started here in the flute forum because it was primarily about the economics of flute making and the impact of certain economic issues on the flute market. However, some remarks of a political/controversial nature in the thread caused the moderators to move it, properly, I think, to the Political forum. This was an unusual situation. Most threads that belong in the Political forum are completely off-topic (off the topic of music). This one was a thread that was actually mostly on-topic, but which certainly could reasonably be expected to generate purely political discussion because of some particular marks.
The thread is open and active and the only controversy has been about where it properly belongs. Accordingly, I have established this thread with a link which will allow visitors to the flute forum to make a quick jump over to the political forum to read or participate in the thread.
So, here it is:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=54759
Another possible solution, carefully considered, was editing the thread to remove the remarks that caused it to be moved in the first place. My first impulse was to offer to “clean up” the thread. But, I think that’s an activity that moderators can’t get into doing. Editing posts is tricky business. You have to edit the post. You have to check all the responses and edit them if they refer to the original post. Etc.
A reminder that this controversy–and the emotion associated with it–is about where a thread belongs on a Internet music forum. At the risk of minimizing the pain and anguish of those involved–it’s not that big of a deal.
Regarding the cries of censorship, we’ve been over that a million times and it’s just worth doing again. All we did is move a thread. Now, I’ve returned a heading to the flute forum, so all one has to do to participate in the thread is click on the link–read and participate–and then return to the flute forum.
Thanks.
Dale