[iceman (Mike)]

Originally Posted by mick pinner

my main point being the site allows a general chat section and then suspends or removes threads that don't follow the guidlines, surely this tells you the guidlines are not specific enough.

How much more specific do you need them? The guidelines are undergoing change right now and are being amended as a result of the latest debacles, but people shouldn't need to be hand-held. You can't put a guideline around "don't be stupid".
You can't make guidelines too specific, because it just gives people a reason to delibaretly go just outside them and say "it wasn't in the guidelines".

Originally Posted by mick pinner

throughout the offending threads of the past and including this one people keep repeating lets get back to the basics of the site and keep it astro related which seems to be what the majority wants yet Mike and the moderators continue to allow unrelated threads to be started and then after it has taken of it has action taken and usually removed.

I think you're way over-generalising.. I don't think a few responses can be seen as the majority. Yes this is an astro forum and yes most discussions should be about astronomy. But the general chat forum is for just that, general off-topic chat. I don't know how many forums you've been a part of before, but every forum i've been a part of, always has an off-topic area - whether it's another astro forum, a programming forum or a woodworking forum. There's always an "off-topic" area where people can get to know each other and talk about things that aren't on topic.

As Geoff said, it's been made clear what's acceptable in general chat, and it seems to me from the posts being made, that people enjoy chatting in general chat, learning about each others lives and talking about stuff outside astronomy.

Originally Posted by mick pinner

l must add Mike that if you have the attitude that if people don't agree with you then just leave l suggest you address your attitude, you started this forum and if you thought everyone was going to have the same attitute to you on everything you were naive

Not at all Mick.. I would never expect everyone to have the same attitude as me. My point was, you have the most democratic right of all - choice.

Regarding ID discussions, there has been some valid points made by Kearn, ArgoNavis and AstroRon about what is moderated and how. In some cases, offending posts would've been better removed and let the discussion continue rather than locking the thread outright. I'll discuss this with the moderators and see if we can learn from this experience.