VEGANGELICA

I can understand your feeling offended at being called a spammer when your deleted thread, from your description of it, was simply a question about your own music that you hoped someone would answer and was not an attempt to promote your music:

I recommend that you post your question (if you still wish to) in the songwriting section down in the Artists Corner (which is really a horizontal band, but, oh well ) if you didn't before, midnight_spree. I think your question would be more likely to receive helpful feedback there, because I'm guessing that people who are interested in song structure/composition issues and genre technicalities are more likely to look at that section. They will probably be able to tell when a question is an honest request for help or feedback rather than just a way to broadcast the musician's songs. (I like it when musicians are here to share their songs, but I may be in the minority. )

I've also noticed the tendency of some people at MusicBanter to assume right away that newcomers are wrong or bad. I do feel in general this forum repels quite a few musicians and others who might have enjoyed their stay if they had felt more welcomed. I wish moderators would consistently take an "innocent until proven guilty" stance toward members with respect to the rule against joining just to promote their own music or someone else's...and even if the person is "guilty," still treat her or him respectfully.

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Moderators, this thread and Vanilla's post before mine remind me that I want to raise a concern with all of you, which is that some of the rules are not enforced consistently or even followed consistently by moderators themselves, such as our site's first rule:

• While debating and discussion is fine, we will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks, trolling, purposeless inflammatory posts or members deliberately provoking another member into committing any of these acts.

It often seems to me that the main job of moderators here is to delete posts that contain advertisements, and I can imagine that is a big job. I see the clean-up in action and do appreciate it. Using MusicBanter to banter about music in a substantive way would be much harder if the posts of people who join only to advertise or promote weren't cleaned up. So, thank you, Mods, for that.

Yet I feel the occasional nasty comments by moderators and some members are much more harmful to the community than "spam" is. When I see moderators are breaking one rule while telling people to follow another, I no longer trust any of the moderators because I don't trust them to police each other.

For example, Vanilla, I wish you wouldn't tell midnight-spree that he can **** off. If you really *are* drunk when you are posting, then I think it would be better if you wait until you aren't, because I feel you are violating the first rule of MusicBanter by being intentionally rude and hurtful: "We will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks, trolling, purposeless inflammatory posts."

Midnight_spree's feedback is actually a good thing because it shows she or he has hope that the concern will be listened to and has not given up hope that the moderators will be fair and decent.

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