Thank you all for your comments and contributions. I am not going to answer every question on this thread, but will endeavour to answer some that come to mind.
Firstly, I would like to thank all the moderators for their voluntary efforts to moderate these boards, because I think they are doing a grand job - for which we should all be grateful. I certainly am.
Secondly, I would like to thank the vast majority of posters who contribute interesting discussions and offer valuable commentary and information for the benefit of others. As someone pointed out, without posters there is no website. However, Stooz and I had neither sought to create a website for our own ends nor done so to make a profit. Our objective was to keep a community together and to do so in a way that was positive, welcoming, polite, friendly and useful .... and, yes, to act with integrity.
Thirdly, there have been various questions and conjecture about rules: secret rules, new rules, made-up-on-the-fly rules etc. The rules are pretty well defined, but the website has nearly 3000 users, has had about 72,000 posts - and it is still a young website. So it is completely unsurprising (to me) that we sometimes get faced with issues which we had not foreseen, so the rules will be refined, added to or changed.
While there are defined rules, do not expect them to be 100% pinned down in excruciating detail, because that would be time-consuming and rather pointless. Indeed, I received a very useful and interesting bit of advice from the team at TMF - which some of you will not like. I paraphrase it below ...
You need to have a set of rules but be very careful not to make them too detailed and unambiguous because there are posters out there who will exploit them to the letter - and cause a great feal of trouble. It is far better to have a broad set of rules and leave yourself some wriggle room for things which you knoware wrong but it would be hard to spell out in rules
That said, I haven't set out the rules to be ambiguous but I have no intention of creating pages and pages of them to take account of every possibility - and to hoisted by my own petard as the rules back Stooz and me into a corner.
So you will have to live with that. Stooz and I are both reasonable people and want this to be a tolerant (within reason), polite and an interesting place to be. And 99.9% of the time that is exactly what it is. But it also means - as others have said - that we have the ultimate right to set the moderation guidelines as we see fit.
That brings me on to the question "There's no rule to say we cannot question the moderators". Well there isn't but they do clearly state:
Posts may be deleted without warning or explanation (we will endeavour to explain but this may not always be possible). The decision of the Admins and Moderators is final.
Way back I wrote some Moderation Guidelines which advised the moderators not to get drawn into detailed justification of their actions. I think all mods are happy to explain reasons for their action but do not want to get drawn into long debates. The Mods and Admins decisions are final.
A few final comments about Legality and Integrity. As individuals (not a Limited Company), Stooz and I are not going to risk the site being sued or investigated for copyright infringement, defamation or any accusations of allowing illegal activities to be positively discussed. So we will take a low/no risk approach whether you like it or not.
In terms of integrity, that is something that is very important to me personally. I understand that Integrity is a subjective thing but I know what standards we wish to see here - and I think there is a common understanding amongst the moderators of what that is - even though it may be hard to write down in the form of rules.
Don't forget that the site has been funded by Ads. The site has been threatened with losing ads a few times because of some of the things written on this site by users. This is most likely the Polite Debates board but not solely. If there is no income, there is no Lemonfool.
Perhaps this is also an opportunity to thank the <1% of registered users who have kindly made a voluntary donation to the running of the site. Stooz and I are very grateful for your support.
So thanks once again for your contributions and discussion. It has been an interesting read. I'll leave the topic open for a bit, but do not expect any further contribution from me.
Thanks
Clariman
