Here is a crash-course on what is allowed on CureZone.


Let's say we have a user with username "TheUser"

If you post a message on CureZone Forums and you talk negative about "TheUser", and you actually insert his/her username inside your message, your message is a personal attack on "TheUser", and such message should have never been posted on public forums in the first place.


You have had option to send a message as a private message or as an email to anyone you want, but it is against CureZone guidelines to post that message on public forums.


If you disregard CureZone rules and you anyway choose to post message about "TheUser" on public forum, you risk your message being removed by global moderators.

Global moderators are people who have privileges to remove messages inside any forum, private or not.
Local moderators are people who have privileges to remove messages inside just one single forum.

Example: Hveragerthi is a Local moderator inside his own forum and can remove any message inside his forum, message that is in violation of CureZone TOS or even a message he finds inappropriate for whatever reason.

Global moderators are people who have privileges to monitor everybody, even Local moderators.

Global Administrators are people who have privileges to monitor everybody, even Global moderators.

Webmasters are people who have privileges to monitor everybody, even Global Administrators.
Having privileges and having time to excercise your privileges is not the same thing.



Every time any forum owner opt to break any rule, inside or outside his/her forum, the forum owner risks having his/her message removed. It is usually a Global moderator or Administrator that does that job.


What is important about this rule?


It is important to understand that rule is to be applied, even if everything you write is 100% truth.

It is not about who is right, it is about what is allowed on public forums and what is not!

If you write a message that sounds like this:


"Here people like "TheUser1" and "TheUser2" have been attacking me relentlessly on these forums and yet they are still allowed to post and none of their attacks have been hidden. All i did was defend myself against these attacks and I am the one that gets banned and had my post hidden by "TheUser3" even though it was not an attack or TOS violation."

This message is a personal attack on "TheUser1" and "TheUser2", even if it is 100% true.

And, because it is a personal attack, it has to be removed, cause the author opted to use real usernames instead of just saying that there have been members of CureZone who have been relentlessly attacking him in the past.


Without naming names, the message is still 100% truth, but it is not a personal attack, it is not breaking any rules.

If you reply to a message classified as a personal attack, you risk your message being removed simply because it is a reply to a removed message. All replies disappear once parent message is removed, unless moderator opt to just remove message subject and message body, while leaving message placeholder visible to public.


Leaving message placeholder visible to public generally shows who posted the message, and it shows that message was removed. It doesn't say why the message was removed, but you can guess, it is because it was in breach of CureZone Forum Rules or CureZone TOS .


Why are not all personal attacks removed?



Here are a few possible reasons or examples:

1. CureZone Moderators are volunteers, they are not paid for enforcing rules. That means they do it only if they have time to do it.


2. Moderator who received alert message is not online for a longer time. Once Moderator returns, there may be too many alerts (100), and Moderator opts to focus on doing what he/she has time to do, just moderate new messages (last 30), while leaving old messages (70) untouched.



3. The forum has no local moderator, and none of the global moderators are interested in the forum subject so they avoid policing that forum.


4. The forum use to have active local moderator, but suddenly local moderator stop visiting CureZone, and global moderators are not aware of the fact that the forum is now without a moderator, so they avoid policing that forum thinking someone else is doing that job.

5. Wording used inside message makes it very difficult for a moderator to decide if a message is a personal attack or if it is valid criticism of an opinion expressed.


6. Active local moderator believes that truth ( subjective truth, what he considers the truth ) is more important left online, then it is removing a personal attack.

7. Active local moderator is biased, and chooses to leave personal attack online.


8. Any combination of the 7 possibilities above.

9. Anything else I forgot to mention.


In 99% of cases when a moderator did not respond to an alert, it is because of examples 1 - 5.

In rare circumstances, moderators will leave a personal attack online, du to reason 6-8.



So, as you can see, there are many reasons why some personal attacks remain on CureZone longer then 48 hours.

Just so you understand, I, Webmaster, rarely am able to find time to read more then 2 messages per day.
I rarely have time to read messages or to play role of Global Moderator.

All other people with Global Moderator privileges, usually focus on less then 3-5 forums, and they leave the other forums to local moderators.

That means there are many forums that may not receive attention of any moderator, sometimes for weeks, months or even for years.

So, if nothing is done about your alert, it could be because there is nobody doing that job on that forum.

Everything on CureZone is not a Conspiracy against you.


Few facts to better understand the picture:

There are more then 1000 forums on CureZone and almost 2000 blogs.
More then 500 messages are posted every day, more then 1000 some very busy days.
Global moderators may receive from 10 up to 50 or more alerts per day. To understand each alert, the moderator may need to read the complete thread, sometimes up to 50 or even 100 messages per thread.

If a Global moderator is offline 1 week, he may find 100-300 alerts in his Inbox.

No single person has got so much free time to read all alerts or to respond to all alerts.

That is the main reason why rules are not always applied within 24 hours after you press you alert buton, or you send a message to Webmaster.

I work several days almost every week on a high mountain where I have no time for CureZone or sometimes internet is not available. If you don't hear from me, it could be I have not read your message or your alert.


Why remove a personal attack, if it is a 100% truth?

Because personal attacks generate only more personal attacks, which in the end results in flame war.

Nothing good has ever come out of a flame war.
The only person who wins every flame war is the one who never participates.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The only right way to respond to a personal attack is no response or just press the "bad alert" button.

Counter attack is equally bad as being the one that started first. If you "attack" the one who attacked you, you just wasted great oportunity to rise far above your oponents.

Forum owners are the last people who should allow themselves to attack anyone else, regardless of what other people say about them.




Webmaster