listen man, I have posted here as a quite new member some s**t that I should not have and was rightly critisized for it (drunk as I was), but since I have been here generally sober & otherwise I have got the distinct impression from those in charge that there is a great distain among them in terms of respect for free speech, after all this is a music forum, people are bound to have opinions, some which may upset some people, hey ! it comes with the f**king teritorary ! yes if you happen to like Snow Patrol & The Frames, the chances are that some of us may thik you are bit of a c**t ! yes you read that right OK, both bands being in music terms the tory party equilivent of the current Irish music sceane imho ! so bland and conservative its unreal, ! there you go thats my opinion ! now if that were me on the end of that s**t I'd come back and say no youre wrong, this is why they are great... blah blah blah ! but no ! watch what happens next !

Eoin, You throw words like 'distain', 'respect' and 'free speech' like Cluas was some kinda totalitarian state. If you feel the need to rage against the machine, go and set up a political party or better still, set up your own discussion board. For the record, running a discussion board is legally a very grey area and a lack of moderation is at the very least a fast track to getting booted by your hosting company; worst case is getting your ass sued, which Cluas as a non-profit site could not fight. Hence, we err on the side of caution. Equally, some threads such as the 'The biggest w*%ker in the Music Industry' serve no other puspose than to slag people off and should be canned as they are just drivel. For nearly six years a great many people have given their time and effort for free to build the site into what it is today. Trust me, we don't like having to moderate but we are not going to allow situations arise which might threaten the site. So, can we please get back to discussing music?

A few months ago, the Cluas discussion boards saw a series of post being written on the topic of a certain Irish singer/songwriter which were rather unpleasant to those who did not like this artists work. I don't know why but I got the feeling that the posts were not being written by fans of the act but rather by people working for either/or the act's record company/management team/official fan club. And I must state that I have no evidence for this other than a hunch. One of their key gripes was the way that, they felt, the act was being discriminated against by unseen forces at Cluas, even though this artist regularly features in our end of year 'Best Of' polls. And I came to the conclusion that an attempt was being made to manipulate opinion on the site in a less than transparent way. So I decided to offer the said posters in question the chance to write an op-ed on the artist since, I felt, if they were genuine they would accept. Guess what, they vanished from the site, as did their bullying, campaigning attitude. Now, it appears, we have another situation here where certain people new to the site are taking the opportunity to talk up an act or acts and, when their views are discussed in an open way by some of our readers, they begin to fabricate some old tat about dark forces, censorship etc. And again, I wonder whats really behind it. Two things. Firstly, Cluas is an online music magazine, offering diverse opinion, review and editorial on things musical. It is not a fanzine. Secondly, the concept of editing material exists in all liberal, free societies and you only have to look at last week's debacle over Kevin Myers column in the Irish Times to see the wisdom of exercising a judicious degree of oversight on a public forum. Now, lets drop this topic and move on. Thank you.

hear, hear. great post moderator i have to say i enjoy cluas and the way opinions get worked over but everyone's opinion is respected. i look at how other irish music forums work and despair. at least here, u can have a decent conversation about a lot of issues, read some very good points of view and know that no-one is just resorting to name-calling, rampant Myserisms or thumping someone just because they think its smart Viva Cluas!

I have to say this board is moderated well , unlike the boards. Having said that its hard to moderate 100% of the time.

yeh sometimes they come across a bit harsh, but take a look at the cpu.ie forum for a glimpse of what it would be like if things got out of control, the whole f**kin thing is overrun by kids abusin each other!

I think "kids" is the operative word here. While I'm not a fan of any kind of corporal punishment, kudos to the moderators for exercising the necessary discipline to keep these upstarts in line.

I would support the Moderators fully on this one. Name calling has no part in a proper "Dicussion" which is what this board is all about. It shows immaturity when you have to resort to insulting someone personally in your discussion. Up until recently cluas was safe from all that kind of rubbish that you see on other boards, and thats what makes it different.