Chris and T.C.; Thanks For Your Diligence!

I was on another board recently and some putz was ranting about T-Mag and how they would never post there again because of deletions and/or modifications of their post, blah, blah, blah…


Well… let me give you a personal experience on the value of truly moderating a board.I post periodically on the board of one of my favorite bodybuilders. It’s fairly new, and it’s good to see his personality come out with some of his post. He’s really a cool guy.


Anyway, things are going well until some flamer begins to flood the board with rants, porn, flames, profanities and the like over a matter of DAYS! It’s almost as if this guy has some type of “posting re-dial” (is there such a thing?), as his “post” run the gamut from pictures to text to graphics. Unbelievable. In very short order, this board becomes one that was pretty nice to just “chat” on (it’s not a real “informational” board), to one almost not worth visiting.


Look, guys… “true” moderation of a board is NOT censorship…it’s a way of maintaining the quality of a board. (My recent experience has taught me that). I just wanted to thank Chris and T.C. for what they do…because I’m sure it’s not easy…

And that is why I’m not turning on message capabilities on that tmagpix yahoo group - the guys here do too good a job for me to fuck with it.

Face it, there are those “few” who post on this forum
who basically have nothing to offer - not unless you
deem inane wisecracks, scatological references,
and racist and/or homophobic rants worthy reading!
(Dirty…" or Big J…" just to name two.) So, when
the moderator pulls their threads, is he not doing us
all a favor?

Hopefully these half-witted malcontents have had their final opportunity to spew their toxic waste!

I have to agree on most points here. However, I have also seen some very valid threads here pulled, with no explanation as to why. And no feedback to the poster on why the post got turned down.


It would just be nice to get an answer to why your post was turned down (you submit and email with every message) or a message to the thread creator to why an entire thread was pulled.

From what I’ve been able to gather, the level of moderation that’s done now is almost a full-time job. What you’re suggesting, Spanky, would probably be almost prohibitive…
(Maybe Chris or T.C. could shed a little more light)…


Also, whether a thread is “valid” or “good” or “appropriate” gets us on a slippery slope of not only interpretation, but also having the ability to look at the tone, direction and volumne of the board as a whole (which is a perspective that only the moderators have…)


Again…the level of moderation that you may be asking for may be prohibitive…just a thought…

Just a few notes: First, TC and I are not the mods, although I help out sometimes. Second, Mufasa is very correct on the time prohibitive issue.

Just some FYI type stuff. The number one cause of deleted posts on this forum is when someone attempts to reply to a post and hits “Submit new message” instead. This leaves pointless, titleless posts hanging in space. These are deleted rather than left to clutter and confuse the forum. Even if mods know where they belong, it takes too much time to fix given the enormous amount of board traffic.

Posts are also deleted or edited if the poster tries to buy or sell steroids, or tries to leave his e-mail address for any reason. Some posts are zapped because they fall under the “customer service” guideline. In other words, their question or concern is better suited for either T-mag or Biotest customer service. Although Bill Roberts and other supplement formulators post here, you are not necessary speaking to Biotest when posting here. Sometimes if we get a lot of “How many servings of MAG-10 are in a bottle?” questions, we allow one to go through so it can be answered. But in reality, this should be deleted as the answer is already at Biotestedge.com and should be addressed to customer service by e-mail or phone if the person can’t find the info.

Someone who appears to be a troublemaker or troll is deleted as well. They may get by with it for a while, but the mods can spot patterns very quickly. Now, that’s not to say they don’t allow some “war of words” to go on for a while, but if one person can only contribute “Dude, ur a fuckin’ fag” to every question, the pattern will be spotted and he will be barred from posting, perhaps given another chance later, perhaps not.

Rarely, some posts are not allowed on because they make no sense. They just can’t be understood so they are zapped. Also, we sometimes get letters like “Why won’t you guys let my post on about leg exercises?” The truth is that for whatever reason (likely user error or computer trouble on the user’s end) we never received the post.

And yes, if you ever read a totally unmoderated board you will see how it will self-destruct in a few months with porn ads, flame fests, racism, trolls, steroid dealers trying to undermine one another by posting under a dozen different names, salesman trying to get you into their multi-level marketing “business” etc etc.

And finally, the mods don’t really have to moderate all that much here. Luckily, T-mag does not attract idiots. At least not many!

The board is usually great but can be hard to navigate at times. I think this is most evident when using the “super” search feature. The fact is the search feature pretty much sucks unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

An unmoderated board would turn to shit real fast but if you guys switched over to another system, ie Ultimate BBS I’m sure you could find some volunteers who would help with the moderation. Even now with the current system you see a bunch of fucks who have nothing better to do than insult people. Just start a thread called “Bowflex” and you will see the flames coming left and right.

This was just a little rant by me. The magazine rocks by the way. When does the new paper version come out?

Outstanding!..Thanks for clearing some things up!


Would your post (or something similar) be worth putting in some type of Forum “FAQ” or maybe some “Read Prior To Posting” type of area (or something like that)? Just a thought…

Thank you, sir, for sharing this with us. I, too, have had a couple of responses deleted, and would have liked to have known why (since I do value appropriateness so). I was trying to get into a position to offer a guy a job. Now I know why it didn’t make it.