Hey Rhian, it seems that's the whole point.
This is about censorship, pure and simple. Just like the censor who spends all day watching porn before denouncing it, no one forced GP or Mikie to read the offending article, and no one forced them to read the comments. As I pointed out earlier, I didn't read the article (in the first instance) because I found it unappealing, and I'm not even gay.
On can only assume this couple is afraid of open debate; rather like the President of Iran, who supports freedom of debate in Egypt, -but not Iran.

Kipp

The website does have a process for removing comments that breach its policies, but it relies on readers to report offensive comments. It seems to me MikeyBear wants more than that, though. He wants to prevent offensive opinion appearing in the first place. That is not free speech.

One of the core aims of this website is to promote free discussion among people with diverse and conflicting opinions. It’s inevitable that some people are going to disagree vehemently with some of the articles, and to be offended by some of the contributions and comments. I disagree with Muehlenberg's article and with the aggressively homophobic comments it prompted from some forum contributors. (I didn’t read the article when it was published or participate in that forum, but I have consistently argued for gay rights in other forum discussions on OLO).

The solution to homophobia is not to silence the bigots but to engage with them and show why their arguments and “facts” are wrong. There is a fundamental contradiction in proposing zero tolerance of intolerance. A lack of “social skills” is a price worth paying for free and open debate.

Poirot,

Thank you for posting, in your post of Wednesday, 16 February 2011, at 3:30:38 PM, the link http://gregory.storer.com.au/?p=295 .

Indirectly, by surfing the highlighted text link words 'suggestion', and then 'article', in the seventh paragraph of Greg's post 'To be ignored' in the context of that paragraph itself, I was able to answer the question I had posed at the conclusion of my post of Tuesday, 15 February 2011, at 6:57:32 AM:

"What content on what Greg Storer describes as
his 'outdated election blog' is it that we can
no longer see, and yet to which Greg himself
refers in his blog entry dated 14 February 2011?"

Greg's text link word 'suggestion' is in fact to my post to this thread of Tuesday, 15 February 2011 at 6:57:32 AM. In that post I made no suggestion of anything having been removed from the blog to prevent any visitor fom landing on the article about Gillard and marriage equality. I was simply trying to clarify what would have been on display at the time when GrahamY linked to the blog site when compiling his article the way he did in paragraph 25 delivering a viewer to this URL: http://gregory.storer.com.au/ .

It seems, depending upon when the change to the 'landing page' set for Greg's blog was made, that GrahamY would have linked to either the 'about me' page content, or the combined content of the page http://gregory.storer.com.au/?p=270 and part of the content of the page http://gregory.storer.com.au/?p=238 (the Gillard and marriage equality blog entry). I guess only Graham knows which of these he saw at the time of compilation of his article.

What would there have been worthy of hiding with respect to the 'Gillard and marriage equality' post anyway, that anyone should have been taken as suggesting blog content had been removed to prevent visitors landing there? And, in any case, how would removing OTHER content aid in hiding what clearly remains on the blog?

I don't understand the sensitivity surrounding this.

Rhian, it's not what I want. It's what Gregory wants. Please check back on what I wrote. However I think his idea has merits, but that's a discussion for another topic.

Forrest Gumpp, is a conspiracy theory the best you can come up with? You are really convinced Gregory has something to hide. Don't you have better things to do with your time?

Michael.

Mikey Bear asks:

"Forrest Gumpp, is a conspiracy theory the best you
can come up with? You are really convinced Gregory
has something to hide. Don't you have better things
to do with your time?"

I see few better uses of my time than that of assisting OLO to survive as a significant and effectively un-edited voice for genuine public opinion in what is a predominantly MSM environment. Money, revenue for OLO, is clearly the most urgent requirement in the context of enabling that survival, and to that end I have made some suggestions as to how significant financing independent of advertising revenue may be obtained.

Beyond that, since 'time is money', I remain happy to devote time to asking what may prove to be some of the right questions as to revealing what may be the true nature of this evident attempt at denial of an erstwhile source of revenue to OLO. Clarifying the sequence of events in what may appear to be several concurrent lines of attack upon both OLO revenue and site moderation, I see as being potentially useful. Sorry if that process is boring, but attempting to denigrate it by labeling it as 'conspiracy theory' cuts the mustard less by the day, these days.

Greg's post on his blog told me what I wanted to know about how his site operated. Just a pity that that explanation wasn't given here where the question was asked.

GrahamY posted, on Tuesday, 15 February 2011, at 12:38:33 PM:

"I don't think anyone should get too carried away
with the idea that Greg and Mike caused the damage
to OLO. They were never mentioned to us in any
correspondence with the advertising agency. The credit
apparently goes to an employee of IBM and an employee
of another advertising agency (not ours)."

It just may be that GrahamY is right, and that a private agenda has been pursued from within an advertising agency perhaps affiliated with an organisation that has imposed a private advertising code of conduct upon its affiliates and their advertising clients.

Mikey Bear, this is Goldilocks -

I'm gonna repeat this comment you posted on my blog, because I think it says everything about your intentions right from the start.

I asked Mikey Bear had they thought about the anti discrimination path, instead of a financial attack on OLO as their first course of action. He wrote:

*Why must they go to via an anti-discrimination path? That’s ludicrous. A letter to the advertisers proved far simpler, effective and expedient.*

and there you have it.

There is no human right not to be offended. Everybody gets offended about something sometime. The list of what's offending me in the world at the moment is long. Being offended is what we tolerate and deal with, for the privilege of living in a democracy.

What Graham did in this case was publish a rebuttal of the Muehlenberg article just a few days later, and allowed the offensive comments to be ridiculed and challenged in the forum.

Democracy at work, Mikey.

You two, on the other hand, behave like agents of repression. In your rage at not getting what you wanted the instant you wanted it, you decided to try your hands at a bit of trashing and see if that would get you noticed.

Censorship did gays and lesbians a lot of damage - now you want revenge do you? Now you want to do the same thing to others that was done to you?

Very grown up, baby bear. Very mature. Very helpful to the world.

There's a great deal more I'd like to say, but I'd be deleted.

Pop over to my blog again sometime. I'm the moderator there.