My problem with the Drum is that only a particular clique of people seem to get published there. Its basically a soapbox for people who already have some level of public fames or who are in some way connected to the left wing crowd at the ABC.

In contrast, OLO hosts a variety of opinions and publishes articles from a broad range of people in the Australian community. If it wasn't for OLO we wouldn't have a truly democratic webspace for opinion pieces.

IMHO the Drum, given that it is funded by Australian taxpayers, would do a lot better if it followed OLO's policy of publishing widely. I don't think that there is any justification for the current restrictive editorial policy.

Well clearly the ABC removed the offending comment when the person involved made the complaint directly, demonstrating the comment to be inaccurate. But I agree with you that the comment was attacking the person rather than the argument. A strategy all too common on all sides of a debate.

Climate sceptics do tend to get tarred with the extreme RW brush but no more than climate change believers (AGW) get tarred with the tags of extreme 'leftist', 'greenie', 'radical'.

All sweeping generalisations.

Generally I believe the ABC to be even handed in its dealings with politicians of all stripes however on AGW, the ABC is less even handed.

OLO certainly provides a greater variety of articles on a wide range of subjects.

R0bert, you say "Put up a proposal of how you think a forum should operate and lets see the pro's and con's be debated in an open forum."

Allow me to repeat myself here for the good people who didn't see what I said previously in the other discussion.

A good start for transparency and accountability would be when the site moderator(s) can adhere to their site posting policy in an equitable and fair manner. When a comment posted is perceived to be reasonably distressing and the when the site policy say that comments that are likely to distress will not be tolerated, then the site moderator has an obligation to deal with the offending comment in a mature and professional manner and not show any personal bias.

That's the extent of it. So far OLO has not shown itself to be the best corporate citizen on these grounds.

Michael.

Haven't spent much time on The Drum website but will do so after the comments posted here. I have had some experiences of bias in the ABC but many other, more neutral ones as well.

One disappointment with OLO, and I'm not sure how to (or even if you can) address it, is the number of threads that contain personal insult. I expect this, sadly, from our politicians and shock jocks, but was greatly disappointed to see how much was on here. "Attack the statement not the person" is a mantra some people need to consider. The impact it has on me is that I simply skip over comments from certain people, as too often they are vitriolic attacks and decidedly short on facts.

That said, I enjoy OLO and see the need for it to exist. Can OLO do the job as well as something like The Drum? I'll get back to you...

Mikey Bear, zip it, why don't you?

Anybody who tried to bring down an online community like you did has no credibility.

Rather than stand on your own two feet you run to corporate daddies and ask them to wield a big stick over nasty people who say stuff you don't like.

That's the world you want to live in, is it? A world where corporations decide what we say and don't say?

BTW what exactly have you achieved I wonder? OLO still going strong, everybody still wants to write for it and read it. Churches still allowed to discriminate against homosexuals. Even the comment is still in the forum.

Not a great advertisement for your tactics

Rational-debate, you've got to be kidding when you ask can OLO do things as well as The Drum.

On OLO everyone is published, then some may be removed as abusive, but they were aired. The Drum allow nothing to appear unless it conforms to the UN/BBC line.

It can be hard to be civil to some government funded lackey when they blandly state that arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, or use such a compromised reference as the IPCC. This rubbish will often appear a day or so after the US navy have announced they, with their sub operations have found a 32% increase in arctic ice volume, & a something over 60% increase in third year ice.

Such things happen so often that I start to believe they are responding to a spotting system. They have to say something to anesthetize the brethren, before they can start to believe the truth.

I'll give you a little wager. $50 to the ABC, or OLO that you could not get that US navy ice report up on The Drum, & left there for discussion for 3 days.

You.d have to let me know if you did, I tried it for a few days, but couldn't handle all the peeing in each other's pockets.