nunyun,
Until this year, the only posts we deleted were those containing nothing more than commercial advertising not related to polygraphy (i.e. people posting ads for electronics stores, cigarettes, etc). Registration was not required.
This year, we were hit with a deluge of posts made by angry polygraphers consisting solely of insults, profanity, personal attacks, etc. These posts, made by unregistered users employing different names, added absolutely nothing to the discussion. They simply attacked others for failing polygraphs (which the facts show are worthless “tests,”), creating this site, etc.
We decided to deal with this issue by moving such posts to the
Discarded Posts Forum. You can see for yourself the type of posts that have been moved.
Unfortunately, while this slowed our problem, it did not stop it. We were still spending a great deal of time cutting and pasting posts. Last month, we took the regrettable step on enabling “force registration” for the board. This requires malicious posters to take the additional step of creating a new account (which requires a unique e-mail address) each time they want to re-register. It has cut down on a lot of our problems.
I am going to try to dig up a bunch of the old stuff re: the censorship issues we dealt with on 911jobforums.com (formerly lawenforcementjob.com). As you know, they quickly rip down any posts exposing the truth and/or trickery behind polygraphy. The reasoning, they facetiously claimed, was that they wanted to avoid “commercial” posts. As their site was a for-profit site then (and it even moreso now), this did not make sense. Moreoever, AntiPolygraph.org is a non-profit site. We don’t even accept donations. It is a money-losing, out-of-pocket operation run by a few victims of polygraphy. I wrote an e-mail to Bob Amaral (the owner of LEjob.com), explaining this, and asking for clarification on the terms of service (specifically, if the criteria is commercial posting, why were posts still being deleted?). I never received the courtesy of a reply.
The fact is that 911jobforums is a commercial site that law enforcement employers pay to advertise on. It appears that any posts that portray the negative side of an employer (no matter how respectfully written and accurate they are) are being deleted. This is deplorable, especially when the site is funded in substantial part by checks from LE employers (essentially tax money).
Exposing this site is something on my list of priorities when we map out a re-design of AntiPolygraph.org (currently scheduled for late 2005/early 2006). Drew Richardson and I discussed having him respond to threads on polygraphy at 911jobforums.com. Copies of his posts (which I'm sure will be deleted) and links to the 911jobforums threads will be posted on a page at AntiPolygraph.org. This could be very interesting, as Dr. Richardson is uniquely qualified to speak on polygraph matters. It would also be very hard to accuse him of having a commercial interest here.