In Reply to: re: re: re: re: re: oh dear posted by ABU!!!! on March 24, 2008 at 10:47:57:

We'll be sorry to see you go but the posting rules here have been pretty consistent over the years.

Unfortunately it is still not possible to allow posters to call named persons barefaced liars, crooks, corrupt, or other similar allegations - until an actual final court verdict is in and complete. We have either deleted or edited quite a number of posts similar to yours as a result of this policy. While large newspapers with resources may chose to be more forthcoming as a small non profit voluntary website - with very limited resources - we have no wish to jeopardise the overall continuation of the site by allowing potentially libellous posts to appear.

The rules haven't changed especially since pre-moderation of posts was introduced following a legal threat to shut the site down following an alleged libel. Around that time most Irish newspapers also shut down their various discussion boards - presumably they could not afford to resources to introduce moderation to protect themselves against libel.

Castlebar.ie is extremely lucky to have a team of volunteer moderators - and boards.ie is perhaps the only other similar open discussion group remaining in the country at this stage? Obviously Castlebar.ie is focussed on the town of Castlebar primarily so presumably it's a much smaller operation than boards which cover a wider range of issues - but nonetheless we still had 3.5 million hits in January 2008 with over 400,000 visits to the site so it's still a substantial website with a lot of visitors.