personally, i prefer casual to rigidly regimented and controlled ... i would not make a good private in the army ... i see nothing really wrong with a little casual off topic conversation, if it is not carried to extremes ... but each of us has different ideas and opinions and attitudes
in any case, i have no moderator powers in this section of the forum at all
i only have moderator powers in the Additional Software section, and those powers are very limited
for example, as a moderator, i can not delete any posts ... i can not even delete my own posts
i think i can edit posts, including the title of the post
i think i can move entire threads, but i don't think i can not move individual posts
i think i can split a thread and move some posts to a new thread ... i'm not sure, i have never tried to do that
most forums have a hidden section ... on this forum, moderators are expected to move threads which are spam to the hidden section (if you leave spam in a section of the forum that is not hidden, the spammers have won, because what they want is for search engine like Googlebot to index their links on your forum, to make it more likely that thier web sites will be found by a Google search)
i suppose that other moderators might have powers that i do not have, but i suspect all moderators have the same limited powers
it might be possible to split a thread, creating a new thread, and moving some posts from the old thread to the new thread, then moving the new thread to the hidden spam section ... the "deleted" posts will be visible to the other moderators, of course
personally, i agree with PaulBx1 ... John Murga owns and pays for this forum, and has permission to administrate this forum in any way he chooses, including deleting any posts he chooses ... i think he also has the right to administer his own forum in any way he chooses ... i think it would be responsible management to administer the forum in a fair manner ... in any case, i have not seen much evidence that John has not been for the most part, a fair and balanced administrator
this is pretty much the extent of my knowledge concerning this issue ... i'm sorry, but i don't know any more about it
continuing the off topic topic, i've been to Glacier Park in Montana ...
http://www.nps.gov/archive/glac/webcams/ghcam.htm
i remember bringing back furniture and appliances from Great Falls in my VW bus for a friend ... i remember the customs in Sweetgrass were closed, so we just drove on through ... he said he would get in touch with them the next day, i assume he did, other wise i would have been involved with smuggling hot furniture over the border ... he was a judge, so i guess it was all right