Who is behind the NJ.com deletions?

As most who read this website know, there have bee a rash of comment deletions & user deactivations on the Bayonne forum at NJ.com. Initially, because I was not part of this sweep, I had thought that what was being deleted was of some sort of illegal nature, or perhaps inappropriate content. To be sure, this did occur from time to time. However, on 1/16 I was responding to someone who had been deleted/deactivated and had just come back from "forum jail" as it is called on NJ.com. My punishment for replying to this person and acknowledging that he was deleted was swift! I was deleted and jailed. I took the time to write an email to the forum management. I was sent back a one sentence email stating simply:

from: forums@nj.com
date: 1/17/2008

Please review our Community Rules
http://www.nj.com/forums/index.ssf?rules.html

Note that posts regarding deletions and other elements of forum policy are not permitted.
Thank you,
Interactivity Management

Okay, I thought, they have a rule against speaking about being deleted. Fair enough. I couldn't imagine that people are being unfairly deleted, I mean, there were rules and they needed to be followed. I accepted the response on face value. Until....

Jan 29th, I responded to a discussion about firefighting and the shifts people work in Bayonne. BFD is on a24 hour shift, some were proposing an 8 hour shift, others the 24. I attempted to find a middle ground, and posted an article about the 10/14 shift system, which seems to be backed by many in firefighting circles. I was deleted and deactivated again.

So I wrote another email (again under the naive assumption that others were breakign rules, and I was simply just being swept up in it all):

To: forums@nj.com
date: 1/29/2008


Questions/Comments: My account "KaptanKa0s" that I used on the Bayonne NJ.com forum has been deactivated (again!) yet I am one of the few people who posts respectfully on this forum. I actually sign my posts with my real name, I actually LIST my email in my profile. I cannot fathom why my account is being deactivated? I violated no rules. I understand that many on that forum do violate rules, but I am not one of them. I would like to have my account reactivated rather than creatign a new name, which many on the forum seem to do, no matter how many times they are deleted!

I received this response:

From: forums@nj.com
date: 1/29/2008

Your account is active and not permanetly frozen. It is possible that you have been temporarily blocked for a violation of the Community Rules. The
rules are linked on every Forum page. Please review the rules.

Thanks.
Interactivity

At this point I am left scratching my head. So I decide to respond:

To: forums@nj.com
date: 1/29/2008

With all due respect I have reviewed the rules. And I know what I write, it was merely a discussion of work hours for the fire department. I used no foul language, did not discuss any issues that violate the rules. I am 110% sure of this. Some of that forum are strtign to belive that posts are being removed due to merely speaking about political issues. I hope that this is not the case. I would like my account unblocked please.

I got no response to this... but magically my account was unjailed. I logged back on to the forum and posted again. I was careful NOT to mention having been deleted in my post. I merely posted that it was time that we all had a place to express ourselves freely, and that I was considering creating a new board to do so with. WHAM! Deleted and deactivated. A clear violation of their own rules. I emailed the following:

To: reply@nj.com
date: 1/29/2008

Wow... again I have had a thread of mine deleted, when all I did was talk about creating a new board. I specifically did not mention having been deleted and having my account blocked from yesterday. I said that due to the policies here, perhaps we may want to look into a board where we can post and not violate policies.

While I was orginally supportive of the crackdown you guys were taking on some really vulgar and uneccessary posts that were going on in the bayonne forum, now I can only conclude that the deletions and blocking you are enacting are possibly politically motivated or just plain vindictive.

Please inform me of who is in charge of overseeing the forums, I would like to write a letter directly to this person and lodge a complaint.

Aside from that, as I said in my post that was deleted, I will begin to create a new forum so that we can speak of political issues in Bayonne and be unmolested by draconian deletions that violate your own policies.

At that point I did create a new name, and I decided to begin telling people about this website. I have spent my own time & my own money on this website because I believe it is extremely important that people have an opportunity to express themselves politically free of molestation from authority.

I can say for certain that I do not know who is behind the MASS deletions on the NJ.com Bayonne forum. However i have my suspicions. They are two fold. First, I suspect there is a power happy overzealous systems administrator at NJ.com who is deletion happy. Secondly, I think he has focused on the Bayonne forum because there have been multiple complaints from certain political factions within the city of Bayonne. I know I have no proof of this. However, I have seen how Joe Olezewski (I may have spelling wrong) has acted on the forum. He works for Tony Chiappone, a politician with whom I have no gripe with. However it appears as if Joe O (who has in my opinion taken many intractable and incorrect views) was caught using multiple screen names on the NJ.com Bayonne forum. I cannot prove this, as I am not the systems admin on nj.com. However, it seems entirely likely that in retaliation of the negative responses he was getting from some of his opinions, he reported multiple posts as inappropriate to NJ.com. I believe the repeated flagging of posts as "inappropriate" has caused an overzealous Systems Admin to focus on the Bayonne forum.

I would invite ANYONE from NJ.com OR Joe O himself to refute these opinions. After all, a free exchange of ideas is what this website is all about.

Signed,

Your Bayonne Public Advocate