Take note everyone, because this doesn't happen every day.
Part of the problem is the fine line between someone taking a legitimate extreme side of a hot topic and blatant trolling. I can see someone legitimately thinking that the natural course of EMS evolution in the US being that everything is fire based. Is it de facto trolling if you express that view? Not necessarily. I know my views on education and appropriate scope of practice could be considered by many to be trollish, but unless my purpose is to get a rise out of people, it isn't trolling regardless of the end result.
I actually agree with JPINFV on this. Taking a quote from the first paragraph of our Community Rules,
We don't intend to censor messages based on the opinions expressed within posts, but we will enforce the policies outlined both here, on the Guidelines page and on the Forum.
As far as the Community Leaders are concerned, everyone is entitled to their opinion and they are entitled to express that opinion here as long as it remains within the guidelines we have set forth in our rules and elsewhere.
I agree with JP in that people have opinions ranging along the spectrum, and we can't assume everyone at the outer ends are trolls. I think that unless someone is causing huge problems, forum management just doesn't care. I don't think it's some conspiracy to increase ad revenue.
We actually do care, but in a different way. We have to balance these types of posts against several factors. If we crack down to hard, people accuse us of censorship and violating their First Amendment rights of free speech. This leads to decreased membership and activity because members feel like they are not allowed to express themselves.
If we leave it alone, people will stop visiting here because the atmosphere is not conductive to honest, open, intelligent, and civil discussions...which would cause this place to cease to exist.
Another factor we consider, for example, is the educational value of the thread. Can people learn from it? Maybe not the "trollish post" itself, but the responses to that post are often times some of the most educational posts on this forum. I know for a fact that I've left several obviously trollish posts alone simply for this fact.
Just to clear up one other issue...this forum brings in absolutely zero revenue, so it is not about money. EMTLife.com is funded solely by it's founder, and if you look around you will find nothing on this site that generates any revenue. For a variety of reasons, it's been like that from day one; and it's one of the reasons we have a very low tolerance for spam, and other forms of advertising (such as placing it in signatures).
