Guess I should have seen it coming. After having a rather innocuous post flagged and hidden twice - even after revising it to remove anything I could think of that might be perceived as ‘too much’ - It seems the ‘community’ (possibly 1-2 individuals, who knows) has deemed my speech too strong for their delicate ears. So, time to stop hanging out where I have to walk on eggshells.
Adios.
Sad times. All the best on your future travels.
I hope you will reconsider.
Hasta pronto
That’s a shame, I’ve enjoyed the banter. Thank you for your contributions, they’ve added depth to the discussions. I’ve always found the discussions good on MPU, with the odd idiotic post; usually mine.
For sure. The forum needs contrary opinions; I, at least, am not seeking an echo chamber.
Figured you were on the way out when you deleted your avatar recently, haha. The way Discourse rewards bad-faith flagging isn’t one of its good features. Hope you’ll rejoin at some point. Appreciate the notice.
I hope you’ll reconsider by and by. It seems a lot of us appreciate your contributions. (I disagree with a lot of people on this forum, but still find their comments worthwhile…)
Sorry to see you go. Hopefully this will just be a brief hiatus. 
@dixonge I know this isn’t worth much but I wasn’t consciously aware of any of your postings. I went back and found 7-12. There was absolutely nothing “controversial” or out of line in any of them. I flummoxed by whomever was complaining and why. I understand your feelings. Ugh. I just hope you return at some point.
Hopefully there’s some way within the Discourse forum software to change the “oversensitivity” or “overweighting” of other people’s complaints.
+1
That is exactly what I think.
This is just sad.
appreciate the thoughts - perhaps if the management changes course or adjusts the settings then I might reconsider. We’ll see 
but I’m not holding my breath…
I’m sorry to see you go, I’ve always found you to be reasonable. Take care and I hope you make your way back here.
Wait, what? Whose delicate eyes were so offended?
What BS.
Stay well.
We have a pretty clear set of community rules that some of your posts ran into (esp. rules 1 and 4), but no one has asked you to leave. I’m sorry if you felt our community was too restrictive, but the Internet is a big place and we try to keep this little place nice and tidy. You are more than welcome to stay and participate without injecting unneeded things into the discussion.
(As a side note, I have clarified Rule 7, which a few of your posts bumped into.)
with due respect because you have a lot of interesting and helpful posts; is creating a post to widely highlight your departure behaving any less “delicate” than the person who flagged your post? You could leave without announcing your departue. Or you could ignore flagging and continue to engage as, you have seen by creating this post, there are plenty of people who valued your contributions.
I disagree. It’s healthy to highlight why someone is leaving a community they’ve been part of for a long while. I wouldn’t want my kids to just disappear because we disagreed without talking about it.
That’s because you want and expect your relationship with your kids to endure. It’s important that you work on it from both sides to make sure it does that.
Internet discussions aren’t like that (or probably shouldn’t be if they are healthy). They are valuable for what we learn and for what we can share, but they are not what defines us in the same way as family or friendship relationships.
Some work goes in to making discussions valuable from all the participants, and that can include discussing how to make it work better, but when you decide it’s no longer for you, there’s really no point in continuing the discussion or expressing why you aren’t participating any more. Slamming the door on your way out doesn’t really help anyone, I think.
You mean we’re not family?! 
Although I understand your point, I wouldn’t agree. There’s always room for discussion. I also wouldn’t agree that this is a slamming the door reaction.
I think internet discussions for many are their only outlet and lifeline. This forum provides me with discussions I cannot have with others as they’re not interested in these topics. The world has changed and online forums such as this one provides interaction that I think is valuable and needed.
Leaving a forum you’ve been part of a long time can be as wrenching as leaving a local friendship group. I’ve done this myself before and was surprised how it impacted me negatively.
That’s an interesting point. I think you’re right that some discussion could be useful in certain cases but I didn’t really see an attempt here. I feel like this board has fewer flagged posts than anywhere I pass through online but only the moderators would have a true sense of that.
Stephen,
I’ve reviewed the community rules and my edited original post and still don’t see where I violated any of them. The original ‘opinion’ that I responded to, with my opinion, could have easily been seen as violating the same rules, but I guess I should have just flagged it instead of responding to it? That seems like a good way to lower engagement…
Look, it’s your forum, and you get to choose and enforce the rules, I get it. I just hate that the ‘nice and tidy’ always allows certain opinions but not others. It’s biased, and as humans bias is hard to avoid, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. 
I would stay, and this thread has encouraged me that I’m not the only one who appreciates a contrarian opinion now and then, but if (for example) espousing negative opinions re: Twitter, shaped by mass media and not based on fact, is allowed, but responding to that opinion in an attempt to correct the record is not allowed, then your definition of “unneeded things” is much too narrow for me.
I am who I am, and as much effort as I put into trying to keep things impersonal so no one feels ‘shamed’ you’d think I would never get flagged. *¯_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for clarifying why my post was hidden. I do appreciate knowing the details, but it does make me wonder – there is an ignore feature (which I have used) that allows people to have an MPU forum experience that is tailored to their preferences. Instead, by using the ‘flag’ feature, users are forcing their own preferences on all the other users, or at least signalling to the mods that this is what they want. Perhaps my issue is with the combination of both the interpretation of the rules and the features of Discourse?
Any way, as they say here in Mexico, ‘es lo que hay’ – it is what it is.