[theme-reviewers] Censorship must not be tolerated

[Darren Slatten]

In my opinion, the discussion about output buffering that ended earlier
today was a complete failure on many levels. I personally spent many hours
responding to that discussion thread, and ultimately, I believe it was
terminated prematurely simply because a couple of individuals were extremely
frustrated with it.

I too was extremely frustrated with the apparent lack of progression, and
even more frustrated with the official outcome, but in my opinion, "pulling
rank" to stamp out a heated and lively debate...is *absolutely unacceptable*.
This type of censorship should not be tolerated in any open-source project
or community, and certainly not in a WordPress mailing list, whose *defining
purpose* is to facilitate exactly these kinds of discussions.

I'd like to contribute some ideas on how we can avoid similar failures in
the future, but first I think it's important to establish whether or not
everyone agrees that this is a problem. So my question is:



Should it be okay for some individuals to prevent everyone else from
engaging in certain discussions* on this mailing list?

*assuming the discussion is relevant, appropriate, not abusive, not illegal,
etc.



Some people mentioned in the output buffering discussion that my
stance/arguments are difficult to recognize, so I'll emphasize my point
here:

*No one should be permitted to terminate or prevent a relevant discussion on
this mailing list, unless there is sufficient evidence to show that doing so
is necessary to protect the rights, freedoms, and/or safety of the WordPress
community at large, or doing so is required by law.*



Does anyone disagree with that statement?



-- 
Darren Slatten
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