"...I had not thought of the stagnating effect that editorial review before posting has on dampening the vigor and pace of the give and take on a debatable subject."

That's an interesting choice of words. Believe me, no one wants this message board to run without monitoring more than Jamie and I. The purpose of and the need for the monitoring, in my opinion, is that we've got some folks who are "bomb throwers" and will say the most outlandish, insulting and absurd things. This isn't a problem, as long as others on the message board don't allow these inane postings to begin a "thread". Unfortunately, these postings with their "vigor and pace" invariably dominate the discussions here. Visitors attempting to read or take part in a more subdued, historically based or thoughtful discussion are overwhelmed by the number of posts resulting from the "bomb thrower" threads.

David and Dennis, I'm not so worried about your postings; however, I am worried about twenty postings in response to a bomb throwers "Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual!" or "Jeff Davis was a Nazi!" thread before I can react to it. It's a lot easier, as an administrator, to prevent these threads getting started, than it is to go back and delete an entire thread or selectively determine, which postings should be left and which should be removed, and if I'm being fair to Tom and being unfair to John. I/we just don't have time for that.

I'm sure we'll turn off the monitoring of this message board at some point. My hope is that the regulars on this message board will resist the temptation to respond to insulting or absurd or off-topic postings. If these "bomb throwers" realize that the people on this message board, simply "won't play", they will lose interest and move on.

Finally, besides the difficulty in editing these "bomb thrower" threads as they grow with such "vigor and pace", I still need to remind everyone that we have published authors, educators, federal employees and others who are in jobs very sensitive to being connected with any group or organization where there is the slightest hint of racism, prejudice or extreme Left and Right-Wing political viewpoints. For the benefit of these message boards, if I have to choose between a free-wheeling N&V message board and retaining the participation of our authors and professors on the other message boards, the authors win.

Jim