@Encrypted you might find some useful info here: www.gokunming.com/[...]

The comments on every Giveaway-style article are closed because in the past, users have put the trivia answers in the comments, thus nullifying the contest.

2...1...0.

Point made. This thread is locked for obvious reasons.

Point taken. No need for discussion of something this sensitive. Thread locked.

A few thoughts as someone tasked with monitoring the GK forums:

We've let certain threads venture far off topic over the past few months in an effort to give other forum topics more breathing room. Hasn't worked.

We'll return to a slightly more hands on approach.

For a more personal take, and speaking as someone who has been responsible for the the content here on the website for seven years, it's impossible to please everyone and perhaps I've been guilty of trying too hard. In answer to a few recent posts:

Some people like the up/down vote system, others don't. Some come to the forums to read a very small minority of users duke it out daily. Some hate it.

Determining what is offensive vs what is banter varies from person to person and day by day.

Conversations like this on GK inevitably (every summer in July and August to be precise) lead to discussions of freedom of speech and forum management. To the former I'd respond: that freedom is recognized, guaranteed and protected by governments with citizen input. Not by websites, and not by companies. Our guidelines make no bones about this. Please read them.

As to moderation, yes we delete spam and posts the Chinese government may frown upon. You can view this cynically, but the actuality is we remove spam because it's useless and wastes space, and we delete sensitive posts in order to stay online.

Staying online as a free service to the community is our most bedrock function.

All that being said, forums are by nature volatile, and we've been too blasé about moderation recently. My personal apologies. We will look to step it up.

Rant over. As always, thanks to everyone for using the site and caring enough about how GK is run to comment, criticize and offer advice. We appreciate it more than you may realize.

- Patrick