I never set out to seek a fight. But I won't back down when confronted with an injustice. Mr Harry Mathews operates a web forum called "Smokstak" purportedly for 'old engine enthusiasts'. However, he seems to only encourage a certain KIND of old engine enthusiast to belong. Several months ago, my posting priveleges were curtailed in the off topic forum by Mr Matthews for point out certain factual inaccuracies, and fallacies posted by agroup of ultra conservative posters. This resulted in me getting jumped on by a group of these folks any time I posted much of anything on that subforum. Not backing down from my position that 'a lie was a lie, no matter who tells it', made ME the troublemaker. I was banned, the others it seems, were not.

Fast forward to January. I posted a link to a gallery of nice photos.see: http://kimandmik.deviantart.com/gallery/  About half steam related in his steam forum. The post was removed by Mr Matthews. Inquiring why, I was met with a very unproffessional response to the effect that any content hosted at the place the gallery was was unwelcome, acussing me of changing the content of the gallery (" I don't give a crap who runs that site or who their friends are, they will not be a part of my site. Incidentally, the artwork they presented shifted to other material from the stuff I saw when I first looked and it apparently shifts at random. Interesting too that your own photos in your link were all changed since I first looked."), acusing me of being a troublemaker, and threatening to 'nuke' my account.

I wrote him a polite reply saying I had not tried to cause trouble, merely inquired what rule had been violated. In response, he re-instated the thread, then promptly deleted my account.

While, it may be his property to do with as he sees fit. It is also promoted as a public forum for old engine enthusiasts, and as such, he needs to be more professional and neutral in his manner and decisions, leave the moderating to those who can, or post clearly in his terms and rules that only conservative viewpoints are encourage, and those daring to post opinions that he disagrees with will come under more intense scrutiny and be held to higher standards than those whom he likes. Anything less is being disingenous.