Two-thirds of the world is covered by water, and the rest is censored by The Economist

What do you do when your post gets deleted, like mine was in The Economist? You try to understand what happened and you send an email to clarify what “removed because it breaks our comments policy” actually means, and get no response.

It may well be that the Comments Moderator is a program responding to certain criteria and not a human being but I have no way of telling whether it would pass the Turing Test or not.  

So is The Economist’s Comments Moderator just an imperfect program with no human intervention whatsoever or should The Economist’s famous ad be changed to   Two- thirds of the world is covered by water, and the rest  is censored by The Economist?

The attached comment, posted under the pen name Mladen_Andrijasevic, has been deleted from The Economist online.  The comment was removed because it breaks our comments policy:

http://www.economist.com/legal/terms-of-use#usercontent

We remind you that repeated violation of our comments policy may result in your being blocked from posting comments on The Economist online.


Yours sincerely,

Comments Moderator The Economist online


Your comment:

I am often asked why stupidity and not design? Because how else can one
explain the Obama administration rushing into a deal with Iran, the outcome
of which would be a nuclear war? There is no other explanation but stupidity.
Ignorance falls in that category too because only the stupid would fail to
educate themselves on the motives that drive their enemies.

The quintessence of the US-Israel split on Iran
[1] http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/the-quintessence-of-us-israel-split-on.html

You may not:

·         Post, link to or otherwise publish any Messages containing material that is obscene, racist, homophobic or sexist or that contains any form of hate speech;

·         Post, link to or otherwise publish any Messages that infringe copyright;

·         Post, link to or otherwise publish any Messages that are illegal, libellous, defamatory or may prejudice ongoing legal proceedings or breach a court injunction or other order;

·         Post, link to or otherwise publish any Messages that are abusive, threatening or make any form of personal attack on another user or an employee of The Economist;

·         Post Messages in any language other than English;

·         Post the same Message, or a very similar Message, repeatedly;

·         Post or otherwise publish any Messages unrelated to the Forum or the Forum's topic;

·         Post, link to or otherwise publish any Messages containing any form of advertising or promotion for goods and services or any chain Messages or "spam";

·         Post, link to or otherwise publish any Messages with recommendations to buy or refrain from buying a particular security or which contain confidential information of another party or which otherwise have the purpose of affecting the price or value of any security;

·         Disguise the origin of any Messages;

·         Impersonate any person or entity (including The Economist employees or Forum guests or hosts) or misrepresent any affiliation with any person or entity;

·         Post or transmit any Messages that contain software viruses, files or code designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of the Site or any computer software or equipment, or any other harmful component;

·         Collect or store other users' personal data; and/or

·         Restrict or inhibit any other user from using the Forums.