Frankly for me the real test of moderation is how you deal with posters who hold minority views or who do not follow the herd. There is thin line between culling free thinking and what might be interpreted as trolling. This calls for very subtle, deft and nuanced application of moderation powers. It's easy to deal with members who are abusive. But use that power crudely you endanger killing differant views. You want a forum to be fresh, a crucible of ideas, where crazy as they may be, collide and in that fermant new ideas take root.
At PDF I went from being hero to zero precisely because my views were not iun sync with a section [very loud] of PDF. They never addressed the points I raisied but instead tried to muff me with calls of "racist". They played the man and not the ball. But in doing so they used their moderation powers to extend a certain narrative that I disagreed with. That is what caused my problems with admin there. I hope that does not happen here. I would love to contribute here. At my age [58] I have seen much, seen lot of the world and done plenty. I am not military person. My professional background is in law. But i have deep interest in politics and the world around us. Since militaries play a large role in the making of the world order they do interest me in a more strategic sense rather then the trinkets and toys.
At any you can expect I have plenty to talk and also am quite hardened in my opinions. You might even call me a dinosaur.
As long as those minority views aren't in favour of terrorism then it's all good.
I agree that abuse of power is the worst thing that can happen to this forum. It's good that the moderators agreed on being open minded early on in the forum's development. The decision to make this an international forum shaped our moderation philosophy.
I look forward to hearing your ideas and opinions, even if I don't agree with them.
Some of the best conversations I've ever had was with someone with completely different political views than mine. It wasn't the difference itself that made it interesting, but when both our views were the same on a particular topic. We both wanted the same thing for our country, but our idea of how that's supposed to be achieved was different. It made for some very interesting conversations. In fact we both failed that class because we wouldn't stop talking. Debating is always better then a boring convo with people who share the exact same opinions.