Posted by Adam Quinan on August 11, 2013 at 12:10:34 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: Re Ransome's working-class characters and the use of certain words posted by Mike Dennis on August 11, 2013 at 00:28:53:
I did remove earlier posts with the word, partly because Peter Hyland objected to his name being associated with the word in question and also because the two comments in the thread were subsequently reposted under a new title with the word in question no longer quoted.
However, the mere fact that a similar discussion has already taken place is not, in my opinion a justification for removing a current discussion. After all we can't refer people to an archive of previous posts (yet, though I hope that will eventually be possible) and the people currently reading TarBoard may well be a bit different from earlier times.
I would urge people to be careful in what they post and any offensive posts will be removed but, as Ransome did use the word in a manner that was typical of his time and not intended to be offensive, we should be able to discuss that if necessary.