Too much censorship on the forums?

[Hanna]

Nobody's forced to be active on this site if they have an issue with alleged "censorship" or anything else. There are millions of other sites out there.

I don't have an issue with censorship, but I have one with the trolling that is going on at the moment.
People are coming here for help with their Russian studies, mainly, and also to discuss the culture, politics, history etc of Russia and the USSR.

However recently there is a small group of people who dedicate an enormous amount of time black-painting Russia to the extent that they are likely to put novices off. They spit out the mainstream English speaking official version on everything related to Russia and other ex Soviet countries to the extent that I am beginning to wonder if they are actually paid for it. While at the same time being extremely secretive about themselves and where they get their information or perspective from. Genuine and well-intentioned participants are open with who they are, and what their reasons for participating are.

All this seems to bring out my worse and most radical, ranting sides. Not really good or healthy.

I realise that there are lots of serious problems and serious issues in Russia's present and past, but if you were to believe some people here; it's such a totally useless and horrible country that anyone bothering to learning the language would be seriously wasting their time! It's sad, when that's the perspective that casual visitors would get.
Who wants to know the language of a vile country with a terrible past, horrible present, led by an evil and corrupt dictator and full of poor and oppressed losers? (this is not my take on Russia, but check the posting history of the most prolific posters, and you'll begin to see a blackpainting campaign on a pretty amazing scale).

Since I am not actively studying Russian at the moment, and since I find myself just getting annoyed and being increasingly unfriendly in my posts, wasting time responding to provocative posts etc, I'm going to take my own advise and back off, instead of complaining.
The site is not uplifting and inspiring for me the way it used to be, so I have decided to take a break.

There are some people I really enjoy interacting with here and very much like - Russians, Americans, Ukrainians and many others.
I would have wanted to interact more with them, or at least visit the site regularly, but I find that I am mostly just trolled and not really learning anything I don't already know, or could find out elsewhere.

[it-ogo]

However recently there is a small group of people who dedicate an enormous amount of time black-painting Russia to the extent that they are likely to put novices off.

We have even the opposite camp active enough.

That is the universal problem not only online. For some reason people always tend to be obsessed with some ideology and promote it by all means. And there is no exact way to separate regular behavor from the ideologized one of the same person.

If you ever provide the way to do it you will get a number of Nobels for sure. Peace, Medicine, maybe Economics and Literature.