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For example the guidelines state that, "Ad hominem personal attacks are not acceptable. The management of the website is the final arbiter of these issues." What that means in reality is that while personal attacks are not acceptable, it is the editors who have the power to decide what is and what isn't a personal attack.
In a top-down hierarchy, power can easily be abused. As an extreme example, in many places in the old south, a black man who did not avert his eyes, lower his head, and step off the sidewalk when a white man passed by him, or did not address that white man as "Sir" or "Master," could have been seen as insolent and lynched. It wasn't that he had attacked the white man, but that he had failed to be sufficiently obsequious. At the same time, the white man could address the black with insulting, denigratory epithets, and even be physically abusive, but that would not be seen as doing anything wrong at all. Such behaviors would be incompatible with a non-hierarchical, classless, or bottom-up system.
I've had some close encounters with editorial power here on opednews myself. For example some time back Rob Kall posted something that he apparently wasn't sure was in keeping with a progressive website, so he posted another article asking for feedback from users. Many saw nothing wrong with what he'd done, but a few, including myself, disagreed. Rob defended his original post by saying that he thought it would attract more readers to the site. I pointed out the fact that a similar technique to attract readership had been used successfully by a right-wing editor, and Rob didn't like my comment. So he posted a piece entitled, if I remember correctly, "Mark Smith Is Full of Shit." But he did NOT ban me and he did allow me to defend myself. In contrast, had I posted something with a title that said that he or any of the other editors were full of shit, I'm quite sure it would have been interpreted as a personal attack and I'd have been banned.
The next thing that happened was that I got into a public disagreement with another editor. While our debate continued for some time, I made no personal attacks on him. So he interpreted and flagged one of my comments as being a personal attack on somebody else, despite the fact that that person disagreed and stated publicly that he did not consider my comment to be a personal attack on him. But the editor's decision prevailed, I was banned, and it was a long time before I was able to have my membership restored.
Similar things have happened recently. The nastiest and most blatant personal attacks do not have to be acted upon when flagged if the editors do not wish to act, but failures on my part to be sufficiently obsequious to editors are regularly interpreted by them as personal attacks.
That's why I usually choose to publish what I write as diaries that do not have to be submitted to the editors rather than as articles that do. Simply put, I do not trust all editors to be objective in their decisions at all times.
But there is another, and in my view more serious, reason that I do not choose to submit my opinion pieces to editors. Check out this article about 9/11 written by Tony Forest. At the end of his article, but as part of the article itself rather than as a separate comment, an anonymous editor added an "Editors Note" that attempted to contradict the thesis of Tony's article. I certainly wouldn't want to have an article of mine published only to find that an editor had included an addendum saying, in so many words, that I or my thesis was full of shit. If the editors disagree with something, they can simply refuse to publish it as an article and suggest that it be published as a diary, or post their disagreement in a comment below the article. To dispute an article's thesis as an addendum to the article itself, seems to me to be an abuse of editorial power.
This puts me in mind of a trashy paperback book I happened to read when I was a kid. The author had been a prostitute in Batista's Cuba, and recounted stories of having to submit to various unappetising capitalist clients. When Castro came to power, the writer claimed not to have changed careers and was then coerced into submitting to various unappetising Communist clients. What struck me as hilarious was that, after coming to America, the poor thing, in order to get a book published, had apparently been forced to submit to an (in my view unappetising) editor. As they say in French, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose -- the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Truth be told, very few of my opinion pieces are worthy of being published as articles and most are more suitable to being diaries, this one being a good example. If I were an editor, I'd probably reject this piece myself, even though I had written it, and suggest that it be published as a diary rather than an article, if it had to be published at all. And then I'd probably accuse myself of bias and abuse of power, so it's a good thing that I'm not an editor here. ;)
Editor's Note: Mark, post a link to the article or diary which you claim I titled "Mark Smith Is Full of Shit." If you don't post the link, that makes you a defamatory liar and this diary will be pulled. You've also distorted the story about he disputed article, and have not met the standards of blogging which would require that you post links to these accusations. You have six hours from the posting of this note to post the link or the diary will be removed. You do this kind of abuse to many writers. From now on, you will be expected, if you make accusations, or claims, to document them with links. That is the common standard for blogging. And no, we do not require it of all writers on this site. But you have been around long enough and have a history of attacking others often enough, without supporting links, so it IS being applied to you.
