I still think an ability to give thanks for a post, or uprate or downrate comments helps to self police the forums. Pure troll posts, content free insults, etc tend to be downvoted and discourage further behavior. There is really a lot of good stuff posted here-people who take a long time to carefully answer a question-an upvote would be a nice reward. Peer pressure is actually quite effective.
I've personally had no issues with forum moderation-in other words nothing I've written sticking strictly to RV topics has been deleted or modified. I'm not here for politics or other forms of discussion.
