Politics forum

DeVore

cdebru wrote:

I am not saying shut him up

i am saying he used his journal as way to insult other board users as a way to get around the rules
i am not asking for his journal to be censored or closed the link from a public post meant he did say it in public

to compare insults directed at other board users to a link to yahoo or geo cities is ridiculous


to answer your question how nasty does it have to be the obvious answer is if it would not be acceptable in a post then it should not be linked to

But you ARENT suggesting a clear line of action. Above is one long, circuitous complaint as far as I can see. There isnt a clear suggestions of what you WANT done just a lot of what you ARENT asking for.

What I want to hear from you is what SHOULD have been done and therefore what SHOULD BE DONE IN FUTURE.

If you are going to ban links , then specify links to what. Any other website? Some websites? No websites?

If the answer is SOME WEBSITES then which ones. Boards Journals only? What about Blogger.com? What about BlogSpot? Would it make a difference if Lemming had his journal at one of these? So we ban them too just in case someone writes something YOU dont like there?

Where does this storm in a teacup end?
You dont go into ANY such detail in your complaint therefore in my mind you're just having a whinge, where "whinge" = "complaint without workable alternative suggestion".

DeV.

Mercury_Tilt

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A Dub in Glasgo

I thought long and hard about starting this on Friday night. I have been away for the weekend and this is my first chance to look in.

A couple of things

1. I have no problem fighting fire with fire so to speak and I can handle myself in politics. I have no intention of fighting 'fire with fire' in this manner though hence this thread. I wanted some feedback and guidance about what is acceptable behaviour on politics.

2. I have not got a problem with any of the mods past or present. This thread was not started as a witchhunt about any of the mods actions.

3. I did not report the offending post at the time

4. If anyone takes offence at this thread, I apologise for that but getting feedback is extremely important to stop trolls and baiting using this form of posting.

gandalf

A Dub in Glasgo no one has taken offense at this thread as I said earlier I appreciate the fact you started it as all the pm's doing the rounds and the insinuations coming from those and comments on certain threads seemed to say that in some peoples minds a conspiracy that the X-Files would have been proud of was in the offing. If anything it has helped to clear the air. Thank you again for posting it.

As regards the issue that has twisted knickers quicker than a 1950's rocker could every hope to, the loophole has been closed.

This was added to the Politics Guidelines yesterday.

"Linking to Journals, Blogs or any other forum to insult people will be taken as if the insult was posted on this forum."

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46807

Gordon

gandalf wrote:

A Dub in Glasgo no one has taken offense at this thread as I said earlier I appreciate the fact you started it as all the pm's doing the rounds and the insinuations coming from those and comments on certain threads seemed to say that in some peoples minds a conspiracy that the X-Files would have been proud of was in the offing. If anything it has helped to clear the air. Thank you again for posting it.

As regards the issue that has twisted knickers quicker than a 1950's rocker could every hope to, the loophole has been closed.

This was added to the Politics Guidelines yesterday.

"Linking to Journals, Blogs or any other forum to insult people will be taken as if the insult was posted on this forum."

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46807

I get the feeling that there are some posters on politics that are anal about rule definitions.

Therefore my suggestion is this instead: "Linking to Journals, Blogs or any other forum will be taken as if the link was a post posted on this forum."

DeVore

The more we define things, the more loopholes will be found. I dont think Lemming sees it that he was insulting anyone so he would claim he didnt break that rule and we're left in a situation of policing ALL links (ie the mods will now have to follow each link and check that it is acceptible).

What about links to his journal in his sig? Will we allow that?

The way to spot bad rules is when you have to make up MORE rules because of them.

We have a rule that says no quoting links to opinion pieces without first giving your opinion about it right? ie: We already ban people for posting a link to a newspaper article without giving their opinion? Perhaps we should invoke that...

DeV.

Mercury_Tilt

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bonkey

Mercury_Tilt wrote:

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cdebru wrote:

i do not accept that the orignal decision to allow lemming to do this was not motivated by political bias

'nuff said.

jc

Mercury_Tilt

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Mercury_Tilt

Mercury_Tilt wrote:

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Benefit of the doubt bias? maybe that exists across boards.

But don't worry everybody,If I see a whiff of abuse no matter from where, even if its linked from jupiter with electric fence cable (I don't know how many one would need, but it would be a lot,a 1000 metre roll in the local farm shop here is about 30 euro) I'll will deal with it, if I get to it first- full stop.
Bud nipping is the only way from here on in.

Villain

Earthman wrote:

Benefit of the doubt bias? maybe that exists across boards.

But don't worry everybody,If I see a whiff of abuse no matter from where, even if its linked from jupiter with electric fence cable (I don't know how many one would need, but it would be a lot,a 1000 metre roll in the local farm shop here is about 30 euro) I'll will deal with it, if I get to it first- full stop.
Bud nipping is the only way from here on in.

What about Mars or Pluto Earthman?

gandalf

You forgot about Uranus as well there Irish1.

Villain

gandalf wrote:

You forgot about Uranus as well there Irish1.

Nah you'd never get a link from my anas.

irish1

irish1 wrote:

What about Mars or Pluto Earthman?

I'm glad you mentioned them and not Uranus

All planets will be covered including those not discovered yet

Heh-Gandalf - you got there before me....

Mercury_Tilt

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bonkey

Mercury_Tilt wrote:

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I genuinely don't see how.

Indeed you can argue with discretion.. obviously...

This is exactly what I was pointing out. I'm at a loss as to how I'm being disengenuous when you are now restating exactly what I was pointing out.

But you can never win against it.

Sure you can. Just the same way you can win against any other moderator's decision - by taking it to an admin and getting them to agree that the mod was sufficiently out of line that something should be done about it.

Quite frankly ambiguity works well for skilled mods.

I never suggested otherwise. I simply questioned the assertion that a poster cannot argue against the implementation of ambiguous rules. The argument most typically faced during my time as moderator was not that the rules were biased, but that they were implemented in a biased manner.

Funnily enough...the rules are biased. They allow the expression of many opinions which would usually be considered anathema / unacceptable in popular society. In this sense, they are intented tp give the holder's of those opinions advantages that they wouldn't have in many other fora.

Now, maybe I was too, ummmm, sensitive about such issues. In my term as mod, I wanted to make Politics a forum where people were encouraged to put their views across. Cries of bias, from either side, whether made in public or in private did not contribute in any way except negatively to my perception as to how successful that was.

It didn't matter whether or not I believed that when the person complaoining said "bias" what they really meant was "you won't make the rules shut this person up for me because I don't like what they're saying". What mattered is the damage that such allegations made to the reputation of the forum.

All I was trying to do was highlight that more ambiguous rules are no panacea. They don't stop the complaints. They don't even stop the justified complaints. You can argue about their implementation as easily as you can any other rules. And ultimately, its the implementation which is all that matters....which is what I thought was what I was pointing out.

jc

Mercury_Tilt

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bonkey

Mercury_Tilt wrote:

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Thank you I did try.

And you very rarely let the madness get to you or p1ss you off. Just the odd time. The very odd time

Oh, it got to me quite a lot. I just hope that it had undue influence as rarely as you think. Fsck knows that it wasn't as rarely as I'd have liked.

jc

sceptre

I've been offline since Friday. So here we go.

irish1 wrote:

So Gandalf was aware of this post and done nothing until I suggested that others might do the same, thats very good Gandalf :rolleyes:

No, gandalf was aware of the post and did nothing (a decision which of course you can disagree with) for the reasons outlined by him above, sceptre was unaware of this post and did something (posted) when you suggested that others might do something in particular (which happened to be the same) and then sceptre was aware of the post and wasn't all that impressed & thought it deserved an edit and isn't all that impressed with the skulking around in PMs by more than one person, mentioned to the other mods on Friday (I've been away since) that it was good that ADIG had the balls to post this issue (which obviously means enough to him that he posted it here) out in the open for discussion and from my POV that takes us up till now. And that, Mister Tibbs and Garfield, is what really happened.

Amazingly (after the standard of posting at times) I don't actually have an anti-republican bias. I have my own opinion on these things of course but anti-republican bias, no. I reserve the right to have an anti-stupidity bias and that extends across all spectrums of the political landscape.

Speaking specifically just for a moment, I'm aware that yourself and Lemming (or Lemming and yourself, don't know or care who might have started it) may have some personal or political animosity but frankly that's none of my business unless it affects the working of the forum. There are other pairs or people with mutual issues and they've all been told to take it off the forum.

My reading of the issue from my point of view is that someone told someone they could get around the rules by doing something that I indicated may well be a non-runner. Then there's some discussion on that in the thread and there's this thread. As I mentioned in a PM to irish1, I legislate for what I notice. Where I'm unaware of something, by my not reading it or noticing it and where it's been unreported (cough) you're not going to get anything done about it. Where I am aware of something I may chooose to take particular action or no action. And any action or non-action may be raised at any time by someone here. Which is what ADIG has done.

Funnily enough, on the forum and complaints I've received about me from participants, I gather the far left socialists reckon I've a pro-PD slant, the anti-immigration crowd reckon I'm an open border idiot, the unionists reckon I wear green underpants and the big-R republicans reckon I'm a west Brit (I'm none of these things but any one of you can think it's so if it makes you feel better). And all of them are agreed that I'm well capable of communicating well at times but they reckon I abuse that for my own reasons (none of which they've ever cared to expand upon) because I so obviously secretly represent the opposite side to theirs.

That corresponds perfectly with me in real life where my FF friends reckon I'm a closet Labourite or FGer, the FG types reckon I'm two steps away from joining FF, the PDers reckon I'm a wacky socialist and the SWP cardholders think I'm far too much of a socialite to be anywhere near their views. I don't know anyone in Labour except for a brother of my mother's who's a councillor and he's not all that interested in politics as far as I can see but if it came up for discussion I'd have little doubt that he'd think I belong to someone else.

As far as I can decide the issue's been dealt with. And in my opinion dealt with in the correct way (as a mod of the particular forum I have some bias here remember but I'm referring to the decision to edit the link which wasn't an action I took as I only read the post afterwards and the linked journal even after that). If I thought it wasn't I'd have communicated that to the other mods. I haven't done this. I mightn't tell you all if I had but I'll happily tell you that I haven't and won't. I'd almost certainly have made the same decision (given that I can't remember the precise state of the forum (which is always relevant as something continually in flux) a month ago I can't guarantee that I would have obviously but it's almost certainly to have been so) at the time and I'd certainly have made the same decision a few days ago when it was actually highlighted in particular by someone as a problem for, as far as I can see, the first time.

(I used to be the IT guy/IT guru/general idiot for a large firm of accountants. Occasionally someone would call me and let me know something wasn't working. On arriving I'd be told that it hadn't worked for "frigging weeks now". I'd happily tell them that firstly they were foolish for not telling me weeks ago and that the problem was mine from that point onwards but not before. Before that point from my POV it wasn't a problem that actually existed)

Rant time: I'm tired of people telling me (and the other mods) that any particular decision made must be because of some inherent bias and some conscious desicion to push one political viewpoint. I find it hilarious, I find it pathetic but it's boring me a bit. If you ("you" as in "anyone" for the remainder) can make a political point, grand. If you can make a political point without getting abusive of other posters, grand. If you can't do either of these things, either get out of the ring or let someone else step up. If someone else does one of these things, the mods may notice and take unilateral action. In case they don't you might want to report it. If they take particular action or no action, the Feedback forum is there. If you don't report it, how in the name of all that's holy can you say you've any idea about what might motivate anything in particular being untouched. If you're psychic, great - you can make all my posts from me from here on in. If you reckon you're being oppressed, I doubt it's by any of the Politics mods - none of us appear to have the time to oppress anyone (especially with the quantity of reported posts we're getting on the basis of "I didn't like what that guy said because it doesn't agree with my POV so do something unspecified"). In my case I'm too lazy to as well.

So in conclusion: thanks to ADIG for highlighting the problem here. No thanks to anyone who didn't bother (no-one loses points but no-one gains any). The Report button's always there for abusive, advertising or genuine spam posts. And as far as I'm concerned it's done and dusted. Comments? Complaints? You're all in one of the right places to make them.

Sherifu

Mercury_Tilt wrote:

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Thats classic.
Lateral thinking.
Can I link to my journal for artistic merit?

cdebru

DeVore wrote:

But you ARENT suggesting a clear line of action. Above is one long, circuitous complaint as far as I can see. There isnt a clear suggestions of what you WANT done just a lot of what you ARENT asking for.

What I want to hear from you is what SHOULD have been done and therefore what SHOULD BE DONE IN FUTURE.

If you are going to ban links , then specify links to what. Any other website? Some websites? No websites?

If the answer is SOME WEBSITES then which ones. Boards Journals only? What about Blogger.com? What about BlogSpot? Would it make a difference if Lemming had his journal at one of these? So we ban them too just in case someone writes something YOU dont like there?

Where does this storm in a teacup end?
You dont go into ANY such detail in your complaint therefore in my mind you're just having a whinge, where "whinge" = "complaint without workable alternative suggestion".

DeV.

what i want/wanted done was that lemming should have at least been publicly warned that linking to specifically written abuse where ever it is written as an attempt to get around the rule of not posting abuse would not be tolerated

if it was not a clear breach of the rules at the time (which i don't accept it wasn't) it should have been made clear that from then on it was and the link to the abuse should have been removed as it has been now 3 weeks later

as to which websites should be banned the answer is none
what i understand the rule to be now if it is not acceptable for you to write it in a thread then it is not acceptable for you to liink to somewhere else where you have written it that is and was obvious 3 weeks ago
wether it is a boards journal or any other kind of blog
if you or someone else has written an opinion that is within the boards rules i dont see a problem linking to it


my whinge as you put it is that i believe political bias was shown in allowing lemming to write abuse about republican posters and only moving to stop linking to abuse when Irish1 obtained a journal and thus could have done the same
my contention is that if the abuse had been directed in the other direction the poster would have been banned immediately and the offence removed then not 3 weeks later

Nuttzz

gandalf wrote:

"Linking to Journals, Blogs or any other forum to insult people will be taken as if the insult was posted on this forum."

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46807

I dont see how this will work tbh, if you look at any of lemmings posts or any posts by a personwith a journal you will see a link to their journal. Now we know that lemming is good for a the occasional anti SF rant everyone checks out his journal from time to time and then when he has another one there is another hissy fit about his latest journal entry, were do you draw the line?

cdebru

DeVore wrote:

The more we define things, the more loopholes will be found. I dont think Lemming sees it that he was insulting anyone so he would claim he didnt break that rule ...

DeV.

i see so a poster has to see that his post is insulting well that leaves it wide open to anything goes then if thats the case

so if i honestly believe someone is a dimwitted moron calling him that would not be an insult

cdebru

Nuttzz wrote:

I dont see how this will work tbh, if you look at any of lemmings posts or any posts by a personwith a journal you will see a link to their journal. Now we know that lemming is good for a the occasional anti SF rant everyone checks out his journal from time to time and then when he has another one there is another hissy fit about his latest journal entry, were do you draw the line?

if someone wants to go and read his journal in the normal manner that is their own business and what he or anyone else puts in their journal is their own business

posting a link that says here is what i think is different when the link is abusive

A Dub in Glasgo

Nuttzz wrote:

I dont see how this will work tbh, if you look at any of lemmings posts or any posts by a personwith a journal you will see a link to their journal. Now we know that lemming is good for a the occasional anti SF rant everyone checks out his journal from time to time and then when he has another one there is another hissy fit about his latest journal entry, were do you draw the line?

It was not a simple case of a journal entry being innocently linked to as you describe above.

Why is it difficult to see that Lemming linked to a specific jounal entry in a post where he did not want to post the contents into his post. That is totally different than having a journal linked as a generic link. I t was done to avoid a ban or a warning, that much is obvious.

A journal is just a mumble of thoughts on various subjects none of which I have any real interest in reading. When someone links to a specific journal entry and states this is the content of their post in a forum, that it becomes part of the discussion and the same rules that we all have to adhere to should apply.


That is all I am asking

Mercury_Tilt

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uberwolf

cdebru wrote:

i see so a poster has to see that his post is insulting well that leaves it wide open to anything goes then if thats the case

so if i honestly believe someone is a dimwitted moron calling him that would not be an insult

it will have to remain at the discretion (dangerous word) of the mods as to what is insulting. Now if you truely believe that the mods have a bias and will protect one group or utilise this discretion to remove another group from the forum then you'd better find somewhere else to post. This is meant to be a neutral ground for debate, and all the mods aim to keep it that way. You'll have to trust us.

Meantime I implore people to utilise the report post utility. The emails and PMs I receive are my first port of call everytime I log on, I sometimes just pop on to dial up from home to check those alone. I take the responsibility seriously, but if no one reports the posts then they are sometimes missed.

If you see something you don't like and don't report it then then you're as good as saying it's ok by you.

Nuttzz

Mercury_Tilt wrote:

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grand, but lets say he (or anyone else) said in this journal that Mercury tilt is supporter of murdering terrorists and I posted a link to that, who gets banned? do i for posting the link, does he for writing it? All i'm saying is that its a minefield for the (over taxed,IMO) politics mods.

Villain

Nuttzz wrote:

grand, but lets say he (or anyone else) said in this journal that Mercury tilt is supporter of murdering terrorists and I posted a link to that, who gets banned? do i for posting the link, does he for writing it? All i'm saying is that its a minefield for the (over taxed,IMO) politics mods.

IMO you should get banned for linking to material that is in breach of the forum rules. Who ever brings it into the thread has to take responsibility for it

Nuttzz

irish1 wrote:

IMO you should get banned for linking to material that is in breach of the forum rules. Who ever brings it into the thread has to take responsibility for it

Imagine:

Nuttzz: Well Irish1 I hear you support IRA murders
Irish1: WTF? Where did you get that from?
Nuttzz: Here (linky to my "source" someones journal)
Irish1 reports my post.

There are so many ways that could spin out? Was I just quoting what an external source said, was I posting in good faith, was I trying to score points? It becomes very vauge at this point.