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-- Not Garry (Not@Garry.now), July 02, 2000

Answers

Who would you trust to have the power to decide when a post is so offensive it should be deleted?

-- (Just@wondering.hmm), July 02, 2000.

"Just Wondering",

My vote probably shouldn't count since no one really knows me, but I'll throw two names in the ring for others to consider.
1. Bocce
2. Absolom

It's best if there are at least a few moderators, including ones in different time zones. That way there is nearly continuous monitoring in case someone goes postal at, say, 2 A.M. on a Sunday morning.

-- (Benevolent Dictator@home.now), July 02, 2000.


Gee, and I always thought I was the model of fairness. *smile*

-- Emily (em@members.evolt.org), July 03, 2000.

Are we sure we need a moderator?

-- Sarasvati (666@xxxx.com), July 03, 2000.

I think the idea is to have someone that can delete death threats, 2MB pictures in the textarea, etc.

Of course, everyone has different ideas about what is and is not appropriate to post in a public forum. No doubt if there were "rules," then certain people would whine about other people supposedly "breaking" the rules and the moderator(s) ignoring them. There's one inevitability.

-- Emily (em@members.evolt.org), July 04, 2000.



Some things that moderators can provide:

1. Delete SPAM. Personally, I think SPAM consists of blatant commercial solicitations. I also think it is SPAM when someone submits repetitious posts (such as 50 posts consisting of the word, "Hello").
2. Delete or edit posts that impair the functioning of the forum. Such posts could be deliberate or unintentional errors by the posters, along the lines of the scroll-wrap screw-ups you sometimes see at Doones.
3. Delete posts that involve, as Em says, death threats. Similarly, if someone submits a post that contains identifying personal information about another poster (name, phone number, address, etc.), that post could be deleted...if the one being identified objects to it.
4. Since it is possible to delete any post for any reason, moderators should be chosen by consensus among the participants as to whom they would trust with the Delete Key.

So far, the only DB regular who has offered to assist in moderation is Bb9, although he hasn't returned sinceasking how to post a gif of Bart Simpson mooning the world. If The Site Gods at Doonesbury do take Town Hall down, this forum could include participants from all points on the political, personal and emotional spectrums.

The question is who do you, the regulars, trust with the Delete Key?

-- (Benevolent Dictator@home.now), July 04, 2000.


I think a moderator should only deal with issues like posting RL info, spam, copyright breaking etc. Not deal with stuff like insulting etc., since this is what one can expect in an online place like this. If someone thinks that someone makes serious threats to them, contacting the Police would be a better solution, than deleting the posts.

Incidentially I would take on the job as a moderator, if it was neceassary that someone did it, and if people wanted me to do it, but I wouldn't restrict what people could post very much, since I think that's exactly what will kill DB in the long run. I would just deal with spam and copyright infringements mostly (+personal info obviously).

-- Absalon (defender_of_kristjnaity@yahoo.com), July 04, 2000.


I think I would have to agree with you about the death threats, Abby. After all, threats coupled with personal information would be deleted under the "personal info" rule.

As I said above, my concern is that people would be (virtually) hopping up and down whining He said I should watch my back! Sounds like a threat to me! Moderator!

And like you said, people have legal recourse if they really feel threatened.

-- Emily (em@members.evolt.org), July 05, 2000.


I nominate myself, only because I thurst for power.

-- Tom (digger623@hotmail.com), July 06, 2000.

Tap, if he were around more often. not to many others. maybe croesos, or steve b.

-- nicole (cb043@freenet.buffalo.edu), July 06, 2000.


though, absalon is a pretty close second. bocce would be good too.

-- nicole (cb043@freenet.buffalo.edu), July 06, 2000.

I'm confused, Tom. Do you thrust for power or thirst for it? What's the difference?

-- Emily (em@members.evolt.org), July 06, 2000.

or of course LAWV but he posts so rarely now.

-- nicole (nicole@who.cares.com), July 06, 2000.

"If nominated...I will not run, if elected...I will not serve" Lyndon Baines Johnson-1968

-- LAWV (nekkid@at the swimmin' hole.com), July 06, 2000.

The possibility of people whining to the moderator makes it even more important that the moderators (who ever they might be) makes the rules clear in advance, and make sure to uphold them strictly, so no- one can accuse them of biased behaviour.

-- Absalon (defender_of_kristjanity@yahoo.com), July 06, 2000.


Well, it looks as though either (a) we'll need to set this place up for regular use, or (b) The Management (at Doones) may solve the problems for us. If you try to enter Sound Bytes directly now, e.g., through a bookmark directly to a hall, you get "contains no data." If you go through the front door, you get an announcement that Sound Bytes is undergoing "renovation." If they are in fact "renovating" the place, it will be interesting to see what they come up with to eliminate the problem posts.

-- GRC (GRCCRC@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

Glad to see you GRC. I think they are going to demand a bit more in the way of identification, or possibly just put in a registered logon process.

LG could get registered, for example, but if he got out of line they would cancel his registration and he wouldn't be able to get in. The folks over at Lucian.com have been getting attacked by a group possessed of the idea that if they toss in enough scatalogical references and death threats they can shut down the right. Of course they are fools.

They are also foolish. If the "right" is as bad as they think, they are insane.

Lucian.com had already controlled the site to the extent that they specified who could or could not have the power to end a thread, or to cancel it if some really bad stuff were found in it.

I think they are going to go to affirmative logons to control who has write access.

FreeRepublic, which has a very large number of posters and is rather open as far as boards go, has everybody registered. You must log in your registration information every time you make a post.

In general, this serves to deter guys like LG, and even Mikey, but some times you'll find a Mike in there, and surrounded by all that right wing testosterone and good vibes, it's too much, and they start posting crazy stuff about black helicopters.

Well, nuff said. Looks like others have also found the emergency fall back boards.

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


If anyone sees this, go on over to Hot Buttons and we will try to continue on. It would not surprise me to see Doonesbury down for several days.

-- John (jsmith@hotbot.gov), July 12, 2000.

I don't object to registration; have been suggesting it for some time. But apparently some do. Well, whatever, it had been obvious for some time that something had to be done.

My last post over in Doones before "renovation" was these two lines from Iris DeMent's "Our Town:"

"Well, don't ya see, the sun's settin' fast

And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts."

It's set, now, and what new sights/sites we shall see when it rises again, only The Management knows....

-- GRC (GRCCGR@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


The last "management" message was concerned with RL stuff about people's kids, death threats, and so forth.

But I believe that's just an excuse. If they read through our discussions of copyright, and who really owned "the death threat" words, it is possible that we woke them up.

GRC, I continue to be amazed at the folks who ignored your two part statement. It was just a "put up or shut up" type thing, but they couldn't get past the "put up" part.

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


BB9...but this is what I'm trying to explain to you guys and The Management...they could just make a statement saying "Gary Trudeau, blah blah blah blah blah, are not responsible for the contents herein." I don't understand why it's such a big deal.

-- Sarasvati (sarasvati@sarasvati.com), July 12, 2000.

Sara, but they could not ALSO say the stuff was copyrighted by G. Trudeau.

They had two things wrong - one, they stated a policy they did not adhere to, and two, they copyrighted Mikey's death threat to me! When they did that, Mr. Trudeau owned those words and became responsible for them. His pockets are much deeper than Mikey's. I did save the words!

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


BB9...but they don't have to do that anymore...are you going to sue them? Right now, what they're doing, has nothing to do with death threats.

-- Sarasvati (lala@sarasvati.com), July 12, 2000.

Let's put it this way - death threats really can't be pulled back.

Once you've made one, it's kind of just sticking out there forever.

Anyway, on the alternate site that you do not like, the problem is the contrast density between their "red" and their "blue" or "dirty gray" (the way I see it).

It doesn't give me eyeaches, but I am blue-blind which makes stuff exceedingly faint. I am sure they believe they have a very intense "green" of some sort there, but it doesn't stand out well from the dark gray.

BTW, I got my website at the office into compliance with the Handicapped Accessibility Law. We have to make them useable by blind folks. (And, to do that effectively, a lot of the "alt" text has to be set under font control to "invisible" so that it doesn't mess up your image.

Anyway, I assure you my site is probably the ONLY one in the entire US government that is ALSO accessible to the "blue blind"!

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


Well, today in HB The Management did in fact mention death threats, disparagement of or threats to children, and a couple of other things which I forget.

But some of it is just some people monopolizing the site for purposes for which it was clearly not intended. It *is* their site, and if they want to eliminate sheer brazen idiocy and meanness, and can figure out how to do it, they have every right.

And I applaud them if that's what they're about.

-- GRC (GRCCGR@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


just a quick test to give me information to explain this to SteveB.

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

Oh, Beebs, you can't tell me you couldn't see my orange and yellow posts....

-- GRC (GRCCGR@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

I can see the orange ones fine. For whatever reason, YELLOW shows up as an even fainter white/gray. Pink is good too! We can also go to Front Page or Word Webpage, type in some stuff, and thenset the colors like we want. You flip over to the HTML side, find the fghi89f color code for it, and then copy it into the color entry point. Presumably it comes back with a color more to your liking.

Unfortunately, if we stick to their presets, it's all Day Glo invisible!

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.


I just noticed that I have been giving the wrong hotmail addy. Will change it.

-- GRC (GRCCGR@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

How odd about the yellow. Have you done research on blue/green colorblindness (I believe it is the most common colorblindness)?

-- GRC (GRCCRG@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

It's RED/GREEN colorblindness that is the most common. BLUE/GREEN/GRAY colorblindness is very uncommon. It is called anonamalous dichromatism (sp?)

I see "blue", "green" and the various "grays" just fine - it's just that you other people don't use the RIGHT ONES!

My color vision in "blue" simply looks for a different peak frequency, one not usually used by others.

Another way to look at it is I am correct in my perception of color and everybody else is not.

But, there are new friends all the time. Seems that heavy use of Viagra leads to "blue" blindness. They have proposed airline pilots not use Viagra (as if they would really need to, there being a large number of willing accomplices, women of light virtue, out there to, as it were "help out").

-- Billybob 9 (muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 13, 2000.


FYI I threw up another alternate meeting place in Table Talk. It's in the Politics folder and is titled Sound Bytes. If no one posts there it will just be deleted by an administrator, so it's no big thing.

-- Emily (em@members.evolt.org), July 13, 2000.

Well, I'm flattered to be nominated, certainly. "I will be a wise and tolerant monarch, dispensing justice fairly, and only setting nightmares to rip out the minds of the evil and the wicked. Or just anybody I don't like."--John Dee in Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_

Actually, a one-person monitoring operation, while efficient (assuming the one person is online a LOT of the time) is fraught with trouble. Might I suggest a panel of moderators? If more than one is here, they could put their heads together & decide if a post crosses a line. If there's only one, he or she would be empowered to act in the hall's best interest.

None of which means I'm volunteering, BTW.

-- Bocce (bocce42@yahoo.com), July 13, 2000.


Another possibility would be just to wait and see whether any problem develops, and then see if a majority of whoever posts on the site would vote to ask that a particular post be eliminated.

Just a thought.

-- GRC (GRCCGR@hotmail.com), July 13, 2000.


Hi all. Bocce, I was a moderator on another forum using this software for nearly two years. The forum archived over 300,000 posts, and had a ton of traffic at times. Since we had our occasional troll/disrupters, it worked well to have several people monitoring the forum who all had delete passwords so there was good coverage. There were 5 moderators, and deletion was taken very seriously. In other words, the decision was not made lightly.

-- (Benevolent Dictator@x.xxx), July 14, 2000.

Hi guys, BG here. I think we don't need one, with certain people gone, there should be no problems, and should something arise, it can be handled in hall.

-- BRUCE BLACKMON/ BG (blackmon@llano.net), July 17, 2000.

The "certain people" are off raging in Rock On Line!

They are talking to each other, using different personae, it is truly pitiful.

Time to turn them in.

-- Billybob 9 (Muawiyah@hotmail.com), July 17, 2000.


Boy, this place is slower than Christmas, HELLO, hello, ECHO, echo.

-- BG (blackmon@llano.net), July 19, 2000.

Hi, everyone. As an infrequent visitor to halls other than "the strip," I am pretty weirded out by the conversations going on in this new place. I had no idea things were so out of control. Of course death threats, in any medium should be reported to the police. Personally I've only ever met one other poster ftf. I am sure that person poses no threat to me. And although I guess I am one of the most guilty of giving out real life info about my kids etc. I don't really feel that puts me in anymore danger from insane serial killers or whatever. Sorry. I don't really know what I am talking about. I was looking for someone (BillyBob9?) to discuss the Tour de France and U.S.er's embarressing lack of interest. Maybe I should see if I can start my own thread? BTW is this place actually a secret from posters no one wants to hear from anymore? Does anyone feel like posting, or e-mailing me an explanation for what is going on at the old site, and here?

-- Maggie (mage@mage.cx), July 22, 2000.

maggie, in hats thread "what happened" it says all anyone knows about it. no, everyone from the old site that could be notified about this place, has been, besides, it was posted openly in the old site before it went down.... if you want anymore info, feel free to e-mail me. not that i have any, but...

-- nicole (cb043@freenet.buffalo.edu), July 22, 2000.

nicole, thanks. I guess things really are weird. I'm glad we are all still in touch. Thanks to whoever set us up here.

-- Maggie (mage@mage.cx), July 22, 2000.

no problem, maggie.

-- nicole (nicole@etc.and.so.on), July 22, 2000.

New message on the SoundBytes page at DB... October... at least we have a time frame now.....

-- Lisa (cslmc@eiu.edu), July 25, 2000.

Got this e-mail today:

"User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022 Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 09:30:43 -0500 Subject: Re: TOWN HALL From: Matt Miquelon To: [e-mail addy edited out by me] Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <200007230935.FAA03827@ups4.uexpress.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

-- Thank you for your past support of SOUND BYTES. We regret that excessive venting by a few vitriolic users makes it impossible for us to continue the feature in its current form.

Please look for a new, flameproof version of SB when DTH 3.0 launches in October.

The Management"

-- GRC (GRCCGR@hotmail.com), July 25, 2000.


This thread is dead....

-- Lisa (cslmc@eiu.edu), September 12, 2000.

Hi Lisa. Yes, it is. Thankfully, no decisions about moderation were ever necessary. The group still posting on "The Strip" thread is as nonvolatile as could be. I've looked in on Fred's site a few times. It's really doing well, and Fred has done a great service to the Doone's community. His solution to the disruption potential was *very* creative...and, it seems, effective. Thanks for stopping by.

-- (Benevolent Dictator@home.now), September 13, 2000.

No prob, BD... :o)

-- Lisa (cslmc@eiu.edu), September 19, 2000.

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