Posted on: 25-06-05 06:19:54
Quote:
Orginally posted by chandresh
BXMCA
Without going into details, let me tell you some of the things we have DECIDED will not be encouraged on this forum - and since that is in our unwritten charter, we shall follow it. This shall be followed, even when we the moderators, as a member alone, support one view and would like to express it - but WILL NOT, since that does not flow with our mission.
Some of the things (and the list is not exhaustive) that we will NOT encourage here (since they do not gell well with our purpose of having this site - the reason is as simple as that) are:
a) religious discussions which start calling something in one religion as bad - however, if members wanted to discuss topics of religion which increases their knowledge of the religion - without any value judgements, is definitely encouraged.
b) advertising of one's business through a post in charcha - they are free to advertise through free classifieds, but NOT thru Charcha.
c) Offensive language - language that seems offensive to we as moderators, even something any member might find non-offensive.
d) explicit discussions on sex (and since I am using a subjective word as 'explicit' - we the moderators have the responsibility to decide what could be termed as explicit)
ETC. ETC. ETC...........
And once again let me spell it out - this site is created and maintained voluntarily for the sole purpose of helping immigrants in their lives and knowledge about Canada, which can take many dimensions, including some of the topics listed above, but specifically excluded/prohibited.
Yes this is a public forum and the public at large is free to discuss most of the things in life on this forum. However, they are also free to join and leave whenever they want to, and make their own decision whether or not the restrictions placed on this public forum are consistent with their personal beliefs.
I hope I have been able to explain the reasons behind the locking of thread responsibility/power. However, if you still feel you would like to express more and discuss - we are available and willing to discuss and implement changes that we as a group might feel will make this site better.
Chandresh
Chandresh,
I appreciate you trying to "spell it out" for me, but there are some fundamental contradictions in your statements. First, you speak of "our mission" and "unwritten charter" and I think the first thing you moderators should do is to publish these "documents" you speak of so that members of this forum have access to it. Second, I am not sure how you can have a discussion on relgion without having value judegements .. religions base themseleves on values. We all make judements and thinking that someone people(including yourself) dont make value judgements everyday is simplistic. Example: You have already made a value judgement on me by stating "once again, let me spell it out.." as though I am not capable of understanding your comments. Third, I constantly see people(real estate agents) putting their business name and their profession as part of their signature in Charcha.. dont you think that is advertising? Fourth, by saying that "people are free to join and leave the fourm.." is in my mind similar to a racist telling you that.. "I will kick your teeth out and if you dont like it.. leave canada". Fifth.. there seem to be a lot of "ETC.." in your guidelines.. which tells me that the moderators have never really communicated with eachother as to what the guidelines should be.. so as to maintain consistency.
As for discussing this further.. Given some of your tone in your response.. I am not sure if it is worth the effort since moderators on this forum have already decided what is "right" and frankly show very little interest in debating the issue.
I would argue that, the lack of interest is really because there would be a fundamental shift in roles and more control would return to the members of this forum to determine what they find interesting and what they dont.Sure.. there will be times when non-sense will come up.. but it will be the system that will determine its relevance.. not the moderators.
However, thanks for the replies and the discussion.. its has been fun.
Quote:
Orginally posted by jake3d
Its a fine balance, and I think the mods have done a good job so far.
I particularly note the potshots often aimed at BL, by a cpl of other members, who are just trying to provoke. They are still around.
Ofcourse its possible that some people see some actions of the mods as unwarranted while others see it as too lax(and have complained so, just like you are doing). This difference in perception is inevitable in an open(within limits) forum. I think the few guidelines in the post by Chandresh are reasonable enough. Note that all the mods are volunteering their time.
I also think its a good thing that you BXMCA question the mods actions. Its probably not about 'right' and 'wrong' as much as about maintaining that fine balance, you are now helping with, by starting this thread. Thanks for the same.
Jake,
The question to me is not if there is a fine line, it would seem that it is important in any forum to have "rules" that are published so that when people join.. they can make they choice at that time if they want to join or not. Without telling people the limits.. when they join the forum is perhaps setting false expectations. I dont disagree that there is a find balance, but the balance does not have to be so illusive if the moderators made is clear the expectations of this forum and enforce that across the board. You cannot have set of rules that apply when we talk about "indian" topics.. and not apply the same rule when you talk about "canadian topics".
As for me complaining, I am not. I have no control over this to change it, if anything.. I am just highlighting the issue. My comments could be considered as complaints if I was to somehow benefit from the change. The core issue is that tomorrow.. some moderator could decide that s/he does not like what I am saying about them.. and Poof! the thread is locked.. without thought out and communicate guidelines.. you always run the risk of having people with the power to change the discussion.. to me that limits free speech. Even governments have checks and balances.. this forum DOES NOT.
As for the moderators.. giving their time to do this.. as much as I appreciate the thought.. it still does not change the fact that they have a responsiability to the forum. I could follow one moderator' approach and say that if the Mod's find this difficult to deal with .. then they should stop being moderator.
Thanks for the comments and you are certainly diplomatic in your response..
It has been fun..
Quote:
Orginally posted by bxmca
What are the specific goals? and the board may be privatly owned.. but it is in a public place(the internet) and it is free access.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. The whole internet is a "public place". And many places have free access, rather most places have free access. What does that have to do with individual websites setting up their own rules?
Quote:
I suppose, my issue is that.. your lack of faith should not translate into you making decisions on who you contribute to what. You have just hit the nail on the head.. it is YOUR view.. and not mine or of perhaps many other people on this forum.
But I never denied that . You're accusing me of something I'm readily accepting.
This is my view based on past experiences and I AM making this judgement call for the whole forum based on what I think is best for the forum. Again, it comes back to this being a privately owned forum within a "public space" such as the internet.I'm not disputing your ideas, it would be awesome to be able to live up to a gold standard of liberty of speech. And it would be awesome to approach moderation of each and every discusson from this frame of mind.
The reality however is this is not possible with the current resources we have. With the amount of time that moderators can afford to spend on managing the site, we have to make quick judgment calls, even though all of them may not adhere to the highest standard of freedom of speech.
I don't think we're doing such a bad job either if you look at some hard numbers. There are a total of 8600 total threads as of today, out of which the number of locked threads due to religious content is less than 25 (actually probably half of that). So at a max, that's 0.29%! To me, a quick risk-reward analysis of locking 0.29% of the threads isn't much of a loss at all. On the contrary, the risk of having those threads continue and making this a religious mud-slinging forum is not something I'm willing to take. Again, thats a judgement call that I make.
Quote:
The core issue is that tomorrow.. some moderator could decide that s/he does not like what I am saying about them.. and Poof! the thread is locked..
By the same token, some moderator could come and decide to allow these religious "discussions" to continue, considering them a great resource to mankind capable of changing people's views about their own religions. And poof! The thread is unlocked.
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Now let's talk get off the moralistic high horse and talk about the trhead in question. I'd actually like and am willing to try out your suggestion on this.
The thread started out as a regular news link. There were a whole bunch of legit arguments that were not disparaging to any religion however approached the discussion objectively. But then I noticed a couple of posters had made blankey statements about Muslims, the last post by zcool being particularly offensive.
My worry is if we allow this, someone who's muslim and invariably offended will come up and make similar statements about Hindus. They probably won't start out that bad, however some Hindu will invariably respond inviting opposite responses and the discussion will systematically degenrate to Hindu-muslim mud-slinging. Now if this goes on in one thread, people who are currently not even posting on this site will log on, stirred up by religious emotions and start creating threads specifically to bash another religion. This will consume the forum for the most part and people who are productive contributors to the immigration issue (the MAIN purpose of this site) will shake their head and sign off.
How do we prevent this? And please don't say, let's allow the discussion, let this happen and then we'll decide what to do. Because once done, this is irreversible.
Since I don't have the time, I'll let you do all the thinking. And I'm willing to try out your approach so long as I don't think it'll permanently damage the forum. THAT is a risk I'm not willing to take, freedom of speech or not.
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Quote:
Orginally posted by bxmca
The core issue is that tomorrow.. some moderator could decide that s/he does not like what I am saying about them.. and Poof! the thread is locked.. without thought out and communicate guidelines.. you always run the risk of having people with the power to change the discussion.. to me that limits free speech. Even governments have checks and balances.. this forum DOES NOT.
Since the above is your perception of the problem...incase you did not see it in my last post...there ARE checks and balances...you and I ARE it.
(If your ego hadnt given you the feeling that I am trying to be diplomatic in my response...you would have probably understood it already)
Checks and balances probably will work better in this fashion than in any hard and fast rules, especially on a forum like this.
If we all do our part it'll all be fine. As you can see none of the mods responses say they are not willing to listen to you.
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I'm not sure what you mean by that. The whole internet is a "public place". And many places have free access, rather most places have free access. What does that have to do with individual websites setting up their own rules?
>> All I am saying is that if you have such rules, then publish them for all to see.
I don't think we're doing such a bad job either if you look at some hard numbers. There are a total of 8600 total threads as of today, out of which the number of locked threads due to religious content is less than 25 (actually probably half of that). So at a max, that's 0.29%! To me, a quick risk-reward analysis of locking 0.29% of the threads isn't much of a loss at all. On the contrary, the risk of having those threads continue and making this a religious mud-slinging forum is not something I'm willing to take. Again, thats a judgement call that I make.
>>Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
By the same token, some moderator could come and decide to allow these religious "discussions" to continue, considering them a great resource to mankind capable of changing people's views about their own religions. And poof! The thread is unlocked.
>> I am not sure how this can happen, since I dont know how one goes about becoming a moderator and every moderator has the right to lock threads. So... point well taken
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Now let's talk get off the moralistic high horse and talk about the trhead in question. I'd actually like and am willing to try out your suggestion on this.
>> Let us not label my questions about the actions as a "moralistic high horse".. If there is such a beast.. I have yet to find it or ride it.
Since I don't have the time, I'll let you do all the thinking. And I'm willing to try out your approach so long as I don't think it'll permanently damage the forum. THAT is a risk I'm not willing to take, freedom of speech or not.
>> I appreciate the offer to do all the thinking. I read your post "A Disturbing Trend" in feedback section and I think we should perhaps agree to disagree on this issue... we are very far apart in our thinking.
Since the above is your perception of the problem...incase you did not see it in my last post...there ARE checks and balances...you and I ARE it.
(If your ego hadnt given you the feeling that I am trying to be diplomatic in my response...you would have probably understood it already)
>> To clarify, I thought you previous positing was trying very hard to >>take the middle ground. I prefer to have people take a position and >>debate it on the issues. If people perfer to take the middle ground.. >>then it is their choice.. I just dont see the point because I think it does >>not move the discussion in any direction.
>>However, it appears that you think all this has to do with my ego, >>clearly you have run out of things to say and have decided to make >>such comments. You seem to have missed my point completely. Thanks for the observation and I will keep my ego in check.
>>If you think we are the checks and balances.. then please go ahead. It >>is clear that how we define checks and balances are different. That is >>fine.
If we all do our part it'll all be fine. As you can see none of the mods responses say they are not willing to listen to you.
>> Right..
Quote:
Orginally posted by bxmca
>> To clarify, I thought you previous positing was trying very hard to >>take the middle ground.
You assumed you knew me and made that jump yourself(in assuming i am taking the middle ground instead of taking what I wrote at face value). I call such judgements and assumptions as works of the 'ego'. I do not think its right or wrong.
Quote:
>>However, it appears that you think all this has to do with my ego, >>clearly you have run out of things to say and have decided to make >>such comments.
etc etc.
Again you are making an assumption that I meant anything negative or malicious when I mentioned the 'ego'. It was just my ignorant way of communication...thinking that my personal(but hardly original) philosophy is widely accepted and adhered to
. Like Chandresh put it once before...and I paraphrase "you dont speak for the common man". Guilty as charged.p.s: we are deviating from the topic...so pm me if we have to continue.
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