board77

It's a very good idea actually not to allow PM rights to multiple IDs. Yes in a way it's paranoid but it does come from somewhere. I like the idea of adding a * to proclaim but not identify multiple IDs. Can I however make just one more suggestion/addition to Prim's proposed text? (and yes - I admit, it's 'paranoya' kicking in)

Although B77 does not encourage it, you may post under one or more secondary screen names if admins are informed at the time of registration...

Now maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here by spelling something out and through that casting a spotlight right on it. I don't know ... what do you think?

As to letting go re foreign language post of the bit about translation by several posters - I don't mind but would like to hear Nin's opinion.
_______________
Resident witchâ„¢

Voronwe_the_Faithful wrote:

Good. Then that is what I would like to see: if someone posts unintentionally insults someone they are not subject to discipline, but the admins have the discretion to edit the offending post if the offending party refuses to do so.

Of course, there may be times when a judgment call will need to be made as to whether an insult was really unintentional. Otherwise, that is what everyone will always claim.

Ok, I may be a little behind in what has been happeneing in the CC recently but I am getting a little worried about the tone of what is happening. This is getting awfully reminincent of TORC, the language rules, the innuendo rules and the defence of the insulted over the poster, which to be perfectly frank reads as defence of a certain mindset.

I think we need to build in some leeway, quite a lot in fact, or there is a very real danger that what we have on B77 will just colapse or become identical to a 'significantly similar site', which is no fun.

I do understand what is being said, and I do understand that out there in messageboard land, egos are ten thousand times more fragile than in the real world. People can take offence over the slightest thing, and let that fester or blow it out of all proportion. and posting in that enviroment is just not nice.

For somebody like me who's lanaguage is as inuendo ridden as a sewer full of carrots and marrows, I natuarally find that I insult or offend people. Not out of intent, but out of my natural language use. Something that I have noticed very very strongly when posting with Europeans is that the same can be true, but not totally.

My fear is that if we asign the rules immidiatley on insults or offensive language, then we are suffercating the origional purpose of this place which was to have a community that was self govening and free of such constraints.

My real fear is that if we start to set what can and can't be said, we are making the same mistakes that we have seen before, and it will not take long before we have exactly the same situation as we left.

Which leaves me in a bit of a quandry, because I do understand that there will be the need to have constraints in place assuming this board opens up. So, is it possible that the language we are using in the constitution can be watered down a lot. Less talk of RIGHTS for the individual, more talk of the community as a whole.

Sorry, had to throw the spanner in like that. I read the first post and it really spooked me.


Oh, and on the topic of multiple Id's, I am all in favor of not allowing them except for RP purposes. There really is no point, they serve no purpose, and if anybody has anything to say why not say it as themselves rather than hiding behind some little used id.

And PM rights is silly for them, that can only lead to confusion and an easy way to bully somebody. Not good at all. If RP id's need to contact the Admins, well slipping into your main id and PMing is a better option.

Din, I agree with what you just said.

Sorry to elbow back in here again so soon but all this talk had me going
multiple ID's?? ID changes... and then a bunch of other things I don't see spelled out in member rights but which have come up before in discussion. I really don't want to side-track the issue here.
I think my question simply is, are we going to spell out things in the constitution re e.g.

- member has right to delete their own posts (though we do not encourage it but rather would adivse to edit)
- member can ask for their username to be changed (precedent!) but only if the change is a minor one (e.g. capitalizing, shortening or elongating an existing name) that was discussed/agreed before and as far as I know still upholds
- members have right to vote (addition of with their primary ID only IF multiples should happen)

etc.

or is this going to go into a 'Member's Handbook' (since we do have an Admin handbook).Right now many (but not all)of these things are spelled out in the Comprehensive guide to Board 77 which of course might get completely re-vamped when we redesign all the stickies. I'm just confused as to just where these things will come in and will be spelled out.

If I'm jumping the gun here I apologize - I really don't want to make life more difficult as it already is yet those things should not get forgotten either.

_______________
Resident witchâ„¢

Din, I hear where you are coming from. I think it comes down to what I said in my first post in this thread about finding the proper balance between the two competing interests. I'll give it some more thought before trying to come ups with specific language.

Viv, I'd like to see the full list of Member's Rights and Responsibilities be enumerated right in the Charter.

I want member rights in the charter.

Din--

How can a community have rights if its individual constituents do not? I certainly agree that we need to be wary of allowing a tyranny of one, but by the same token I think we have plenty of safeguards against a prudish, politcally motivated, or overly sensitive poster in general or admin in particular exerting too much constraint on others. The most important one is the membership itself...but even as we broaden our base, the charter already contains quite a few checks on the ability of one person to choke off discussions because they are "insulted." That is why I wanted it clarified that unintentional putative insults were not to be dealt with as offenses, but as something for the principals to work out if possible between themselves.

Din, the insults we're talking about are not on the order of "you stupid git." They're spelled out as "insults that target your nationality, ethnicity, religion, native language, gender, age or sexual orientation." Insults like this are outlawed not just to protect people's sensibilities, but to preserve a tolerable atmosphere on this board. Imagine what it would be like if racial slurs were used openly, or people's languages or nationalities were laughed at.

The same principle applies here as elsewhere in the charter: matters that are actionable, that can lead to jury hearings, are all matters that go beyond a dispute between posters and are something that can damage the board as a whole.

One or two cents:

I wanted to bring in "intentional" because of the risk of cultural missunderstandings, I think that harm done without intention should be repaired, but not punished as harm done with intention.

As for posting in foreign languages: I don't feel very strong about it, but I have seen on TORC that it was called a privilege which could be revoked (said in the German thread). I want to be sure that something alike cannot happen.

As for translation - I would prefer only one person, because my request is the one for trust. The translation of a poster should be trusted. One should be enough.

We are disadvantaged by having done the Charter in backward order. Truly if I had known that the committee was going to undo so much of what members had decided pre-committee, I would not have done these articles first but would have gone straight to the Mission Statement.

The tone that we want to achieve, which is what Din is referring to, I believe, is set by the Mission Statement and by the Key Principles. That is where we express our desire for balance between free expression of ideas and absence of prejudicial comments, etc. in light of which all the by-laws should be interpreted.

The proliferation of rules that various members have occassionally complained about - I view the intention of these to be elimination of confusion and a check on the power of an admin to harm a member in a realy scuzzy way, like banning out of vindictiveness. No one is going to check the charter before posting every day to make sure they're posting within the rules (!), but admins, juries etc will definitely check the charter before making a decision affecting someone's membership in the community, or the character of the community etc., and the more non-contradictory detail we give them the easier their job will be.

If it didn't say, "send the decision to the poster 24 hours before posting it in the thread," we really would have juries asking, "what do I do next" or posting bans or other penalites without giving the poster the courtesy of of forewarning.

It looks like a lot of detail and a lot of proscriptions, but if you think about stepping into that process and walking through it, a lot of it simply lays out the path of most courteous treatment toward someone, for people who have no innate sense of this.

I still think it would be a good idea to have some "troll play" when we get this Article finished. Collect the names of people who want to be in the Jury Pool, and hold a "workshop" in the Jury Room for fictitious cases. Let them go through the process, see how it works, see what kinds of comments jurors and witnesses are likely to make, etc.

Btw, I believe the right to vote is in the Article, framed as a right to admin and hold office and a responsibility to vote when quorums are needed. This is in the 'unenforcable' section.

I would encourage Din to hold on to his ideas, because he expresses his view of our 'tone' very well. This is exactly the kind of overview, broad-intention statement that goes into the Mission Statement and the Key Principles.

Jn

I must admit, I'm not up to date with the thread in the business room - I had become very confused with the discussion about technicalities of allowing or preventing multiple IDs, and stopped following the subject for a while.

So I'm just summing up my view here with reference to previous posts here:

In earlier discussions on this subject, I think I was among those arguing for outlawing it because I don't like it - thanks Imp for quoting tinwe's post here, she (? - sorry, still don't know) is right in saying that this is no sufficient reason for outlawing something.

On the other hand, I agree with Din that alternate IDs serve no useful purpose.
Yes, some of the IDs in movies on TORC were used in a very amusing way - but they also set me guessing who is behind it, which of course can't be guessed (at least I can't), and no matter how funny, I still find it slightly annoying that I don't know who is behind (for example) "cuteandcuddlyraccoons" - especially when it seems that other people are in the know.
And any other use is obviously to disguise your real self - or isn't it? So people won't know it's you they are talking to. (Or, if it's not that, maybe there are some psychological processes at work that I don't understand?)
The problem is, that for this reason I don't much like interacting with alternative IDs.

So, if there was an asterisk behind the name, that's better than nothing, but I probably wouldn't like posting with the asterisked ID unless I knew who was behind it. If we allow multiple IDs, my suggestion would be to keep a list of who uses which ID, just like in the RP forum, so you'd know who you are talking to.

So, for a compromise, I really like Alandriel's suggestion:

Alandriel wrote:

Although B77 does not encourage it, you may post under one or more secondary screen names if admins are informed at the time of registration...

As to the rest of the member rights - I'm a bit confused at the moment (what else is new? ) - let me try to get this straight:

- the whole text in the first post (that is, whatever of it gets approved) will become part of the charter
- the bits that start "you have the right" (in §1) mean: this is an enforceable right, someone who violates it is up for a hearing or so
- the later parts (§2) are only our ideals and hopes but not "rules"

(I find that confusing, because to be honest, I find §2 covers everything that needs to be said. If you are treated with courtesy and respect, it is self-evident that you won't be targeted because of your ethnicity, religion etc)

~~~~~~~~~~~
Longish excursion on foreign language posts:

Nin -

Quote:

but I have seen on TORC that it was called a privilege which could be revoked (said in the German thread).

Agreed, it should be clear that this is not a privilege that can be revoked.
(Although TORC has always been very outspoken about their view that ALL posting there is only a privilege that could be revoked at any time).

Quote:

I would prefer only one person, because my request is the one for trust. The translation of a poster should be trusted. One should be enough.

I'm sorry, Nin, but I disagree. Less because I don't trust posters, but because I see a danger of making mistakes.

I should prefer the paragraph to end after Posts in foreign languages should be translated upon request, as I said before - it could then be decided case by case whether one translation is enough.
(Btw - if there's to be just one translation, I suppose this means the translation should not be given by the person who used the possibly offensive text?)

I don't know whether you have a particular example in mind where doubting a given translation led to conflict, but the one example that comes to my mind shows that it's necessary sometimes to check and re-check a given translation - and then maybe check again. Sometimes it's not so easy to translate something.

If I was trying to resolve a conflict arising from a foreign language text I would want to have the right to use every possible way to come to a correct assessment of the case. I would probably want to have two translations, done independently of each other, and if they agreed, I'd be pretty certain this was the correct meaning.

Say, Ber said something to you in Spanish, and you suspected, from your knowledge of Spanish, that she had insulted you. You say "she called me a bitch" (or something much worse and against our rules) and Ber says "in Spanish that's a term of endearment". I think we'd need a third opinion here as to what it means. And if that third opinion said you are right and Ber is wrong, and it might lead to a penalty for Ber, I'd want to ask even a fourth opinion, just to make sure we aren't making a mistake.

Quote:

(I find that confusing, because to be honest, I find §2 covers everything that needs to be said. If you are treated with courtesy and respect, it is self-evident that you won't be targeted because of your ethnicity, religion etc)

Hobby, I'm not sure that I understand correctly what you are saying here, but I think that I disagree. If this is something that you want to vote on, can you clarify what option you would like to see included in the ballot?

Voronwe, I'm not sure I understand myself!

I didn't mean for the ballot to be changed, it's that I'm not sure what the ballot means.

I was asking whether I'm right in that the difference between §1 and §2 is that the items in §1 are enforceable, while those in §2 (¶2: We strive to create a culture and atmosphere that will also ensure the following rights for all members of Board77) are merely ideals and hopes.

Because if I'm wrong, and §2 is also enforceable, I think that clauses 11 and 12 perfectly cover clause 5 (which receives a lot of debate on how to be as strict as necessary and as generous as possible).

Because if you have the right to be treated with courtesy and respect and to express one’s thoughts on any topic, no matter how controversial, but with respect, forbearance and consideration for the context, the feelings of others, and the value of contrasting viewpoints, as this is necessary for worthwhile conversation among adults. it is, IMO, self-evident that insulting posts are out of the question.

Quote:

I was asking whether I'm right in that the difference between §1 and §2 is that the items in §1 are enforceable, while those in §2 (¶2: We strive to create a culture and atmosphere that will also ensure the following rights for all members of Board77) are merely ideals and hopes.

I think that is accurate. That is my understanding. If Jn meant it differently, hopefully she'll speak up.

Please keep in mind that we do not actually have a ballot yet, just an initial list for discussion purposes and then people's additional comments. I think the ballot for this article is going to be quite complex, but I am hoping to do it in one vote. I will probably start trying to prepate a draft ballot this weekend, so that people can then comment on it. I would tentatively hope to have the vote around the middle of next week. Of course, we all know about the best laid plans, and all that.

[]If Jn meant it differently, hopefully she'll speak up.[/i]

I guess I do feel that we are losing sight of the primary distinction that I intended here.

Courtesy, respect, etc. - these are goals, but their absence is often a matter of perception. I do not want to have to hold a hearing every time someone has cause to raise their eyebrows.

Targetting someone's nationality, or race, or gender, or sexual orientation, etc. is qualitatively different, and not a matter of perception, and enforceable by edit and justifiably enforcable by hearing if it persists. If someone uses the N word repeatedly I want them banned.Because we are not a white supremicist board and I don't want that propaganda entering here. That is different from having a discussion about race relations in the U.S. where contrary opinions as to causes and solutions are held, even though the issue might be quite emotional for some of us.

If someone wants to argue that Jews control the media in the U.S. - I won't like to hear it, I may suspect them of prejudice - but I will certainly square off with them and demand evidence and argue to the contrary. But if they call me a kike, then I want them banned. See?

edited for clarity: one slur might be corrected by an admin and if it does not recur, fine. But to repeatedly refer to Jews as kikes after being told this is not in character with the board, then I want to be able to ban them.

I guess I'm having trouble understanding why other people are having trouble understanding this distinction. If someone can propose the wording that would make this clear to everyone, I would appreciate it.

Maybe we can say "You have the right not to be defamed by means of religion, etc. " because it is really defamation that we are talking about, not comments whose motivation is questionable because the phrasing is unclear.

Jn

Thanks, Jn. I think it will be easier for people to focus their comments once I've prepared a draft ballot for review. But on the other hand, I need people's comments before I can draft a ballot.

Well, I'm sorry to say I've definitely lost my grip on the current discussions/situation.

Is it the case, that we are proceeding in the usual way with the discussions of Penalties and Member Rights?

Is it the case that our deliberations here are not contingent either in result or time-frame on some kind of binding or non-binding poll (multiple ids) being undertaken in the Business Forum?

Voronwe, which of these discussions did you say would have to wait for the other to conclude before continuing?

Just want to say that I've read but have nothing to add at this point.

I'm of Jny's view with regard to offence vs defamation. Would be good to keep the distinction.

Would also like to back Din's argument that we should strive for simple broad guidelines for courteous behaviour, with only a few specific, enforcable clauses if their exclusion would result in loop holes for discourtesy.

Cerin wrote:

Is it the case, that we are proceeding in the usual way with the discussions of Penalties and Member Rights?

Yes.

Quote:

Is it the case that our deliberations here are not contingent either in result or time-frame on some kind of binding or non-binding poll (multiple ids) being undertaken in the Business Forum?

Mostly yes. If a non-binding poll is set up in the business forum on multiple ids I will probably delay the beginning of the vote on member's rights until that poll has ended, to make sure the committee members have an opportunity to consider that poll in voting here. However, the part of the member's rights ballot on multiple IDs will likely not follow that poll exactly, since we will not be limited by the poll feature. It will likely be the run-off type vote that Jn has used so successfully before. And, for instance, it will have an option for having secondary IDs withou an asterisk whether or not that option is included in the business forum poll, since that is the option I favor.

Quote:

Voronwe, which of these discussions did you say would have to wait for the other to conclude before continuing?

The offenses requiring a penalty vote will have to come after the member's rights vote because we will have to see whether member's have a right to secondary ID's before we determine what penalties are available for having and/or abusing secondary ID's.

I hope that helps clear things up.

I like Jnyusa's distinction. Slurs should be immediately actionable.


Is "Republican" a slur?

IdylleSeethes wrote:

Is "Republican" a slur?

Yes.