[hrothgar]

I'm afraid I don't understand the point in locking the thread titled

"Just the facts, "we did not vote for bush" answers"

This is one of the few threads where we are actually getting specific information from principals involved in the "Shanghai Incident". Personally, I question the Rosenburg's decision to publicly post in this type of forum. (I think that making these types of statements are dangerous during litigation. In a similar vein, I don't think that the USBF BoD's decision to post a statement regarding damages was well advised).

Be that as it may, making this type of information available is valuable to the BBO community and I don't think that locking thread is an appropriate response.

I will note in passing that many people on this forum have been directly criticizing the USBF Board for taking an activist position in an ongoing controversy. Selective locking and editting threads is very similar to this same behavior.

[jonottawa]

I made a post. Uday deleted it without explanation. I won't repeat the content here, lest he delete it again, but it was 100% appropriate, by anybody's standards, imo. I have yet to receive a public or private explanation.

[blackshoe]

I think it was appropriate to lock the "just the facts" thread. Otherwise it gets cluttered with stuff that doesn't fit the thread title.

regarding jon's reply here, please see http://forums.bridge...showtopic=22368

[uday]

I locked the thread to allow it to present one side of the dispute without the primary message of the thread being flooded by posts that agree or disagree with what they did.

In my judgment that best served our community.

It is easy enough for someone to create a new thread and avoid cluttering another thread.

I actively want BBO to avoid taking any position on this entireissue.

Threads need to be civil, etc etc and occasionally I feel the need to step in to ensure that.

I have no interest in blocking viewpoints, only in blocking viewpoints that are expressed in such a way that they disrupt our community by the nature of their presentation.

To sum that up: i'm shooting for "moderation", not "censorship." Say what you wish, but say it nicely.

Uday

[jonottawa]

I quoted another post (a paragraph I objected to) and typed:

?????




I would have previously typed something explaining my objection, but apparently my tone makes certain people's heads explode and so in a good-faith effort to 'play nice' I left it at that.

Does anyone else feel it's appropriate to start deleting posts like that or locking down threads because of that?

[han]

Yes I think that blocking the "facts" thread was very sensible. I was thinking about replying in that thread but decided not to for the same reason that Uday blocked it. I'm surprised you thought it wise to respond in that thread.

[jonottawa]

The paragraph I objected to was the very last sentence of this post.

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...ndpost&p=236343

[kenrexford]

jonottawa, on Nov 18 2007, 04:06 PM, said:

The paragraph I objected to was the very last sentence of this post.

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...ndpost&p=236343

We agree!!!

[jonottawa]

kenrexford, on Nov 18 2007, 09:10 PM, said:

jonottawa, on Nov 18 2007, 04:06 PM, said:

The paragraph I objected to was the very last sentence of this post.

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...ndpost&p=236343

We agree!!!

Christ, now someone's hacking into kenrexford's account. There's a post saying he agrees with me about something!

[mrdct]

Seems a strange decision to me.

The "just the facts" thread looked like it had good potential to explore some new ground.

So far as I could see nothing rude or inappropriate had been posted (although any such postings may already have been deleted by a moderator of course).

I am somewhat alarmed at Uday's update to his "hoof and mouth disease" thread that he is posting all over the place:

uday said:

update: Nov 18
I will casually toss out stuff that I think is detrimental to the larger purpose of the discussion groups. Flames. Noise. Attacks. Thread hijacking.

If these threads are going to be censored, I would hope that the moderator wouldn't be doing so "casually".

[jonottawa]

Anyway, this is much ado about nothing provided it doesn't happen again.

Edit: Just read Dave's post above and this doesn't look like much ado about nothing at all. Fred, please weigh in ASAP.

Uday, next time please give me the benefit of the doubt. Thanks.

Fred, if you think my post was worth deleting, or even came close, please say so here. Thanks.

I'm gonna go work out. Catch y'all later.

[fred]

jonottawa, on Nov 18 2007, 09:17 PM, said:

Anyway, this is much ado about nothing provided it doesn't happen again.

Edit: Just read Dave's post above and this doesn't look like much ado about nothing at all.  Fred, please weigh in ASAP.

Uday, next time please give me the benefit of the doubt.  Thanks.

Fred, if you think my post was worth deleting, or even came close, please say so here.  Thanks.

I'm gonna go work out.  Catch y'all later.

Jon,

I have not seen the posts that Uday deleted, I do not know the order in which they were deleted, and I do not know which deleted posts were innocent victims of Uday trying to shut down the thread in what sounds like a less than optimal way (from a software point of view I mean).

However, I have enough confidence in Uday that I do not need to know. I trust his judgment. In fact, I have no doubt that he is better at dealing with obnoxious posters than I do.

If I thought Uday made a mistake I would tell him about it privately. Your childish attempt to drive a wedge between me and Uday concerning a completely trivial issue is not going to work. Do you think I really care that your stupid question marks got deleted?

Now please listen to this:

Intentionally or not you manage to offend a lot of people.

That causes problems for us.

We do not like to prevent people from posting in Forums, especially people like you who seem to have a lot of time on their hands for posting and a lot of interesting things to say.

But when we receive daily complaints about a particular contributor (as we do with you) there is only so long we can put up with it. Whatever benefit that our membership gains from your non-inflammatory posts is not sufficient to make up for the time we waste fielding complaints about your inflammatory posts.

From my (perhaps biased) point of view, a clear majority of the posts you make could be reasonably be considered to be inflammatory. That is too much.

So please try a little harder to control yourself and please stop asking for my opinions on things. If I feel like I have something to say about an issue I will say it. I do not need you to put me on the spot whenever it suits the convenience of the point you are trying to make.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[kenrexford]

LOL!

So, Fred should be required to give a top ten list for favorite posters each day, and bottom ten, and honorable mentions?

[Aberlour10]

I would like to suggest to keep the locked thread "artifical" at the top of the Water Cooler for a moment. I think the content is important for the "new" people(user) who want to overlook this case and a discussion about it. Otherwise it will disappear very fast at site 2 or 3.

Robert

[jonottawa]

fred, on Nov 18 2007, 09:51 PM, said:

jonottawa, on Nov 18 2007, 09:17 PM, said:

Anyway, this is much ado about nothing provided it doesn't happen again.

Edit: Just read Dave's post above and this doesn't look like much ado about nothing at all.  Fred, please weigh in ASAP.

Uday, next time please give me the benefit of the doubt.  Thanks.

Fred, if you think my post was worth deleting, or even came close, please say so here.  Thanks.

I'm gonna go work out.  Catch y'all later.

Jon,

I have not seen the posts that Uday deleted, I do not know the order in which they were deleted, and I do not know which deleted posts were innocent victims of Uday trying to shut down the thread in what sounds like a less than optimal way (from a software point of view I mean).

However, I have enough confidence in Uday that I do not need to know. I trust his judgment. In fact, I have no doubt that he is better at dealing with obnoxious posters than I do.

If I thought Uday made a mistake I would tell him about it privately. Your childish attempt to drive a wedge between me and Uday concerning a completely trivial issue is not going to work. Do you think I really care that your stupid question marks got deleted?

Now please listen to this:

Intentionally or not you manage to offend a lot of people.

That causes problems for us.

We do not like to prevent people from posting in Forums, especially people like you who seem to have a lot of time on their hands for posting and a lot of interesting things to say.

But when we receive daily complaints about a particular contributor (as we do with you) there is only so long we can put up with it. Whatever benefit that our membership gains from your non-inflammatory posts is not sufficient to make up for the time we waste fielding complaints about your inflammatory posts.

From my (perhaps biased) point of view, a clear majority of the posts you make could be reasonably be considered to be inflammatory. That is too much.

So please try a little harder to control yourself and please stop asking for my opinions on things. If I feel like I have something to say about an issue I will say it. I do not need you to put me on the spot whenever it suits the convenience of the point you are trying to make.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Fred,

I agree that my posts, while universally well within the rules of engagement here, tend to provoke people. If you had privately asked me to cool it, explaining that your time (or Uday's time, or whoever's time) is being wasted, I would have been happy to do so. This is the first I've heard of daily complaints, I presume you must have found them groundless.

Instead, a completely innocuous post of mine is deleted by Uday. Without explanation or warning. Other subsequent posts are allowed to stay in the thread, unless they reference my missing post. That's just not cool. I suspect you know that.

If you think I'm trying to 'drive a wedge' between you and Uday, you are mistaken. He's been with you through the lean years, working for very little or nothing, as I understand it, and you guys are probably good friends. Whereas you barely know me.

I'll post significantly less here, if only to save you guys the trouble of responding to my fan club. I would like to ask you a small favor:

Could you please let me have my Leniency Petition thread back? I don't like the petition being run under an anti-USBF banner when it's not an anti-USBF petition. The other thread can be deleted or can merely be allowed to drop off the recent threads page like all other old threads. I don't care which.

Thank-you.

P.S. How's Sheri? I haven't heard her name since the Bill Gates announcement. I hope she's well, please send her my regards.

[jtfanclub]

jonottawa, on Nov 18 2007, 08:27 PM, said:

I agree that my posts, while universally well within the rules of engagement here, tend to provoke people.

Actually, they go far outside the rules.

One of the rules here is that you can attack people for what they wrote in the forums here, but you cannot google the Internet to attack them for what they've said or done elsewhere, nor can you publish information about them that they have chosen not to reveal here. While I don't care about the Bulletin thing (and told Uday as much), you have repeatedly brought people's personal lives into the forums, and for somebody who presumes to accuse others of bad 'Netiquette', I have to think that you'd know better.

But then, if your actual purpose here is simply to disrupt the forums as much as possible, using personal information not posted here is probably the best way to do it.

[jonottawa]

jffanclub:

This is a bridge forum. You posted your name and I posted a link to an article that you submitted to the Daily Bulletin, a bridge publication. That you would take offense to that or say anything to Uday about it at all speaks for itself.

When someone googled me and found out I was involved in a hearing against Unit 192 almost 10 years ago (a significantly more controversial type of thing than just posting a link to an article) did I complain? No. I said (paraphrasing) 'start up a thread and I'll be happy to discuss it with you but let's not hijack this thread with this topic.'

I sure didn't run to Uday about it.

[jtfanclub]

jonottawa, on Nov 19 2007, 12:15 PM, said:

jffanclub:

This is a bridge forum. You posted your name and I posted a link to an article that you submitted to the Daily Bulletin, a bridge publication. That you would take offense to that or say anything to Uday about it at all speaks for itself.

We were discussing something else. I said I wasn't offended. I am not one of those who has complained about you to management.

Let me repeat, though, that whether it had anything to do with bridge has nothing to do with it. People here have been warned about pubishing other people's rec.games.bridge posts here. What is posted here is fair game, what is published elsewhere is not.

I didn't think the rule was so complex that it would require repeated attempts before you would understand it. My mistake.