[han]

jtfanclub, on Mar 26 2008, 11:28 PM, said:

Let's get things straight here.

Han posted a thread.
Jilly posted a one liner saying she considered it offensive.
Han had the title changed.

This is incorrect, I did not.

[luke warm]

awm, on Mar 27 2008, 01:44 PM, said:

Advances in communication (internet, cell phones) and transportation (it is much easier to drive long distances in modern cars) have meant that many of us don't really interact socially with our neighbors to often.

and don't forget the "advances" in the nuclear family since the '50s, most especially in the dad's input into discipline (and boy do i remember some input)

[jtfanclub]

han, on Mar 27 2008, 03:45 PM, said:

jtfanclub, on Mar 26 2008, 11:28 PM, said:

Let's get things straight here.

Han posted a thread.
Jilly posted a one liner saying she considered it offensive.
Han had the title changed.

This is incorrect, I did not.

So....your title was changed without your permission? My mistake.

Hmmm, that kinda changes how I feel about this.

I really don't like the mods changing things without discussing it with the person who posted it first. Only in very rare cases (like publishing credit card numbers) do I think the mods should legislate, rather than moderate.

[jillybean]

jtfanclub, on Mar 27 2008, 04:09 PM, said:

han, on Mar 27 2008, 03:45 PM, said:

jtfanclub, on Mar 26 2008, 11:28 PM, said:

Let's get things straight here.

Han posted a thread.
Jilly posted a one liner saying she considered it offensive.
Han had the title changed.

This is incorrect, I did not.

So....your title was changed without your permission? My mistake.

Hmmm, that kinda changes how I feel about this.

I really don't like the mods changing things without discussing it with the person who posted it first. Only in very rare cases (like publishing credit card numbers) do I think the mods should legislate, rather than moderate.

Mine too was edited but the difference being that Hans title was replaced with a rather witty one while mine was replaced with "edited by Uday" with the message "stds are lower in the watercooler. title edited"

Now thats cute!

[finally17]

sceptic, on Mar 27 2008, 03:18 PM, said:

Quote

A moderator changed the title's thread without her permission.
Said moderator started this thread as a result of her "offensive" title.

I am curious, why does he need her permission, are we not his guests and should he not set the standards he wants, is he not the one that makes this place possible and we should respect his level of control, one which I personally feel he does well, I respect him even more for asking our opinion

brown nosing session over, (I just want my warn level reduced )

I don't care who owns the space, there are still lots of good reasons censorship should be avoided as much as possible.

[Elianna]

If people wouldn't get upset when they are reminded that they are adults and can express themselves in an intelligent, rounded manner and shouldn't needlessly use profanity as a crutch for lack of linguistic ability then "the world would be a better place" (quoting the post above).

[jocdelevat]

my 2cents here:
1. I'm surprised by Han who got caught with something like this. He is one of the posters with no blah blah or nonsense. Always well thought posts.(sometimes even funny)
2. if the title is good for water cooler should be good for any other section of this forum.
3. I cannot see how and adult can be offended by that expression except if his kid is reading the bridge section however the kid can read the water cooler too. I can see the damage done to a kid that red that title then go to school and tell his teacher that. (thinking is right reading from a site his parent let him).
4. I think the expression as a contraexmple to the title like "How big are your tits" is offending even in water cooler.
5. the title of poster is well know expression even in dictionaries translated as courage even if it is categorize as a vulgar slang. In the specific post was no doubt about the meanning.
6. if the poster said sorry and was for the first time then we should be ok and forget about.
7. too much noise for a little thing. noone is perfect.

[matmat]

personally, every thread title on this forum offends me :/

[kenberg]

In this long discussion of balls, no one has mentioned that "having the balls to bid a slam" is not so much offensive as it is ludicrous. Your typical bridge player, even if s/he bids imaginative slams on light values, does not greatly resemble Clint Eastwood. Not that I have ever seen Mr. Eastwood's balls, but as a representative of the macho image, I guess he will suffice. The mind reels at Mr. Eastwood glowering: Choose your lead, punk. Do you feel lucky?

[uday]

Quote

I think some profanities actually suit some situations

Sure.

"Finish your milk, you little Fxxx, or I'll kick you across the room!"
"What do you mean, incurable, you Fxxxxxx quack!"


But the situations we really care about here involve exchanging thoughts and ideas with people of varying ages, cultural backgrounds, and sensibilities.

Let us suppose that our larger goal isn't to stand & spout with no-one listening, but to engage in intelligent discourse with as many people as possible. Isn't it possible, even likely, that a gentler approach is more likely to achieve that goal?

[helene_t]

uday, on Mar 29 2008, 07:53 PM, said:

Isn't it possible, even likely, that a gentler approach is more likely to achieve that goal?

I don't think so, IMHO if nothing could be written that might annoy someone then it would be a boring site, as Sceptic puts it.

There are plenty of posts here that annoy me and maybe a few posters whom I would prefer to see leaving the site. But it's not like I would favor any formal rules to get rid of those. After all, this site was not made specifically to please me so I am happy that the wast majority of the posts do please me. And the rest I can just ignore.

[luke warm]

uday, on Mar 29 2008, 01:53 PM, said:

Quote

I think some profanities actually suit some situations

Sure.

"Finish your milk, you little Fxxx, or I'll kick you across the room!"
"What do you mean, incurable, you Fxxxxxx quack!"


But the situations we really care about here involve exchanging thoughts and ideas with people of varying ages, cultural backgrounds, and sensibilities.

Let us suppose that our larger goal isn't to stand & spout with no-one listening, but to engage in intelligent discourse with as many people as possible. Isn't it possible, even likely, that a gentler approach is more likely to achieve that goal?

frankly, as (i think it was) helene said, i'm far more offended by people who try to argue a point but constantly do so fallaciously ... especially the ad hominem remarks

i do think using profanity simply hoping to offend someone is wrong, or immature, but it would have to be fairly vicious (and repeated) before i'd personally consider censorship

[inquiry]

Not sure we have settled much in this thread about what the standards are.

For one thing, the water cooler standards are much less than the other forums. There are profanities in this thread that would never stand in the other forums. We could establish automatic filters that change profanity words to something else, so for example if you typed in *****, it would change it to fiddlesticks (or what ever we wanted). This is something I (we?) have avoided.

But one standard that hasn't changed is personal attacks. Uday and I were both sent a message about one user using ******** to represent another user and attack them by proxy. Uday and I did nothing about it. Yesterday the person meant by the ******** responded, and today the original poster responded to the response. What ever our standards are, that crossed the line. The original person who sent the complaint was probably right. Uday or I should have acted yesterday to edit/remove the first post. We didn't. I have thus deleted all three of those post, as that is NOT THE type of communication these forums are designed for. So at least we have established a new standard.. attacks by proxy will be treated the same as attacks by using the real names in the future.

While we are on the subject, Uday edited one title in the normal forums, I edited han's, because at least two people objected to it. Perhaps i shouldn't have editted, but I didn't think the discussion in that thread should be rather "balls" was appropriate or not, i thought it should be about the interesting problem. The balls issue was hijacking that thread. Discuss it here is fine.

On the balls issues, it sounds like the majority is not offended or does not find it objectionable. I happen to fall into that group. But the question is not does the majority find it objectionable, it should be how many people might find it objectionable and if some number do, should it be allowed. Is one complaint enough (I don't edit things i don't find objectionable or at least highly questionable on one complaint), two? three? And should we wait for complaints? I mean if it takes three days for three complaints to come in, what is the point of censoring it then? This is where I think the discussion in this thread should go.. most of us will accept that "do you have the balls" will not upset the majority of forum readers, but we also know it will be objectionable to at least some. Q.E.D. So.. the question is when the "fun" of the many outweighs the "discomfort" of the few.

[blackshoe]

Some years ago, I was involved in a project to develop "filters" for certain online forums that were designed for school kids, on the theory that kids should not be exposed to certain words. The project failed. There were a number of reasons, but part of it was that once folks got a few filters for the more obvious words, they started asking for filters on considerably less obvious words. I don't remember specifics - it was 15 years ago, at least - but the point is that this kind of censorship doesn't work.

As for editing posts, you might want to look at this post in another forum.

[helene_t]

blackshoe, on Mar 29 2008, 11:49 PM, said:

Some years ago, I was involved in a project to develop "filters" for certain online forums that were designed for school kids, on the theory that kids should not be exposed to certain words.

I never understood the theory that it is harmful to children to be exposed to display of certain body parts or reproductive behavior. Racism, violence and pseudoscience ok but sex? What harm could that possibly do?

Anyway, those filters are a complete joke. A friend of mine working for a dentistry clinic says that the clinic has huge problems with emails being filtered because of the word "oral".

[inquiry]

blackshoe, on Mar 29 2008, 05:49 PM, said:

Some years ago, I was involved in a project to develop "filters" for certain online forums .... (SNIP)

As for editing posts, you might want to look at this post in another forum.

Well, I agree that filters don't work... filter out Viagra and you get v1agra, Vi@gra, etc.... not to mention the problems helene mentioned.

The law's page doesn't say what their standards are. They say, that their policy is "to not edit other people's posts except in very rare circumstances."

They do not state what those circumstances are.

They claim that if they edit a post: they will indicating who did so.

Generally we do too. I add an "edited by inquiry" thingee if I edit a post. Titles that are edited do not have that little "editted by" thing. I also usually say in the text what I changed...

They say, "if a post is considered inappropriate here, we may remove it, but that's a different thing. Usually when we do so we will PM the original poster explaining the reason for the action."

That is also true for us. I didn't send a private message to the two authors I deleted post in this thread, but I did talk about it at legnth in the post above.

They have 29,391 post and 1,325 registered members, we have
267689 posts and 5802 registered members

As far as I can tell, they are not a for profit site, I pretty sure Fred and UDay are trying to make money.

The number of members, the sheer volume of post, and the nature of the site (not for profit, and a web-based support for a for profit products like BBO software and games played on bbo itself), suggest different rules might be appropriate.

As it is, out of more than a quarter of a million post, very few have been editted, deleted. WE have 84 deleted threads... the last was sceptics "Should we cull the Human race" (since he already mentioned it in this thread, i will mention it) that was posted on and deleted on Feb 3. Many of the deleted threads dealt with purchasing viagra, or some other spam stuff before we instituted a way to stop those. (examples, "buy new cars", "Im looking for mail friends", "Warning! Anyone can peep at sites you visit! ", "Losing weight has never been so easy!
phentermine online", "need a home equity loan? "). Of the ones posted by real members, some were crazy things... most dealt with calling someone or the other a cheat. One went over the top on the incident at tenerife, one was by a person banned on the bbo and he went off on everything related to bbo. In addition, several threads were started by BBO yellows.. fred, uday, rain, gweny, have all got some in there. When we deleted a forum that wasn't used.. the post in that went in... By my count, of the 84 threads deleted, a bundle of them in the deleted dutch forum that didn't work... .it was eventually removed for lack of activity. Only 26 post by real bbo members were deleted for being objectional (as opposed to out of date). And most were really objectional, ones like would world peace occur if all members of one religion where killed overnight. Or what women like, going into sexually explicit examples.

Ben

[luke warm]

i believe ben is about as good a moderator as there can be for a forum such as this... unfortunately, he doesn't have the time (or probably the inclination) to spend all his time here

[blackshoe]

inquiry, on Mar 29 2008, 07:32 PM, said:

The law's page doesn't say what their standards are. They say, that their policy is "to not edit other people's posts except in very rare circumstances."

They do not state what those circumstances are.

They claim that if they edit a post: they will indicating who did so.

Generally we do too. I add an "edited by inquiry" thingee if I edit a post. Titles that are edited do not have that little "editted by" thing. I also usually say in the text what I changed...

They say, "if a post is considered inappropriate here, we may remove it, but that's a different thing. Usually when we do so we will PM the original poster explaining the reason for the action."

That is also true for us. I didn't send a private message to the two authors I deleted post in this thread, but I did talk about it at legnth in the post above.

They have 29,391 post and 1,325 registered members, we have
267689 posts and 5802 registered members

As far as I can tell, they are not a for profit site, I pretty sure Fred and UDay are trying to make money.

Perhaps I should have been more clear. I wrote that post. "They" would be David Stevenson and I, for the IBLF. The site belongs to someone else ("Bridgeaddict" :-)).

In the end, the success of any online forum depends on several things. It depends on the site managers to provide interesting content, or at least a place for members to provide interesting content. It depends on the members to treat each other courteously. And it depends on trust. Trust by management that members will, in general, behave, and trust by members that management will not act capriciously in ensuring that they do.

In general, I don't have a problem with the way BBO is handling things, so don't think I'm criticizing. I'm not. I was simply trying to point out what another site — one I happen to help manage — is doing in the same area. If you guys don't think it'll work for you, that's your call.

[finally17]

inquiry, on Mar 29 2008, 05:11 PM, said:

But the question is not does the majority find it objectionable, it should be how many people might find it objectionable and if some number do, should it be allowed. Is one complaint enough (I don't edit things i don't find objectionable or at least highly questionable on one complaint), two? three? And should we wait for complaints? I mean if it takes three days for three complaints to come in, what is the point of censoring it then? This is where I think the discussion in this thread should go.. most of us will accept that "do you have the balls" will not upset the majority of forum readers, but we also know it will be objectionable to at least some. Q.E.D. So.. the question is when the "fun" of the many outweighs the "discomfort" of the few.

I agree completely. In fact, I said something very similar a few posts back:

Quote

Now, since there are always people who take things to extremes, a list of things that are considered unacceptable shouldn't be generated by asking the question "does anyone have a problem with this" but rather something like "do a reasonable percentage (whatever that is) of reasonable people (however we define that) have a problem with this."

But I'm not at all certain time should have anything to do with it. If it's been up for 3 days, and you reach a complaint threshold at that point, strike it. The fact that people choose not to be reactionary and complain in large numbers, quickly and largely, doesn't mean problem statements should remain in perpetuity.

[jillybean]

inquiry, on Mar 29 2008, 03:11 PM, said:

Not sure we have settled much in this thread about what the standards are.

For one thing, the water cooler standards are much less than the other forums. There are profanities in this thread that would never stand in the other forums. We could establish automatic filters that change profanity words to something else, so for example if you typed in *****, it would change it to fiddlesticks (or what ever we wanted). This is something I (we?) have avoided.

Im still not clear if this discussion is about standards for the WC, the main forum or both?

The WC has become the place to let things fly so I think add R18 rating warning and let people go at it, those who don’t like it can avoid it.