betsybee

dawg,

Please be careful where and with whom you share the contents of the post. Even though it was posted on an open, public forum Schminner holds the copyright to it. Sharing it without his/her permission and credit "could" land you in hot-water.

There has been plenty of bad news in the arena lately let's not add to it.

peace
bb

dawg

qualifies as fair use

Conciliator

There's nothing illegal with what he's doing. His public statements are not copyrighted.

PeterB

Folks, please don't get hung up about the post. I've seen it and it's only a bit of speculation, and that's about as harmfull as a fart in the wind.

I think jambutty's intention was to keep the tension down a little and for that reason he was right to delete the post.

Let's pick up, dust off, and move on, We are doing everything we can to find the hacker who might be a 42 year old man from Mexico. I don't want to say too much here about the case but know that we are on it.

Regards
PeterB

betsybee

Sorry PeterB,

for being off-topic

I will go sit in the corner now.

Nimrod

Welcome home Mrs B,

Nimrod

jambutty

Before you start to argue semantics try to construct your sentences so that they make sense.

Your were banned and your posts offering to send the text of a post by Schiminner to anyone who wanted it and offering an email address to enable them to do so was ADVERTISING. Under the forum rules advertising is not allowed except in the folders set aside for this purpose. You have been a member of this forum long enough to know that.

Your action was circumventing a forum decision. To circumvent – to get around, evade, avoid, outwit, thwart. Look it up if you want more. Whilst you are at it look up the laws relating to copyright.

You can rant and rave and spit your dummy out all you want but it won’t get around the facts.

Conciliator

Oh man... I'm worried about the moderators here. Someone does need to contact the administrator (who is hopefully not partial to the moderators, since that means problems don't go away). Giving out your email address is "advertising"? LOL. Since when? Who's arguing semantics now (and in a silly way)? It's not dawg. Don't pretend like you had reason to ban him because he was "advertising", lol. He wasn't advertising anything. Which is why he's not banned right now. He didn't do anything wrong, except question a decision that he thought was autocratic. It's good that someone is willing to speak up when they see what they deem to be an injustice. Unfortunately, they'll often end up taking some heat for standing up to those in authority. On a fair board, moderators will say "Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree because..." and go on their way. In this case (not to say this is an unfair board), he was inappropriately banned. A number of forum members spoke out about this second injustice and the ban was fittingly reversed. I don't think an apology was ever made for the mistake, though one was in order.

Dawg wasn't circumventing anything. No one who viewed the thread would have seen the suspect post. Those who thought that Schiminner might have been dealt an unfair hand would probably have contacted dawg to read the post. If it was offensive, inappropriate, or harassing, they would see that and understand the mod's decision. And they would have no reason to be offended themselves, since they requested to see it. On the other hand, if it really wasn't something that warranted a ban, then it would just make the mod who issued the ban look heavy-handed and impetuous. I think that dawg was banned to prevent this possibility, ironically reaffirming the very thing that was sought to be obscured. This is my opinion.

I'm a moderator on a different board and you really have to exercise some restraint in this capacity. You have to be able to dissociate your subjective emotions from the objective forum rules. You have to gaurd against deciding you want to ban someone for a post that you don't like and then seeking justification by contorting the post into some tenuous violation of the rules. Unfortunately, this happens far too often. I think all moderators are guilty of it to some extent, myself included. When I catch myself doing it, I offer an apology to the person I kicked or banned and vow to myself that I'll stop for a second, cool off, and think impartially when I'm in the heat of a post that I strongly disagree with or don't like. I give myself the opportunity to make the detached decision that the post is not in any strict violation of the rules. I stop myself from banning people who I simply don't like (and who many others don't like) on many occasions. And this is because they're not egregious violators of the rules. If anything, they're pushing the bounds of propiety. And you know what, that's fine with me if I know that I'm preserving free speech (within a strict interpretation of the rules) and making the "forum" what it's supposed to be: an exchange of views... even if I hate some of them.

peterg

Hey guys
Can we leave it alone and get back on topic please ?