Censorship of Forums

[the hog]

Over the last week or so, I don't think I have ever seen a thread in a forum as censored as here. I contribute to a couple of forums, this one, rgb which is totally unmoderated, and one or two others. My personal view is that censorship of any form is odious on ethical and moral grounds. This letter however, is not "to have a go at anyone", it is simply a comment on how I feel.

 

I can understand that if a forum is run under the auspices of an organisation eg Bridge Base Forums, there has to be a form of control on the basis of libel and slander laws. I have a strong suspicion, (and that is all it is as I am not privy to what went through Ben and Uday's minds), that letters here were edited not because of legal reasons but because specific people or perhaps incidents were referred to. I realise fully that this was/is a very difficult situation, particularly for Ben who was dealing with friends, but this is not the right way to go about it.

 

Often an airing of dirty linen in public results in a flurry of acrimony which dies down relatively quickly; people have their say and then get on with their lives. This has happened frequently and continues to hapen on rgb. Censoring posts only contributes to a great deal of ill feeling on all sides as people feel they have been denied what they perceive to be their right to make a comment on a situation.

 

I don't know what the answer is. I do feel however that there should perhaps be a rethink of the role and powers of moderators. So Ben and Uday, please don't think this is a criticism of the last few days; it isn't. I sympathise with those involved in determining what gets aired and what doesn't. I do think thought that there may have been an element of the "sledgehammer and nut" approach here. Hopefully this letter will lead to some constructive comments and thoughts.

 

Cheers

Ron

[JRG]

While you have a point, there is another side (other than legal).

 

At the risk of going off on a tangent, I used to read a number of news groups on the net (this was several years ago). I stopped trying to follow unmoderated news groups fairly quickly. The reason was the signal to noise ratio. I found I simply did not have the time or patience to wade through flame wars, posts that did not add anything to a thread (my "Right on" comment from another thread here), and people asking the same questions over and over again (and the responses that kept saying RTFM or read the FAQ, or both).

 

One news group that I followed much longer than any other was comp.risks.<something or other>. It was moderated, in fact heavily moderated.

 

I find the BBO Forums very lightly moderated, for the most part, yet I find the noise level acceptable. That makes me think the degree of censorship must be acceptable (I'll admit you can make the point that since I don't see what is censored, how can I make such a judgement).

 

Even if flame-wars and noise tend to die out, I don't have the patience, and don't want my time wasted, trying to wade through it. While I am saying "I don't...", my suspicion is that there are many others that feel the way I do.

 

It seems to me that Ben and Uday tend to allow a certain amount of blowing off steam to occur, and then clamp down on threads. It's clearly censorship of a kind, but it seems reasonable to me -- a few posts establish that there is friction or a religious issue but it is stopped before it simply turns into a flame war. Also, some of the stuff posted to unmoderated news groups (and I image bulletin boards or forums) goes beyond what most people consider socially acceptable behaviour.

 

I'm not sure what the best answer is, but clearly I prefer moderated forums.

[mishovnbg]

 

---------------------------------------

Hi Ron!

 

 

------

I don't like any censorship of any kind, simple because soon or late all truth comes to surface, most of time more worse than it was and backfire is normally terrible. But I really respect Ben and know him as partner better than most of people in BBO, somebody joke you know partner better than wife. I he decide to do it, it really need! I think Ben hate his job more than you can imagine Ron... Uday is a programmer, not an lawyer and for him such job is really adverse too. The only problem is in any community somebody need to do this unthankful job.

 

------

Thank you Ben for your efforts to keep peace in our BBO community! Thank you friend for keeping posts in forum far from personal insults and attaks! Thank you Ben for sacrificing so much of your private right to be affected by friends and try to be helpfull for all. Thank you Ben!

 

-------------------------------------------

Misho

[the hog]

Hi Misho,

I agree with what you say. I will repeat here in case this was misunderstood. Please read carefully:

 

This was NOT a criticism of Ben and Uday in ANY way. - Read and take note, Ben and Uday.

 

I too like Ben, (when he agrees with my bids anyway), and I totally sympathise with how hard Uday's, but especially Ben's job has been over the last few days. However I still feel that maybe there was a better way. For example the threats to delete a thread are very heavy handed.

 

I don't know the answers either. My original post was an attempt to get some rational discussion going over what the roles of a moderator and the policies of a forum like this one should be.

 

Cheers

Ron

[Rain]

I believe in what Ben/Uday are doing...

 

Like what John says, people post "noise", things slightly off-topic. While this is acceptable in most other threads, sometimes what gets posted is deemed too sensitive, and Ben has to step in...(well, moderators, but Ben's the coolest!)

 

What constitutes a "sensitive" topic? Subjective to be sure, but probably nothing that inflamatory, nothing degaratory, racist, etc? Of course, anyone posting such stuff will not just have their post deleted, but also be warned or banned.

 

 

Rain

[mikestar]

The term "censorship" is being misused a bit here. BBO is a private organization, not a government; nor is anyone editing posts for fear of government sanctions.

 

The editing that is done here may be well or ill advised, and I may or may not like it or agree with it, but it isn't censorship: legally it is no different than my insisting that guests at a party in my home do not discuss politics and religion at the party--though they are totally free to discuss these things in public.

 

Libel and slander are are another question--it is settled law in the US and most countries that asserting "John Doe is a bridge cheat" (or any other odious thing) in a context where it is likely to be believed is not protected speech unless it is true--and the burden of proving truth is (in practice) on the speaker.

[uday]

I'm not a big believer in censorship either, but I don't see an alternative sometimes. I have (very) rarely edited threads by others. For the most part, I do this bec. the alternatives are (imo) simply worse.

 

It isnt that I think conflict is always unhealthy. Some conflicts just don't belong on a bridge site ( like, say, a discussion of an ongoing war in the Arctic)

 

One rule that I stand by is that no user has a right to say something that will cause harm to another user. Yes, sometimes this means that I edit a post out when I am mistaken in the degree of harm that might be caused.

 

I offer time to BBO not because it is the last place on the planet where we can express any opinion freely, but because i want it to continue as a safe nice place to play bridge. The latter is more important to me than supporting abstract principles of freedom of speech that might conflict with other rights (like the right to play and discuss bridge without inflammatory digressions).

 

I'm sure you'll let us know if you think we're being too heavy handed in our attempts. I am grateful to Inquiry for his efforts to keep the forums flame-free.

[csdenmark]

Nobody need to allow anybody to post. If you are an owner of a media you have the right to decide who, what and how to post. This means you always have an option to deny a post to be published.

 

If you grant a general right to post and a post has been made it is protected from censorship. You can argue against, you can encourage the author to modify or redraw the post and you can sue the author but you have no rights to modify a post arbitrarely. Only the court can decide and the author have the appeal rights within judicial system - last appeal is The Human Rights Court.

 

In Denmark such is protected in the basic law for state.

[inquiry]

To JRG, Misho, Rain, Uday, thanks for the kind words of support.

 

The rest of the message I direct not only to Ron and Klaus, but the others of you that have posted in different threads that hiding the "truth" by deleting and editing post is wrong, and especially to those of you who are so kind to send me private messages telling me that my actions are examples of the worse kind of censorship.

 

When I got the job of moderator, what wonderful resume did I use? None. I got it becasue for some unexplained reason, I come here often and post, and post and post. John had put a call for moderators several times, and I ignored it. Why? Becasue I didn't think I wanted to do it, and I didn't think I would be good at it. Somewhere around the time I hit 800 post or so, I got a message asking me to be a moderator. I think it was because it almost seemed that I was the only person posting, so it made sense for me to be the moderator, becaue it woud mean I could just moderate myself.... In an explained fit of temporary insanity, I agreed.

 

There was no instruction manual, and precisous little advise when I started on what the job involved and how to make decisions. Having never posted on line before this site, I didn't know much about how forums operated, but I have seen flamewars, and know I don't like them. So what did I do? I read the rules of this site. It is a simple document. I tried to let it guide my action by the rules stated there. And i taught myself how to use the software so I could be a source of information if people asked question. But, tor the record, I have recieved no formal instructions from anyone on what I can or can not do or what I should or should not delete. Well, that isn't quite accurate, there was one post I was worried about, not sure what I should do about so I sent Fred an PM about it. His reply, was somthing like he give us a lot of independence and he would leave it up to me. If I remember correctly, that became the first post I ever "edited" using powers granted to me by the site. I informed the author of my edit, and why, but I did not make the edit public, as I wasn't sure if there would be a stigma attached to my editing a post.... And you know Ron, I believe that post was yours, and I know we have had private messages about censorship a number of times.

 

As rain points out, vulgar post are easy, they are gone. When someone "loses it" and post a rambling rant, it goes too... But then there are post like happened this week. For these post, I look no further than the first rule of this site, that states, in part. You will not engage in conduct or post any material that is defamatory, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy

 

Wow, that is some list. Ok vulgar, and sexual I would think are easy. But even vulgar/sexual oriented draws fire, there was a very funny post (I laughed too) that was a play on words that meant a sex act, that I deleted at once. In my minds eye, it could easily be intrepet by some one, especially women, as vulgar, and there was NO DOUBT WHATEVER it was sexually oriented. It was, after all purely a sex joke, plain and simple. Did it bother me? No. Did I think it was funny, yes. Do I think that 95%+ of all readers (adult) would find it funny? Sure. Could someone be offended by reading it? Yes, I know people who would have been offended, and if you are teaching your 12 year old to play bridge, would you expect to have to check a bridge site to make sure it is "clean enough for them" to read? And that one, I think was the second time we discussed censorship. And again this time I had "no sense of humor" and I was "too heavy handed". You had fair support protesting my actions from others who found it funny. But to me, again, it was clear cut, even if not vulgar, it was clearly sexually oriented. An I would try not use my standard of vulgar anyway, I am a dirty old man... so I mine would not be the best to use for a community as a whole, so I try to guess what others would find vulgar. Forunately, this has not been a common problem.

 

Abusive and defamatory language is again easily defined for me. But what is harassing and invasion of privacy? This is where I have the most problems, both identifying and dealing with, as a lot of stuff is very close or over the edge on these two. A case in point is the recent post about unwanted kibitzing. I edited the names of the "unwanted" kibitizer out of the body of the message. Why, the point was about they shouldnot be allowed if they are unwanted. This should be posed and could have been posed as a general question, but instead it included mentioning the individuals involved, a specific case. Since the post works just as well without mentioning the people involved as it did mentioning them, this edit did not change the message. But importantly, I considered the use of names an invasion of the privacy of the people mentioned and as potentially harassing remark as well. This explains my edit. The author publically thanked me for the edits the next day, so I would say I take that as evidence I did the right thing.

 

Then there is the thread with ALL the edits that is being complained about in the original post in this thread. Uday, I and maybe other moderators/staff as well had to edit and delete a number of post. Basically there was a dispute, but as Uday wisely said, this forum was not the place to discuss the specfics. Despite this, time and time again people tried to sneak in the material that the very least would be an invasion of the privacy of one side of the dispute, and at the worse was could be seen as hateful or harassing. Trying to maintain a sense of order without being heavy handed was not an easy task, nor one that I would have chosen to take on, as I found myself editing and deleting post by my friends who where tying to support other of my friends. A very awkward position indeed.

 

However, I and everybody else should have realized that if calm could be maintained, it might be possible for bridges to be mended or new bridges to be built. It was my personal opinion, being close to some of the issues in that thread, if things could cool down a bit, maybe the purpose of the thread could be achieved. I felt then, and still feel today that if material UDAY and I edited/deleted had been left intact, those post and the new ones generate in support or rebuttal to those post would have made the situation worse, and a resolution would never have been acheivable. So Ron, like when I delete the sexual joke, I will take the heat thrown at me and uday for our actions here as well (and directed towards me it was as hot as two rats trapped together in a wool sock in the middle of a desert at high noon in the summer because many of my friends make comments along the line of Ron's, just in private).

 

Since this is an open letter, let me reassure the community, and Ron, that I don't take editing or deleting post lightly. But I will also admit that I am flying blind here. I have no, none, zip, special training for this task (well i did go through a company manditated sexual awareness training, but that was just silly). So I use my best judgment and hope I get more right than I miss. Seems some people think I am doing ok (but then again, they don't see what I choose to delete), and others think I am too heavy handed (they usually don't see either, but they assume any "censorship" is bad). This may surpise you, but I agree. I like free speech, but I agreed to be a moderator, and I will do my best to enforce the posted rules of the site. And to me, that means handling violations of those rules, or else why bother with having a moderator.

 

As a conscript, I am willing to step aside for anyone who thinks they are better suited for this job than I am. With that in mind, Ron, I noticed you have reached the magic 800 post mark, that makes you as qualified to be a moderator as I was when my arm was twisted. So maybe you would like to give this a try? But if you do, I think you should reread the rules of the site and see if you could agree to try to uphold them to the best of your ability. Because, that is all I have been trying to do.

 

And in closing, to the community, Ron and I and Klaus and I (and a few others who haven;t posted here yet, so I will not invade their privacy by mentioning) have discussed my censorship on several occassions. I am well aware of their feeling in this area, an I want to assure you that I did not take this as a personal attack on me, but rather as a simple difference of opinion on what policy should be. I think what they would like to see is what our members think of the edits/deletions that are done EXTREMELY sparingly. Good, bad, overdone, etc. I welcome such a discussion, so feel free to respond.. (but if I don't like what you post, I will delete it.. .hehehehe).

 

Sincerly,

Ben aka inquiry

[Rhutobello]

Just a quick one.

 

I agree totally with the form of "censorship" this site have..They both do a great job.

 

To those who advocat free postings

 

"What do you gain with open discussion with names and cases"

 

In my opinion, nothing but quarell and a lot of people who vanish from the site.

 

Have a nice day

Edvin

[Flame]

I agree , censorship should be kept to minimum possible.

[the hog]

I know Claus and I often disagree on topics, but I do think he has a point here. Maybe Ben, the "first port of call" should be with the poster him/herself. An p_message from you or Uday that the post could be construed as offensive and should be edited.

 

I realise this is not easy as you can't be on line 24/7, but is there functionality in the software that allows the moderator to "hold back" a post until he has spoken to the poster re modification?

[Rhutobello]

Maybe Ben, the "first port of call" should be with the poster him/herself. An p_message from you or Uday that the post could be construed as offensive and should be edited.

 

Well if you do..then the next poster have something to build on and the whole avalanche has started.

 

A community are for all members. We can not be so green eyed that we belive that we can solve any personal dispute in full public.

 

All we can achive is a lot of hurt feelings, click for and ageinst a case, and in the end a lot of missunderstandings.

 

No.. don't ask for it!

 

Still a nice day:)

Edvin

[inquiry]

There are post that I think are might be problematic.. in which I do contact the author and ask them to consider changing. I know I have done this with a few people, maybe total of 3 post out of the thousands and thousands I ahve read. In each case, my recollection when I pointed out my concern, the author chose to make minor correction.

 

I see this as not a workable solution for a lot of post, becasue there is a long time between finding and hearing back when I PM people. And some post simply can not be allowed. As to the question is there some way to hold post until they have be read and approved? I don't know, but that seems unworkable anyway... no delay in posting.. that is the best.. imho.

 

Ben

[csdenmark]

I have several communities under auspicies of MSN. They apply to US-standards for publication which I am not familiar with.

 

Opening a community - and you constantly have an option to modify - you must decide whether content is suitable for people below 12 years or not. You have an option to make message board edited - which I have needed to do for 1 of my communties in order to prevent spamming which has occured once before I changed settings.

 

Now I need to approve all messages to be sent out - but I also have an option to let a persons postings to be published without automatically. In this way I think I will be able to keep it clean granting all the right to post decent messages. Of course I can ban a person if somebody try repeatedly to break the rules intentionally.

 

I think this is a good way handling freedom of speech issues on internet.

[inquiry]

-----------Note... SATIRE ALERT -------------------

 

Claus.. you delted "spam", that is a violtaton of the spammer free speach and is the worse case of heavy handed censorship I have ever heard of.. Can't belive you would be braking about that...

 

-------------------End alert-----------------------------------

 

Ok. it just seems wrong to have to make the BBF a "safe zone" for children, this a place to dscuss bridge and our BBO comunity.

 

Second, how many post a day/week do you have on your board thay you ahve to deal with. This site has had 17,300+ post since late jan 2003 (bit more than a year). Can you imagine the delay required if someone had to read all those before they are posted. The apporve before post theory just will not work well this volume.

 

What have set up a "community standard" dicated by teh rule of the site, and the different moderators that helps us know what is acceptable. I might read a post and think, no problem. Rain might read and thing, no problem,. and uday may come along and read a post and go big problem. So each post is potentially reviewed several times after posted. An example was the bablefish translation posted recently. I read it and had no idea waht it said, uday read it, and deleted all of it on the spot and made commet to boot. From his comment, clearly if I had understtod it I would have done the same.

 

The solution here, seems just about right. As the number of members grow and the number of post per day increase, I can see a need for a few more moderators perhpas, but other than that, it seems to be working to me.

[Rhutobello]

Agree, in most cases when the community are small this is a nice way to go.

 

I have been around this community for a while now, and even if i don't post that much, i read a lot of it. I have managed to get a look of some of the post that have been edit, or deleted. I agein agree with the action, and i think the community have benefit from it.

 

When BBO community have made a choise in what they tolerate and what they don't, most members will work close to this terms, and some will try to stretch it a little.

 

If you on the other hand, tolerate more, there will still be those who want to stretch it a little bit more.

 

But I can still not see why it is important to discuss a case in full public (this is often the "edit" ones) as long as there are no way you can recive the truth and feelings from both sides, and then give them a solution for their problems.

 

The community is GREAT and for all, and you discuss common cases, your help and support for your friends you do with emails:)

 

Have a nice day:)

Edvin

[helium]

quote from ben: As a conscript, I am willing to step aside for anyone who thinks they are better suited for this job than I am. With that in mind, Ron, I noticed you have reached the magic 800 post mark, that makes you as qualified to be a moderator as I was when my arm was twisted. So maybe you would like to give this a try?

 

Hehe, i whould think that it was the contens of ur post thats made u suetable for this job ben, not the nr of post:))

 

btw i think u do a good job:)

 

kenneth

[1eyedjack]

I think all y'all should get away from any argument that this has anything to do with idealistic principles, and accept that (libel laws aside) it is simply a question of market forces.

 

Some prefer a moderated forum to cut down on noise to signal ratio. Some prefer an unmoderated forum out of a fear, which in some cases (and I am not referring to this forum) is justified, that posts are cut or edited inappropriately and/or for the wrong reasons.

 

So it is this: Do you trust the moderators? Can be a tricky question if you never get to see the original censored posts. But I get the feeling that if they regularly made inappropriate cuts a reputation would accrue.

 

And then: Is there somewhere else that you would rather spend your time reading and posting? Ie a forum better run?

 

If they get it wrong, people will leave in droves. So far I suspect they are getting it right.

[csdenmark]

What have set up a "community standard" dicated by teh rule of the site, and the different moderators that helps us know what is acceptable. I might read a post and think, no problem. Rain might read and thing, no problem,. and uday may come along and read a post and go big problem. So each post is potentially reviewed several times after posted. An example was the bablefish translation posted recently. I read it and had no idea waht it said, uday read it, and deleted all of it on the spot and made commet to boot. From his comment, clearly if I had understtod it I would have done the same.

 

The solution here, seems just about right. As the number of members grow and the number of post per day increase, I can see a need for a few more moderators perhpas, but other than that, it seems to be working to me.

Let me take the translation as an example of anacronism regarding censorship. An italian with problems in english have posted a comment. He asked for somebody to translate into english. I did so as a service to an unknown person because I know how to handle the aut. translation procedure. - If a person has the right to post he also has the right to be understood - if possible at all. Therefore I did so!

 

Then this post in english, for which content I have nothing to do with, was censored. Uday deleted the content completely with a remark of garbeling and non-acceptable reference to bad WWII guys. - I completely agree with Uday's comments but thats not the point. Now it looked liked I have created a rubbish statement and was censored. - I would not accept so as I had nothing to do with content as I only did the translation.

 

Uday killed the messenger(me) but forgot to deal with the offender(Giasone). So did the danish resistance movement during WWII fooling the germans. The original post is still there!

[Rhutobello]

This is a little exp on how fast a quarrel can go out of hand. We are a international community with a lot of diffrent culture and languages.

 

A language has a lot of "flowers" and "diffrent meanings" for the same word when used together with other word When we try to translate a message from one language into another much will vanish, or take wrong meanings.

I like to think that I am about average in English, but I am sure that an English person can send me a letter scolding me with "a smile", and I will not see it.

 

So when your translation was deleted, it gave no meaning or false meaning for the reader.

 

We must also agree that a post in a non English language has greater chanse to survive in the community, because of the language barrier.

 

This said without taken any stand in your translation skill:):D

 

Have a nice day:)

Edvin

[aisha759]

Edvin;

When i first started reading your post, i thought: "oh my god! When did i write this? " You look so much like me, we could be twins :D

I was stunned for a few seconds, then realized I hadnt looked at the name.... just so as not to cut this thread and keep it in context, i will add to my post (you might think you wrote it when you first look at it also.. he he) I AGREE WITH YOU!

 

good day :)

Aisha

[slothy]

AN EVEN BIGGER SATIRE ALERT

 

 

Let me take the translation as an example of anacronism regarding censorship. An italian with problems in english have posted a comment. He asked for somebody to translate into english. I did so as a service to an unknown person

 

Claus [et al],

 

With due respect, Sir :)

 

I can only imagine that Uday 'removed' rather than 'censored' your post.

 

If what you submitted was the product of an on-line translator the output is ,by and large, far from perfect. In fact, it has the detrimental effect of straining one's powers of word association and losing ones faith that the language it was translated into has any syntax or a modicum of semantic structure. As it happens, i have contributed code and design principles myself to the development of an on-line translator, and I know for a fact there are a few years to go before the Chomskyesque programming community will produce a program of satisfactory translatory skills. Especially from italian and Giascone's writing style in particular :D which, may i add, is heavily idiomatic.

 

In fact in an effort to translate an essential extract of a computer manual from Swedish recently, it was more like reading a cross-fertilisation of a recipe for a cabbage soufflé with a magazine column about the mating behaviour of transvestite orang-utans.

 

Out of curiosity, i filtered the text in question (Giascones) through one this morning and i was satisfied that the output bore only a passing similarity to the original post and in no way carried across the essential subtlety of the post, written in Italian.

 

This was why, i imagine, Uday removed it. Very little to do with censorship!

 

I started to translate Giascones post myself , but after reading other posts in the same thread, as he seemed to reflect a common opinion prevalent through most of the others, i reasoned i had better things to do with my time before i go away (like write a post like this :) )

 

Lots of love

 

Alex.

 

I was a bit harsh in my last post Claus and i apologise. Keep up the good work!

 

PS

To prove my point Claus..pass this post through an English/Danish translator...and if you cannot make a cabbage soufflé by the end of this week-end and/or have sympathy why male orang-utans who wear pink frilly dresses are pathetically hopeless at finding a mate and passing on their genes, I WILL EAT MY HAT. (This last phrase in particular will have an interesting translation)

[uday]

I don't want to explain the hows and whys of each edit, bu this sort of edit is easy to explain, and easier to understand

 

- I cannot moderate a posting written in a language that I cannot read.

 

- Machine translation is imperfect. Someone posted a very long paragraph, text all smashed together, content mostly nonsensical. It looked something like

 

"....bsszt...crackle...pop....Nazi and Fascist....sputter"

 

and was posted in a thread that reeked of emotional content, about two groups of people having a disagreement.

 

 

Moderation is a fact of life for the mooment.

[csdenmark]

For Alex

 

There is no machine translation possible to/from danish. Pity I would very much like to have such one. I cannot read much italian but from what I can read and rest is guessing - the machine translation was rarely fair to the text.

 

I can test the translation german/english myself and doing so it is not perfect but it is rather good. I have therefore added links to entry sites to my web-sites for aut. translation of those into other languages. There I can check the german translation - and it is fairly good. Of course it is a commercial tool and due to that the word 'bridge' is translated as a bridge for walking.

 

Right I was not censored in the normal meaning of the word but after the deletions it looked so. But the point is still not my translation but only the hitting of a wrong target. The real target was and I think is still in place.

 

We still have many songs from that period - last time we had censorship in Denmark. The germans did not interfere - they were unable to understand. They are still popular tunes - not least due to history.