From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Tue Aug 05 2003 - 03:58:46 MDT
Most of what has been said in the last week is, in my opinion, so woolly-minded, logically flawed and addle-pated as not to deserve a response. Certainly this is the case for the personal viturpuration, all of which has been dealt with ad nauseam before. As but one example of what I mean, mentally competent people do not need to fight with idiots and bigots for a platform. So when we defend the right of idiots and bigots to take over our forums, we don't get discussion and "balance" (mythical though that may appear to be in the United States these days), instead we get "one truth", that of the idiots and bigots, because the intelligent don't like to be seen providing legitimacy, even through disagreement, to such podiums and either shut-up or move elsewhere.
But some of the assertions made may be tested for the cost of a few minutes of time if you know where to look. As testing asserions is generally a good idea, so here are some quick pointers to save your time.
Hermit
PS I promise to be scrupulously honest when rating Bill Roh and Joe Dees. On their past and current behaviour, I think they should be banned, and will certainly vote that way for so long as this remains the case. So the "concerns", "reservations" and "suggestions of hypocricy" are completely misplaced.
[hr]
Any member's posting record may be evaluated by simply clicking on the member's name wherever it appears as a link. This will take you to that member's profile, and at the bottom of the screen, you will be able to view their previous posts. This facility is enabled on the evaluation page in order to assist you in assessing what kinds of things people write for yourself, rather than being told what to think. Numbers don't, of course, tell the whole story, after all, a post or article written for the CoV, or selected and formatted to make it attractive, takes a little more effort and thought than simply copying text; but you need to decide for yourselves how significant that effort is.
But numbers can tell, at least, a partial story.
The "Serious Business Forum" is now available only to congregation members, meaning that assertions about it are to an extent unprovable. However, the statistics page (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=;action=stat) will give you a means of estimating what may have happened on that board. Note in particular, the "Top 10 Topics (by Replies)" and "Top 10 Topics (by Views)" which are self-explanatory when you realize that. with the sole example of the "Current News" thread, which you can see now holds a total of 198 posts, and to which I and others (including e.g. some by Bill Roh) posted a total of 184 items in the course of a year (or about half a post a day) before I decided that posting there only provided credibility to a forum with which I no longer wished to be associated, the vast majority of posts made to that board were made by Joe Dees. You might find it interesting to compare the numbe of people reading the "Current News" thread (2103 reads/198 posts or about 10 reads per post, and it ha
d about 50 a day while I was contributing to it before the board was flooded with those containing material predominantly cut and pasted by Joe Dees. The same comparison works on the main list.
Subsequent to closing the Serious Business forum for public access, Joe Dees, apparently in a hairbrained attempt to continue propagate his virulent memeplex, has taken to posting on the "Test Area" (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=9). When you consider that this has been happening for only a week (since 2003-07-28), you should be able to imagine for yourself why the "Serious Business" board needed to be removed from public view. Joe Dees averaged over 20 posts a day over the period it was public, as he has almost equalled to achieve his 3882 posts this year (vs Hermit's 1126). It being day 217 of the year, this averages to 17.89 posts per day by Dees, versus 5.2 for Hermit (and the next high level posters are Jake Sapiens and Rhinoceros at about half of Hermits.
And convenient shortcuts to the 50 most recent posts by Hermit and Dees:
Hermit: http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=;action=usersrecentposts;userid=3;user=Hermit
Joe Dees: joedees@bellsouth.net">http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=;action=usersrecentposts;userid=9;user=joedees@bellsouth.net
[hr]
On Copyright and Material inclusion
Metahuman/Demon, a 17 year old male (and this may be relevent in your assessments) with all of 17 posts to his avatar (many yesterday), made a large number of assertions, one of which caught my eye. "I should mention that many articles are protected under US Copyright Law and readers are legally prohibited from posting the articles in their complete form unless permission is granted by the author." It seems that metahuman, in common with some others, has not heard of the constitutionally protected doctrine of "fair use" which balances "copyright" - the only reason for which being to encourage the widespread access to material. When posters adhere to the rules established when we founded the BBS, the doctrine of fair use undoubtedly applies. The forum being locked, I quote it in full below:
[hr]
[ Hermit, "Notice to BBS Posters for consideration and comment", 2002-09-19 ] (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=7;action=display&threadid=26663°
Notice to BBS Posters for consideration and comment
Attribution and Citation
Please ensure that all articles posted to the CoV Bulletin Board (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs) are appropriately attributed and that a source URL (or other suitable attribution) is provided. This facility is to enable CoV members to study and comment on material, to create a means for non-members to evaluate us, and to ensure the continuous availability of references on the all too ephemeral web. Not as a podium for plagiarism. So articles not meeting this minimum standard will be removed.
Cutting and pasting the following will provide an appropriate template.
<cut below here>
TITLE
SUBTITLE
Source: URLDESCRIPTION (http://URL)
Authors: AUTHORS
Dated: YYYY-MM-DD
ARTICLE
<cut above here>
Further information on quotation and citation is available on the FAQ board in Notice to BBS Posters for consideration and comment[/b]
Attribution and Citation
Please ensure that all articles posted to the CoV Bulletin Board (http://virus.lucifer.com[b) are appropriately attributed and that a source URL (or other suitable attribution) is provided. This facility is to enable CoV members to study and comment on material, to create a means for non-members to evaluate us, and to ensure the continuous availability of references on the all too ephemeral web. Not as a podium for plagiarism. So articles not meeting this minimum standard will be removed.
Cutting and pasting the following will provide an appropriate template.
<cut below here>
TITLE
SUBTITLE
Source: URLDESCRIPTION (http://URL)
Authors: AUTHORS
Dated: YYYY-MM-DD
ARTICLE
<cut above here>
Further information on quotation and citation is available on the FAQ board in FAQ: Hermitish mail mark-up and citation V2.1. (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=31;action=display;threadid=11526)/bbs/index.php?board=31;action=display;threadid=11526]FAQ: Hermitish mail mark-up and citation V2.1.
Moderation
Moderation decisions are made solely at the discretion of the moderators who will use as light a hand as possible, while attempting to maintain the usability of the forums and preventing their abuse.
Posters are strongly advised to examine any content or links for attempted insults to anyone or any material relating to member or non-member private individuals, which may be defamatory, and edit or remove such posts from the boards, as such posts may otherwise be edited, redirected or deleted by the moderator(s) at the discretion of the moderator(s).
Related posts should, as far as possible be made to single threads, and the number of threads created in a period kept within reasonable limits. Posts to inappropriate boards will be redirected or deleted for topic spamming.
People objecting to the contents of articles, or to the moderation of particular articles, or to the actions of moderators, should write privately to the moderator(s)* concerned. Complaints about moderation or calling for moderation posted to boards other than "Free for All" (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=1) will simply be ignored and probably removed from the boards.
If after attempting in good faith to resolve an issue over moderation with the responsible (or rascally irresponsible) moderator(s), you are still unhappy, please contact Lucifer (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=;action=imsend;to=admin), who will discuss it with the moderator(s) involved and make a final decision. Contacting Lucifer without attempting to make a good faith effort to resolve an issue, or taking a complaint public, may result in the complainant being ignored.
Please bear in mind that everyone working towards the aims of the CoV is an unpaid volunteer, and that moderators are human too. We have to fit in our CoV activities between earning a living, experiencing life and making our own contributions. You can make our lives much easier (and our task here more rewarding) by adhering to these guidelines.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 05 2003 - 03:59:18 MDT