The elephant in the room

@sozobe,

A certain number were banned (I'm guessing six, but don't trust me). Robert cut off pms for all philo folk temporarily, since a number of the banned started pm efforts again posting under new names. That is why there is a dust settling wait.

(well, that's my take..)

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Not on a philosophy site. But then, of course, many of those who join this forum would prefer to discuss anything else rather than philosophy. (Anyway, even if it is worth some discussion, but so much?!) Actually I would advocate just throwing those people off the forum. They don't want to be on the forum anyway.

Kennethamy, we are not on a philosophy site anymore. This is a general discussion site, with a philosophy section. Judging from your comment in the thread that was linked, I think you are under the impression that this site is no different than the old philosophy forum site. But that would make you confused, since this site is in fact different.

Moreover, not everyone that has left this site has left because they want to join some sort of social club. Some have left because they do not think that real philosophic discussion (as opposed to the nonsense you always speak out against) can be had here.

sozobe wrote:

Zetherin, one thing that might help is some context, which is that there has been OODLES and OODLES of discussion of this already. It makes sense that not everyone has seen all of that discussion, but when it comes up yet again, those of us who have been involved find it to be overkill.

I think if you read from the link I gave you (it's a lot to read!) a lot more will become clear. If you want some summaries, I'll do my best.

Thanks for the link, it did indeed help me understand the situation better.

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

A certain number were banned (I'm guessing six, but don't trust me). Robert cut off pms for all philo folk temporarily, since a number of the banned started pm efforts again posting under new names. That is why there is a dust settling wait.

(well, that's my take..)

I'd really like to know who those six are, considering I was a moderator on the old philosophy forum.

3 Replies

@Zetherin,

Glad that helped.

I know that policy on A2K has been to not discuss suspensions (who or why) with anyone but the suspendee. He did go ahead and discuss more than usual here because it was so large-scale and affected so many people.

I don't think the fact that you were a mod on the old forum has much to do with it one way or another, though...

This is what I was thinking of with "three," he's talking more about future than present though looks like:

Robert Gentel wrote:

This isn't a ban-happy forum, and I think only about 3 will remain blocked after this is initially sorted out because they have so far expressed an interest in continuing to recruit here or supporting those who do.

(From the check-in thread.)

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@Zetherin,

He mentioned three in the thread and then the fellow starting the new site. I think he said six spammed. I read fast, may be wrong on that.

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@sozobe,

Oops, missed that. I'll be quiet now. Damn, I can do more harm than good with poor information.

1 Reply

@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

I don't think the fact that you were a mod on the old forum has much to do with it one way or another, though...

It means I invested my time and energy in the old forum, and that's why I'm so interested as to who was banned from the old forum. That's all.

Anyway, thanks for all your help, guys.

2 Replies

@ossobuco,

No, it may still be six now that is likely to go down to three later. Anyway yeah I'm not sure either. Ultimately that level of detail probably doesn't matter much. (Some were suspended, probably some of those will be unsuspended later leaving three or so, those three or so will stay suspended for spamming + indicating they'd continue to do so if the suspension was lifted.)

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin wrote:

Anyway, thanks for all your help, guys.

Sure!

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@Zetherin,

I'm not going to mention any of the names again as I've already been contacted by one of them and was asked to say that he is "under investigation" and not banned (highlighting one reason this is usually not discussed at all in public).

It's understandable that some may be curious to know who was banned but the banned also sometimes don't wish for that to be public information, and we generally refrain from discussing it entirely in public.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

I'm not going to mention any of the names again as I've already been contacted by one of them and was asked to say that he is "under investigation" and not banned (highlighting one reason this is usually not discussed at all in public).

It's understandable that some may be curious to know who was banned but the banned also sometimes don't wish for that to be public information, and we generally refrain from discussing it entirely in public.

But you already mentioned several names in the thread that was linked, didn't you? I'll take it the names that you already mentioned are the ones that were banned.

Man, it's just sad to see the former community fall apart.

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

It won't fall apart, the spammers will be kept out and we are restoring the philforum as a separate forum here almost identically with the previous administrator (jgweed) in charge and the previous 4k members (minus spammers) all there.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Wait, what do you mean you're restoring the old philforum? Can you be more specific?

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

Yeah, I'm working on it right now and trying to make it look a lot like this.

As I said when the import happened, we are working on groups next, which are like separate hosted forums here but with autonomy. It's basically like a free forum host, you can start forums here and run them your way.

In a short time (measured in days) we will be launching our first group, which will be comprised of the previous 4000+ philforum members, it will be lead by its previous administrator jgweed and a moderation team that he is helping us put together and who we will hand off the community to and who will run the group with autonomy (allowing for greater curation/modertion or less, it's up to the community).

When that happens (shortly) we'll send out an email invite to all the previous philforum members letting them know about it.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

When I saw your post on groups, I never imagined you meant them to be of this magnitude.

I'm impressed, Robert.

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

Maybe this is the best way to put it (just show you the direction the development is going):

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/2060/able2knowtest1278541387.png

The navigation is copied from the former forum template so don't take it as meaning those features will be there off the bat, btw.

That is how far I am along right now (just started the "blood free eyes" campaign, which is essentially to give you guys the same colors you had so any bloody eyes are not my damn responsibility). We intend to have this ready within a fortnight, it won't be as feature complete as VB software right off the bat (2 guys working part-time aren't gonna outcode their years of coding in a week or two) but we are better at this than they are and it will be because this is the stuff we like doing. With the groups setup we get to do the part we like most (build the technology) and hand off the part we like least (herd the cats). And people who don't like how we run our forums can run one their way in a few clicks.

Anyway, it will be structured the same (same forums imported and all) and start with all the same members, and have the same colors and layout so I really don't think VCS will manage to fracture the community enough to make both of the forums peter out.

I personally think the community will be in great hands with the team that is being assembled under jgweed and we'll be handing it off to them with autonomy as soon as we can get it ready.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Great. Thanks for all that info.

On that note, can you tell me when you'll be re-enabling PM's for us philosophy folk? I'd really like to communicate with some people privately, and I have no other way of doing so. The spammers have been taken care of, right?

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

I don't know just yet. I have a lot to do and intend to get the group launched and settled first and have already lost enough time playing whack-a-mole to just open it up again. Now I have to work on fine-tuning the PM flood filter (they managed to get that many sent with the limits we have in place so we'll have to make them a bit more restrictive) and adding PM reporting capabilities there directly before I can turn that back on again.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Sigh, the mistakes of a few have to be felt by all.

Can't blame you, though.

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@Zetherin,

To the best of my knowledge, salima, sometime sun, Mark Noble, Theatetus, & VideCorSpoon were all banned until Dec. 2020

1 Reply

The elephant in the room

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