Husker in the hospital again.

Well, if anyone wants Husker's blog address, just "pm" me. He'll be updating us from there, and you can post your comments there, too.

oh my! wouldn't deleting the post that was against TOS do? sugar, as far as i know, left on her own. her posts were deleted or somesuch, she was not banned. she still blogs, just never went back to a2k, because she was ticked off. which is a loss really. she was wonderful. we can lose many great members this way. i'd think warning would be a more sensible way of dealing with things like this, but what do i know. so sad, off to look for husker on the blogging sites.

Yes, it is sad, dag. We have lost great members through the current process. Surely there's a better way to deal with these issues.

Rules are rules, for everyone.

Doesn't mean we have to agree, or pretend to agree, or pretend not to notice.

now i feel awfully guilty. i started all that blogtalk. i should be punished, if anyone. not husker!

I don't think anyone foresaw this happening simply based on his post in that thread, dag. I certainly didn't. Perhaps there's a rule in the TOS that applies, but Husker certainly never intended to violate same. It appears he is being held strictly liable for his actions, regardless of his lack of intent to violate the rules. That is what's unfair about it.

Rules are rules, Walter, and yes, they do apply to everyone. But there's a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, and it seems to several of us that intent may not have been taken into consideration this time. Strict legalism doesn't make for good interpersonal relations.

Besides, in my book, you don't kick someone when they're down. Rules or no rules.

My thoughts are with you Husker.

((((Hugs))))

I'm sure he won't be suspended for long.

Wishing Husker all the best ... <nods, smiles>

... and lord, dont we go through our most loyal, kindhearted and appreciated members quickly on this site. Agreeing with Ebeth: rules are rules - and if they end up repeatedly banning some of our most valuable members, then the rules are wrong and need to be changed. 'S that simple.

I rarely disagree with you my fine Dutch friend but we're making too much of this case. Husker will soon be back with us. In the meantime we can write to him personally as many of you have done.

You want to start a revolution nimh?

I agree though, husker is such a sweet, helpful person
who never would insult anyone. He probably didn not
mean to disobey the rules or engage into advertising
his blog, he probably just forgot that posting websites is
not accepted. In hindsight of his illness and stressful
past days, some special leniency should be considered.

It would be a nice gesture!

Somebody needs to change the title of this thread. It's yelling fire too often.

The Moderating team is still considering the best way to handle this situation. In the meantime, I'd like to direct your attention to http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30513 Even if you have read it before, my suggestion is to review it again as it applies here. Thank you.

I know better than to get into explanations and will probably go back to ignoring A2K issues after this but...

The linking rules are actually something we had been working on changing for a while. However until we get decent criteria worked up it can't go into effect, and doesn't apply here, and it's one of the more tricky rules (which is why the easiest way to enforce it is with less interpretation and more absolutism).

As to Husker, I personally have not a whit of sympathy in this particular issue. He has violated this rule dozens and dozens of times. I personally have spelled out the rule to him on numerous occasions and he always responds that he understands that this isn't the place to promote his numerous web ventures and then goes on to do so.

He has a few websites in the spam filter and you can only get there after repeated posting of them (when pulled he started PMing newbies soliciting business to the point that they complained to me, they just wanted my help with their sites and he was contacting anyone with a site offering deals).

He has been banned more than once and let back because we genuinely like the guy and just wish he didn't see everything as a opportunity to plug something.

Every time he was let back he swore up and down that he'd never do it again but can't help himself. He's received final warnings and still won't stop.

I think he's had the most spamming leniency of any member and it's not just innocent posting of blog links I'm talking about. It goes back to actively trolling the web dev forum to solicit business, mass PM campaigns (even after a temporary PM suspention was lifted he went right back to it), use of secondary accounts to circumvent such restrictions (I actually made the PM spam restriction with him partly in mind)....

I do think the linking rules need changing and we've been working on it for some time. But the rules on using this site as a means of solicitation will likely never get lenient enough to permit what he has repeatedly done here.

I think he's a great guy but can't help but wonder if it's intentional disregard for moderator work. I have no sympathy (and am actually mildly irritated that he incessantly puts us in this situation) for this case and for that reason won't be involved but it's not a fun decision for the mod team and I think that anything they decide will be tantamount to cutting him additional slack and can hardly be described as unfair (unless "I like him" supercedes any regulatory concern).

Well...I guess that's that.

Get better Husker

Thanks for the explainations, Craven and jespah...at least we kinda know the "why" now.

Explanations are greatly appreciated, Craven. We have a community here, we care about each other, and we get upset when someone disappears and we don't know why.

That said, (and I hope this doesn't drive you away!), it sounds as if you're saying he broke a rule you're thinking about changing anyway. And it also sounds like it's possible his past indiscretions have obscured the moderators' judgment about this particular infraction. Perhaps he hasn't done anything all that bad this time after all. I'm glad to hear from jespah that the moderators are still discussing this.

Wow, do I feel like a complete idiot! I innocently put a link to my own website in the Art & Photog forum when posting the A2K Avatar Collage project. I have now gone back and edited this link out. Sorry about that!

I take it that it is okay to put a link in the www space in one's profile though, right? I'm not soliciting any business on that site. It's just to show my collages.

Eva,

I don't want to come across as brushing you off but I really want to stick to my decision to not get involved and if I were involved I'd really not want to make the quorum for consist of the site membership

Reyn,

You bring up a good example of why it's simpler to just have a blanket "no posting of your links" policy and why the link rule changes will be hard to codify.

Yes, putting one's link in the profile field has been allowed. But you sometimes post telling people to click on it which circumvents the notion of not using posts to solicit website traffic. You also had put a call to click on it in your signature.

Some abuse the field and use automated tools to register profiles in order to try to get backlinks and improve their search engine rankings. They often put porn sites in their profiles and we've recently had a mother very upset about it.

You can read more about the automated registration/profile spamming here: http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22661

Webmasters who want to "share" come in all types, some I wouldn't necessarily object to but the flip side of the spectrum is very disruptive to site resources and the desire webmasters have to share their sites can be very problematic (spam is essentially people wanting others to have a look at their site).

How to deal with that is somthing that is not easy and is being worked on but to clarify the current policy, yes, it is allowed to put the website there but not to make calls to click on it elsewhere.

Art is something that this medium doesn't deal with well. I am working on some features to address this and it's one of the reasons I asked the admins to help rewrite the linking rules.

Ultimately (might take a while as I haven't had the time) I think we'll provide free galleries to display one's art but I'm not sure we want to open up the "art hole" on the boards as "artist spam" (even non-commercial) is significant enough to be concerned.

The rule is not in place to prevent commerce, but to prevent site resources from becoming used for solicitation of web traffic.

Members probably don't see it but it is by far the greatest problem we deal with, ranging from pulling spam (easily the bulk of removed posts and we usually get hit multiple times a day), bots unleashed on the site that really harm the database load, scraper spiders who cache content and use it to convert into traffic....

It's a very real problem that members don't see due to the spam filters that are the site moderators. And like a rule-based software spam filter there will always be what some will consider a false positive.

Getting the criteria right is not easy, and I know right now that loosening it will cause more work.

Anywho, I really need to get out of here now, I am very behind on some work people pay me for and want to get back to ignoring A2K's community issues (the financial and tech stuff needs to be my priority).