[ans]Look what they've done to my thread (about whales), ma!

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I am quite perplexed.

Last night I went to bed having just posted a final contribution to the Outrage over Japan's plan to slaughter humpback whales thread.

Tonight I got home from work, turned on my computer again & discovered that the thread appeared to have been doctored. The A2K message told me that "the topic or thread does not exist or has been moved to a restricted area."

OK

So I went to Your Topics (my own topics) to see what the latest posts might have been. Had something occurred to have caused a shut down the thread? (This would not surprise me at all. There is just one poster who seems to take pleasure in sending mindless, provocative posts designed to get a rise out of the folk who have a genuine interest in the protection of whales. The person's "thing" is about guns & the right to kill & apparently found our concerns provocative. Last night he seemed to be, well, on another senseless roll ... Rolling Eyes

In other words, more of the same.)

I made some responses to him (as did a few other A2Kers) & I went to bed thinking ... well, the usual things about that nuisance poster.

Tonight I discovered that quite a number of posts had been deleted There is a whole section of dialogue, prompted by the "nuisance poster" which then prompted responses from others, including me.

Nothing in those posts was at all unusual, given the usual nature of the nuisance posts. Previously I had made one of my extremely few complaints to the moderators about the nature of this person's offensive "contributions" to the thread. I recall a polite response which was to sort of wear it, for reasons I can't recall now. And it seemed more than a wee bit unfair at the time.

I wish to state my strongest possible objection to the deletion of a whole series of posts for some reason. If something diabolical happened after I went offline last night & that was a breach of the TOS, then OK, delete those posts. But the last few posts I saw were not at all unusual given the nature of the provocative posting of this particular member & the responses he receives. In fact, things were pretty tame (compared to the past!) the last time I looked.

Can someone please explain to me what's happened to this thread & why? And why whole sections of it were deleted?
Also, how long before the thread is operative again?

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I suspect that it might be more fruitful to contact the mods on this one via the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page, Msolga.

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Whales of the world, unite!

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Msolga, is this the thread you're looking for?

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51564

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mac11 wrote:

Msolga, is this the thread you're looking for?

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51564

Most certainly - it was closed until recently :wink:

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MsOlga, as I understand it, one doesn't always see whatever post or posts got a thread locked. I think that has been explained on some forum help thread.

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They did the same thing to one of my threads Msolga. It perplexed and disturbed me too.

It's the new sanitized A2K.

(I thought my thread was pretty darn good too)

I do however sympathize with the mods, Thay to have a perplexing job.

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Amigo wrote:

They did the same thing to one of my threads Msolga. It perplexed and disturbed me too.

It's the new sanitized A2K.

(I thought my thread was pretty darn good too)

I do however sympathize with the mods, Thay to have a perplexing job.

Whatever happened, it's all amigos fault.

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dyslexia wrote:

Amigo wrote:
They did the same thing to one of my threads Msolga. It perplexed and disturbed me too.

It's the new sanitized A2K.

(I thought my thread was pretty darn good too)

I do however sympathize with the mods, Thay to have a perplexing job.

Whatever happened, it's all amigos fault.

or ossobuco's fault, I'm nor sure which.(I didn't do it, this time)

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Save the whales, collect the entire set.

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dyslexia wrote:

Amigo wrote:
They did the same thing to one of my threads Msolga. It perplexed and disturbed me too.

It's the new sanitized A2K.

(I thought my thread was pretty darn good too)

I do however sympathize with the mods, Thay to have a perplexing job.

Whatever happened, it's all amigos fault.

You have no idea how often I hear this.

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mac11 wrote:

Msolga, is this the thread you're looking for?

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51564

Does this mean I can have my thread back too Very Happy

.

Maybe I should prey to the Cyber Gods (mods);

"Uh, excuse me Cyber gods, but can I please have my little thread back? I didn't mean no harm. We were talking nice, we wern't harming nobody. Why? why cerber gods? WHYYYYYYYY?????????"

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Yeah, I have a very responsible job too, Amigo. Anything goes wrong, I'm always responsible.

I didn't see the thread Msolga, but I heard about it. It's kind of amazing how some people can get away with trashing something that doesn't even bother them. Don't blame the mods.

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o.k......sorry.

Yes, responsibility, balance, accountability.

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ossobuco wrote:

MsOlga, as I understand it, one doesn't always see whatever post or posts got a thread locked. I think that has been explained on some forum help thread.

Of course I understand that, osso.
In this particular case, however, all interactions between this person & other posters were removed. I was perplexed that the posting behaviour that we had had to put up with for months & months should suddenly cause the thread to be locked. As I mentioned in my initial post on this thread, I had made one of my very few complaints to the mods about this particular person's behaviour on this particular thread some time ago. Whatever the results of my complaint were, they did not change this person's childish & anti-social behaviour on this thread.

This is what happened on the night the thread was closed:

I posted an article about the first killing of a whale by iceland in 14 years. (A very disappointing situation, as Iceland had declared it was about to resume commercial whaling, despite the IWC rulings).

OK

After that, this person posted a number of totally irrelevant & stupid posts, which had nothing remotely to do with the topic. These included a Ted Nugent song (?) with many ****s in it, a photograph of some woman who I assume is a Michigan politician (?) (something to do with guns?), some offensive comment about Bindi Irwin's intention to swim with stingrays just like her dad ... etc.

Me, I am not upset with the comments & posts (predictable & utterly juvenile) so much as the fact that these posts make it almost impossible to carry on a reasonable conversation & destroy the continuity of the thread. To have to wear this again & again & again & to believe that nothing can be done to stop it is, well .... frustrating to say the least. This fits my definition of troll activity, I don't care whether the person is an "established member" or not, they're posting as a troll. (It's a real pity those comments & posts have been deleted. I would love for all of you to be able to have a look! You'd be scratching your heads & wondering, too...! Rolling Eyes

)

Anyway, I was extremely disappointed that somehow, sometime after the time I stopped posting, the thread was locked & posts (some which had nothing to do with this person) were removed. Trolls shouldn't be able to get away with that! It was not even as though this person was participating in some contentious debate, he was simply being objectionable because he felt like it, I guess. He should have been sent to the TimeOut Room & been given counselling ages ago! (That's what we do to continually anti-social children at school! :wink: )

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roger wrote:

Yeah, I have a very responsible job too, Amigo. Anything goes wrong, I'm always responsible.

I didn't see the thread Msolga, but I heard about it. It's kind of amazing how some people can get away with trashing something that doesn't even bother them. Don't blame the mods.

Ah, Roger, I'm not blaming the mods.

It would just be nice to know what's happened to a thread that one cares about & has put considerable time & effort into, that's all.

It's disconcerting to log on & find that a thread has been locked & not know why. To suspect that it's as a result of trolling behaviour is quite angry-making.

A thought: Perhaps, when a thread is locked, the mods could post a (neutral sort of) message to the instigator of the thread explaining why: "msolga, the Whale thread has been locked because of unacceptable abusive attacks between two A2K members. It will be reopened within a week (or whatever)."

Or whatever .... I'm just guessing why it could have happened, because I don't know ...

But some sort of brief notification saves you guessing, wondering & feeling angry because you suspect you've been "trolled".

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msolga wrote:

... a number of totally irrelevant & stupid posts...

Me, I am not upset with the comments & posts (predictable & utterly juvenile) so much as the fact that these posts make it almost impossible to carry on a reasonable conversation & destroy the continuity of the thread. To have to wear this again & again & again & to believe that nothing can be done to stop it is, well .... frustrating to say the least. This fits my definition of troll activity, I don't care whether the person is an "established member" or not, they're posting as a troll. (It's a real pity those comments & posts have been deleted. I would love for all of you to be able to have a look! You'd be scratching your heads & wondering, too...! )

Anyway, I was extremely disappointed that somehow, sometime after the time I stopped posting, the thread was locked & posts (some which had nothing to do with this person) were removed. Trolls shouldn't be able to get away with that! It was not even as though this person was participating in some contentious debate, he was simply being objectionable because he felt like it, I guess. He should have been sent to the TimeOut Room & been given counselling ages ago! (That's what we do to continually anti-social children at school! :wink: )

Our removing the posts is us doing something about it, in order to stop it. Contextual posts, many of which quoted the posts that we were removing, were removed as well so that the thread would continue to have some continuity. Pulling posts and not pulling anything quoting those same posts defeats the purpose of the pull.

The locking was performed, as it often is, to give the Mods a chance to discuss the situation without things further deteriorating. We don't like rushing in, in full running mode. We attempt to have discussions about things and we need the time to do that without more issues piling on.

As for notice, I'm sorry, but this is it for notice. We simply don't have the time. It's nothing personal, we just don't have the time to provide notice (read: for me to provide notice) every time we perform an action. That's just the way things are on a large website. I apologize if this bothers you, but unless you create a 48-hour day for me, it's going to continue to be impossible for us to provide notice about such things.

And, please, next time, contact the Help Desk the next time you have a question about moderation. Thank you.

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Hello jespah

Thanks for responding.

I guess I didn't contact the help desk at the time because I honestly believed that the ongoing behaviour of this person was something of an on-going "feature" of the site & nothing could be done about it. His posts (prior to me going offline) were similarly offensive to what we've had to wear in the past & I assumed we'd just have to continue to continue wearing it. That is frustrating.

Anyway, this has been of some therapeutic benefit, if not much else. It has been good to give my grievance an airing, at least! :wink:

What happened after I went offline, I still have no clue about. I could only guess that what I've described as "trolling activity" & maybe responses to it was the cause of the thread being locked. That made me quite angry. Troll behaviour should not be "rewarded" Rolling Eyes

in this way. This just inconveniences everyone & does little to change the attitude & posts of the nuisance.

It occurs to me that a few, simple, pre-prepared notices could be sent to the instigator of a locked thread (or even appear as a notification post on the locked thread) when this happens .... eg: this thread has been temporary locked due to unacceptable behaviour by participating posters .... or as a result of offensive material being posted... or .....? That could save a bit of anger, confusion. And it would have taken far less time than it's taken you to respond to this. Just a thought.

I wish I could create a 48 hour day for you, too, jespah. I have no doubt that keeping A2K running smoothly is a big job for you & the other moderators & you do it very well. My intention here was not to to create extra work for you. I simply wanted to get a problem aired & I'm glad I've had the opportunity to do this.

Thanks,
Olga

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She's basically already covered all of that here, MsOlga.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30513

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Thanks, soz. I've been through the procedure before, as I mentioned earlier.

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[ans]Look what they've done to my thread (about whales), ma!

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