Comment

Comment by ryan cameron on January 29, 2010 at 10:16pm

Deleting someone's comments or blocking comments is EXACTLY the same thing as slapping duct tape on their mouth. If it is ever justified, it is only under the most egregious of social violation. Certainly as felch points out, this person is clearly using our community for his own personal financial gain and to our detriment. I want to comment on the ideas he posts, and my right as a member of this site is to not have to go create a profile somewhere else to exercise that right.

Comment by Фелч Гроган on January 29, 2010 at 10:04pm

funk Q: Is this some form of enlightened censorship?

You crotchety old fart - you should know better than the rest of us that it is expected of you to understand the issue prior to commenting on it.

1) post-and-lock habit: it is spineless and rude

2) Self-serving vanity spam: Having gone back through his posts and not only are all comments locked, they are virtually content free and are purely an exercise lin link whoring a personal site. Let's look -

Check the "Advertise" tab -

Dear Prospective Advertiser,

DangerousTalk.net is a great blog for you to advertise on. For starters, I post a new blog entry consistently every week day and have built a fairly good size audience of readers who check out my blog daily. Plus, depending on the topic of the day there is also a steady influx of new unique visitors to the site. But the real strength of Dangerous Talk is that we reach out to people on all of the major social networking sites and bring those people here to DangerousTalk.net.Also, because DangerousTalk.net is a focused blog the Dangerous Talkers (readers of the blog) are very loyal to the blog and our sponsors. You can be one of those sponsors who can take advantage of the loyal fan base of this blog. And this is the best time to advertise with us.

So this clown is using A|N as free advertising to promote a vanity site on which he sells advertising. Not to mention running a bookshop as well.

This is not a matter of censorship. It's a matter yet another person, a la the drom-fraud, who has zero interest in contributing to our community and maximum interest in shameless self-promotion.

Comment by ryan cameron on January 29, 2010 at 9:56pm

I dont hate "dangerous talk" and I am not advocating that. I have two points. 1. blocking comments is antithetical to the value of public debate and an open, free forum., so I am advocating a rule where it is strongly discouraged. 2. This person clearly has exploited a lack of policy in this area to the detriment of the site and their own personal gain, so I am advocating he be banned, BUT if talking to him convinces him to open up comments on his posts, then I have no issue with him at all. I have no reason to believe his posts aren't very interesting, intelligent, and helpful.

I also advocate that nothing ever be deleted or removed except in the most extreme circumstances and with strong group consensus. Defeating idiotic statements with intelligent statements is far more effective than using the "delete" button in the long run.

Comment by funk Q on January 29, 2010 at 9:40pm

Is this some form of enlightened censorship?

Would removing the ability to close comments achieve anything? The OP still has the power to delete individual comments which get posted anyway. Unless you propose this is removed as well. If so blog authors will have no means to control spam and irrelevant posting.

Authors should be able to edit their own posts and any comments on them. It's not as if most have any relevance in the material world, now or in the future, anyway. "Dangerous Talk" should possibly be advised of the negative response to his current mode of blocking comment and if the practice continues I suppose a fitting penalty will have to devised.

I must ask though; If this crusade is successful and "Dangerous Talk" is chained to a wall in a damp and cold dungeon somewhere in cyber space which individual or group will be HATED next?


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. Tommy Smothers

Comment by Sentient Biped on January 29, 2010 at 9:35pm

The Site Rules state:

"Do not spam the groups, forums, chat, or other members. Any and all commercial or fraud spam should be reported immediately, using the "report issues" function. The following types of posts may be subject to removal without warning:

(...)
"Posts promoting personal websites and projects in inappropriate places. Your own profile is a good place for promoting your endeavors."

Think Dangerous' posts qualify for this existing site rule? I do.

In addition, maybe we should add a site rule, something to the effect of "posts whose sole intent appear to be to drive traffic to other sites, without primary intent to support the Nexus community, will be removed. Repetitious posting of content that has no intent other than to divert traffic to other sites will result in suspension from the Nexus".

This would include the repititous posts by one former Nexus member-who-shall-remain-unnamed who repeatedly posted links to another website and actively recruited Nexus members, as well as Dangerous' posts that have no intent other than to advertise his web site.

Has anyone used the Report and Issue button, with clear explanation, regarding this member? Seems like commenters here would support you.

Comment by Roy The Infidel on January 29, 2010 at 9:22pm

hmm...

Ryan's comment on his wall has vanished, too.

Comment by HotMess on January 29, 2010 at 9:06pm

This does seem kind of "spammy" if he's just posting here in order to feed his own blog. He explains this as such there on his page. However, I don't know if this is a reason to block someone from this site.

Comment by Фелч Гроган on January 29, 2010 at 8:47pm

Daniel - it's not about cases where undead threads get closed because they have lost relevance. It's about posting an item and then immediately sealing it. It is happening more and more. It is the equivalent of spraypainting a wall and running away. It's as spineless as it is annoying.

Comment by Sentient Biped on January 29, 2010 at 8:25pm

There are a couple of points here.

Some discussions do get way out of hand, and wind up way off topic. If the OP is not able to close a discussion, then it turns into a form of pollution. I have closed a couple of my own discussions because the responses kept veering way off base, repeatedly and despite my trying to move people back onto topic. This happened enough that I stay away from certain topics now, and I no longer feel interested in following some of my own posts. In one case, code was inserted so that anyone who checked the comments would be subjected to annoying music (that member is no longer on the nexus).

Super-long discussions with subthreads and subsubthreads are impossible to follow. I think that the OP has a responsiblity to try to keep discussions on topic, and in the absence of continuous full-time moderators, has some responsiblity to keep a discussion from becoming a source of spam, malicious code insertion, ad hominems, and similar. Not to censor people, or prevent disagreement, but to be a leader.

I agree that it's not appropriate to try to censor people, but at a certain point, if the OP isn't interested in following any more, they should be able to stop. Then someone else can post and lead their own discussion, if they are interested in following. That's not censorship - no one is being stopped from commenting, just a change of the guard so to speak.

That being said, I fully agree that the guy who you mention is siphoning off traffic from Nexus. DIfferent situation.

Comment by Фелч Гроган on January 29, 2010 at 7:43pm

Ryan - I wasn't disagreeing. Just saying he is only one part of a bigger problem.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page