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Thank you all for being so polite!

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John-B
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Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by John-B »

I'm thanking all members for being so helpful, polite and considerate in your posts.

I'm a member of another forum, but not a moderator, which has just had an aggressive lawyer's letter about an alleged libellous post and the administrator has closed that board but we don't know what the outcome will be or whether that particular board will reopen. It's part of a very large financial forum and the board in question has mainly political comment. It's a worry for the administrator and we members hope it will all calm down.

I was a moderator of another forum which was largely composed of younger people who were often rude and there were constant heated arguments. We also had a threatening lawyer's letter there but after deleting posts and warning members the problem died away, luckily.

I'm very glad this forum has had nothing like that. :o Keep up the good work and don't get too upset if you don't agree with another member.

Flinty
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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by Flinty »

What a nice man.

grahamemmett
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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by grahamemmett »

Goodness me I hadn't realised being a moderator could be quite so hazardous.
I run the Club's Facebook page and everybody there is well behaved. I have heard horror stories about other pages though. Considering there are 1200 people on the Facebook page and very few are club members, I've probably got off lightly.
https://www.facebook.com/daimler.oc
Graham Emmett ¦ DLOC Chairman ¦ chair@dloc.co.uk ¦ 07967 109160
Northwich, Cheshire
DB18 1949 LCV522 (Yes that one with the P100s)

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marchesmark
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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by marchesmark »

Daimler and Lanchester owners would never be so undignified! I agree: I'm a member of 3 other car clubs, all of them seem to have succumbed to the general craziness to be found on social media. One club I have only recently joined - my first post got an appallingly rude response from a forum user who is not even a club member! When I expressed surprise I was told, well he's always like that...

This is where I come for dignified discussion.

Mark

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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by classiclife »

Hello John,

Firstly, can I say you do a great job and always provide an excellent service for DLOC Forum users - thank you for that.

I also belong to a couple of other classic car forums (one of which, I am a club member) and I am pleased to report that in all the years of being with them, I have not witnessed anything along the lines you describe; long may that continue.

It is difficult to try and understand the mentality of folk who feel at liberty to cross-swords at the slightest instance, when a view or statement does not reflect their own personal interpretation of a particular point or process. Ironically, "we" have just seen that sort of corrosive rhetoric being overturned, thankfully, very recently within the last 48hrs elsewhere in the world.

Regards.

Richard.
1968 Daimler V8-250 Saloon
DLOC East Sussex Branch Secretary
DLOC 2.5L V8 & V8-250 Registrar - https://www.dloc.org.uk/v8-250
DLOC 2024 International Rally - https://www.dloc.org.uk/rally-2024

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John-B
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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by John-B »

grahamemmett wrote: Fri Jan 22, 2021 10:03 am Goodness me I hadn't realised being a moderator could be quite so hazardous.
I run the Club's Facebook page and everybody there is well behaved. I have heard horror stories about other pages though. Considering there are 1200 people on the Facebook page and very few are club members, I've probably got off lightly.
https://www.facebook.com/daimler.oc
When someone gets annoyed by a post, either because it's libellous or contravenes his copyright, that person won't know the post's author if it's just a username, so his first target is the forum and the administrator will have to deal with the initial threat of legal action and will be threatened with legal action along with the forum itself.

The forum and administrator would notify the author, privately, but gets embroiled as a middle man subject to the same legal action.

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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by Brian-H »

When one is aware of its reason for its existence, I've always had the opinion that stating a forum's culture is tautological.

The most obvious example is Facebook Groups. Of the several FB Groups of which I'm a member, I have never seen any arguments at all, and I think that's because those groups are mainly a showcase for photos (of cars, or whatever the Group is about). But those are probably unusual examples because Facebook's business model relies on advertising hence, until recently, Facebook has allowed all sorts of extremist Groups to exist, where open swearing is usually allowed (and the same applies to Twitter's business model).

So - if a forum relies on advertising to pay for its upkeep, then the same axiom applies i.e. the more arguments, the more click counts. There are also forums that have a hidden agenda where, as well as advertising, the owner(s) want people to get sucked sucked into using services affiliated to the forum, so they too allow topics and arguments therein.

Having said that, there was one forum that I frequented for a few years, that was a bit like DLOC in that it didn't require/need/want advertising or affiliation, yet arguments including swearing were the norm. I think that the reasons were twofold - political threads were rife (and this was long before Brexit) and there was also the petrol vs diesel "warfare".

As DLOC relies on membership for funding, and as political threads are not allowed, and as there have never been diesel Daimlers, well the culture is naturally going to be less argumentative. But, I wouldn't say that this forum is 100% "polite", and without giving examples, all I'll say is a very small number do behave in a typical forum manner of a "fiefdom" (an unstated but obvious attitude "I've been here for a long time, putting me higher up the pecking order, know your place"). For that reason, I wish I'd stuck to using an alias and given my first name out occasionally (as others have done and I have always done in other forums).

On the subject of moderation, John (John-B) does not openly say he is a moderator, but should he need to moderate, I get the impression that he would know the difference between moderation and "hard policing". The latter type of "moderator" are in abundance on many forums, where they are either out of their depth in some threads (whether technical or otherwise), or they clearly side with the fiefdom, or power has simply gone to their head. As I say, from what I've seen, I don't think John is in any of those categories.

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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by Chris_R »

I think this raises an interesting question. Facebook's position is that they are not a publisher and say they are not liable for what is posted by Facebook users although that position has been tested recently by President Trump and political pressure in regards to anti-vaxxers.
Is the same true for forums like this? Has it ever been tested in court against any forum? Or is it just lawyers flexing their muscles, as can be their wont, and voluntary administrators not wishing to take the risk backing down?
Of course I'm not suggested we should start getting rude and insulting and publishing libellous material but I wonder what the position really is.
Does anyone know?

Brian-H
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Re: Thank you all for being so polite!

Post by Brian-H »

AFAIK it's the same for a forum as it is for any other place that is not acting as a publisher, but merely a vehicle for people to state whatever they want. As the people running the place choose what they allow to be said and, as you imply, forums are much smaller too, then maybe that could be a legal grey area ?

In general I would think that where there is a legal objection to something said, if the person who wrote the "offending" post cannot or refuses to remove their own post, then the admin can remove it. But it's possible that in a court it could be said to be too late.

The way out for some forums (and Facebook) is to only allow "members" (people with a login) to see certain threads.

EDIT In the USA it comes under Section 230 which says "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

But I suppose that if a "content provider" is hosted in another country, let's say country "Z", and the libellous post is made by someone living in country "Z" against a business also in country "Z" then as long as the "content provider" has been shown to be moderating what can and cannot be said yet allows that post to remain, then I'd say that there might be a case against the "content provider" in that country.

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