[foo]

I recently received the following not-so-thinly-veiled personal threat as a pm:

==========
xxxxx [name deleted by administrator]
shunning, Jul 7 2007, 09:14 AM

Do you think its worth while publicly shunning foo?

I am suggesting an organized effort in which the bulk of the forum regulars agree not to respond to any of his posts...
==========

(The limitations of "cut and paste" appear to make it impossible to actually quote the original here, but I can forward an actual quote to anyone who asks upon request.)

I also note that it may or may not be coincidence that evidently shortly after sending the quoted message out, the quoted poster began this thread:

[link deleted by administrator]

Given the timing, this could be construed as some kind of "influence peddling"
(I explicitly do not claim it to be so. I merely note the =appearance= that it could be so.)

Now the question. Are personal attacks, or attempts at manipulating public policy by private menbers against other private members, considered reasonable actions from the POV of whatever community standards exist on BBOF?

Since the quoted poster seems to have decided to raise this issue publicly, it seems appropriate that I try to respond to it in the same fashion. While trying to maintain a ,errr, slightly more cvilized tone about the matter.

This post has been edited by inquiry: 2007-July-08, 21:40

[the hog]

Some points: "Do you think its worth while publicly shunning foo?"

A personal threat???? A personal attack? A question which is asked an "attempt at manipulating public policy."

What this has to do with Richard's Iceland thread is beyond the scope of my reasoning.

I think you have totally lost the plot Foo.

[foo]

The_Hog, on Jul 8 2007, 09:50 PM, said:

Some points: "Do you think its worth while publicly shunning foo?"

A personal threat???? A personal attack? A question which is asked an "attempt at manipulating public policy."

What this has to do with Richard's Iceland thread is beyond the scope of my reasoning.

I think you have totally lost the plot Foo.

The only germane question here is "did you, or did you not, also receive a copy of the quoted email from hrothgar?"

If so, then there is proof positive that he did indeed disemminate the quoted post to a public audience in an attempt to organize a personal attack.

...and that's the reason for this thread.

My notice that he, coincidently or not, attempted to "make nice" at about the same time with the readership in a manner unlike his previous behavior is simply that, an observation.

[inquiry]

I will respond to your question.

The standard does not allow attacking people by name. Your post claims to include a Private message from one of our members, parts or which you posted. Rather the private message is real or not, or from the quoted member or not, we do not allow such posting in the forum. You simply can not call out people by name in this manner. There is a little more learyway perhaps in the water cooler, i don't adminster that one, but not here in the bridge links.

Thus, i have deleted the name you allege sent the private message and the link to a post this person started, as that is the same as saying the name.

If you have a problem with the person, take it up with any of the adminstrators in private, or take your complaints to somewhere else. There are members who choose to ignore post by certain other people. That is fine. We can not and will not even try to regulate private messages and what happens elsewhere. But you simply can not post inflammatory matterial here that mentions BBO users by name.

So a private message asking people to shun you, well that is outside our control. A public message on our forum doing the same, that is inside our control. A nd what you posted falls into that area too. Hence the edit. There are other consequences besides editing post, don't make me have to do it again.

[foo]

Inquiry,
It's not a "claim." I have forwarded the original post to you as proof.

If, as he claims, he sent that message as a wide "broadcast", he effectively defamed me in public. Where's the line? 10 private messages? 100? The entire BBOF readership? Just because he did not post it in an open forum, it's to be deemed "private"?

What is my recourse here? How do I protect my rights?

If there is a desire to use these forums as some sort of personal weapon for a private agenda, it is not mine.

I'm here to teach and to learn. As simple as that.

EDIT: I'm going to ask Fred to throw both of me +and+ the quoted poster off BBOF if another solution can't be found. I'd rather that than having there be any diversion of focus from these forums primary purpose: teaching Bridge and positive PR for Bridge.

This post has been edited by foo: 2007-July-08, 22:20

[foo]

If this was something just done to me Justin, I'd shrug and say Life is just too short.

Unfortunately, it has been brought to my attention that others have in the past been the recipient of such vitrol by this member. With the result that people this member does not like end up getting driven from the forums.

=That's= a problem if true.

That sort of stuff is bad for BBO.

[uday]

I'm just hoping this doesn't turn into a fight (yeah, yeah, right!)

I think there is plenty of room for two interesting people who don't want to deal w/each other

This is an echo of what happens daily in BBO itself when 2 people decide they can't stand each other. Our best advice there and here is "ignore the other guy". There is no need to deprive the rest of us of the pleasure of your company

uday

[foo]

uday, on Jul 8 2007, 11:40 PM, said:

I'm just hoping this doesn't turn into a fight (yeah, yeah, right!)

I think there is plenty of room for two interesting people who don't want to deal w/each other

This is an echo of what happens daily in BBO itself when 2 people decide they can't stand each other. Our best advice there and here is "ignore the other guy". There is no need to deprive the rest of us of the pleasure of your company

uday

I have been trying to avoid a fight with this member for quite some time here.
The guy just won't quit trying to pick one.

The real irony of it is that I actually respect this guy's intelligence. Disagreeing with someone is vastly different than finding them disagreeable.

Then he started to act spooky.

One long term solution to the meta-problems of this sort is to put "ignore" functionality into the forums SW just as it is in the playing SW.

Another is to just adopt a "No Fault" policy as in Insurance or as used by Bouncers.
If peace can't be guaranteed, both "vehicles" get thrown out of the "bar".
This protects BBO w/o any need for extra coding.
(I'd hate leaving. But I'd rather that than that he just be able to keep doing this sort of stuff with de facto impunity to member after member he "has a problem with". )

"Out of sight. Out of mind." seems to work well in the playing area.

[foo]

Sorry Justin. Mea Culpa. I'm a bit upset.

I've never claimed I don't care about this. I think I've made it reasonably clear I care a great deal about it. Especially if this guy has a track record of harassing others he doesn't like around here until they are driven off the site.

I cogitated for a ~ a day and a half, and reviewed most of this guy's posts involving me, before I decided that I was not going to keep turning the other cheek. It simply is not working.

It seems turning the other cheek didn't help others he decided to persecute either.

So he finally has what he's been looking for. I'm going to treat this just like any other legal case where opposing counsel decides they want to "mix it up." Attitude on.
The mods are now involved. Fred is now involved.

I'm not a bad guy. But I'm a "badder" guy than he's used to tangling with if he thinks delusions and bullying are going to work here. I simply will not be bullied.

[helene_t]

What Ben and Justin said.

There is a feature in Invision software that allows users to filter out posts from certain other users. I've suggested that feature be enabled on BBF.

One may be skeptical as to the effectiveness of such a measure - the "ignored" poster will still be visible though other posters' reactions to his posts (whether the filter applies to quotes as well, or not).

But if enough people filter out a particular troll, the chance that he gets quoted diminishes, and some won't bother to engage in the flame wars because they can only see part of it. One might hope that this will be sufficient to cause the flame war (or whatever kind of useless thread it is) to die out.

This would make an interesting study for a sociologist. Internet forums provide an excellent opportunity for quantitative measurements of the effects of positive feed-back-loops in social networks.

[Codo]

1. Anybody has the right to ignore other posts.
2. Nobody has the right to make personal attacks in the forum. So XYZs PMs had been allowed, your quotations not.
3. It is your own responsibility how the majority of the posters will behave towards you. And if you belive that more then one respected poster does not respect you, it may be your responsibility to change your behaviour. It is not your responsibility to change their behaviour.
4. I did not get a PM and if I had ignored it. I decide by myself which posts I read and which I ignore.

[P_Marlowe]

The attitude of an average post is usually fairly positive.

What I did learn in real life, you can exchange arguments,
but after two pro contra exchanges, you should recognize
that you cant convince the guy opposite you, and leave it
at that.
Other, who read the arguments, will make up their own
mind up, hopefully you did reflect on your own position
Sometimes your messages put me off a bit, but than, I
ignore those posts.
But I would regret it, if you leave, because diversity in
general is good for a forum.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[hrothgar]

For the record, said message was sent by me.

I understand why Inquiry deleted my name from the original. However, I'm perfectly willing to stand behind something that I feel is the correct thing to do. Equally significant, if I had been trying to secretly organize some kind of grand conspiracy, I wouldn't have forwarded a copy of said message to Foo.

For what its worth, I sent said message out to two individuals. I wanted to gauge reactions and soliit feedback before publicly opening this whole can of worms. There certainly wasn't any kind of widespread broadcast before this was posted on the forums at large. As an example, Ron (The Hog) didn't receive a copy of this message. I expect that he was completely oblivious about it until now. Admittedly, you have now brought this issue to the attention of the entire BBO Forums; However, that's a whole different kettle of fish.

In any case, I don't think that its possible to engage with constructive discussions with Foo. Take a look at the arguments that he continually kicks offs. They invariably start with some kind of ridiculous / grandiose claim before inevitably degenerating into debates about the meaning of the word "the". Simply put, I have come to conclude that engaging with him is a waste of time.

Long ago, people came to recognize that the best way to engage with forum trolls is to starve them of attention. I don't claim that foo is troll. I think that he genuine believes what he spouts. At the same time, I think that his continued presence is every bit as pernicious. I am simply stating that - from now on - I am going to ignore him completely. Moreover, I am suggesting that there would be benefits if other people were to behave in a like manner.

[pbleighton]

Quote

There is a feature in Invision software that allows users to filter out posts from certain other users. I've suggested that feature be enabled on BBF.

I think that this would be a good idea.

That said, there are a couple of posters whose posts I completely ignore, and a few more I usually ignore. It works for me.

Peter

[awm]

One thing that's been bothering me lately is the frequent "hijacking" of threads. This has happened to a lot of threads, but two that I was particularly interested in are the threads discussing regulation of conventions. While this topic has come up a lot on the forums, I thought these threads were nice because they focused on trying to make regulations fair and transparent rather than complaining about specific things being allowed/disallowed. One thread was started by me and one by jtfanclub.

The first few posts on these threads were pretty interesting and on-topic. But both threads soon degenerated into arguments about the validity of people's historical references, the exact words on a page of a particular bridge book from the 30s, the meaning of various terms, and the best defense to various forcing pass systems.

While to some degree this "wandering of topic" is natural for any forum, it seems to have gotten a lot worse recently. If people want to argue about the stuff in the previous paragraph that's certainly their prerogative, but I wish they'd stop hijacking threads I originally thought were interesting in order to do so. I don't think this issue can be blamed on any particular poster (it takes more than one to sidetrack a thread like this anyway), but I think there are a few individuals who are causing a lot of the problems.

[DrTodd13]

Several times I have typed a response here and then failed to send it because that relieves the pressure of wanting to say something without potentially making things less cordial. Interestingly, within the next few minutes someone often types essentially the same thing I was going to say (thanks Helene and Codo!).

Foo, if you would like to fit into this community, let me suggest that you look at your own statement that you came here to "teach and learn." First, the people here are not going to take kindly to you appointing yourself as their teacher. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it isn't what you meant but I'm just telling you that that statement comes off as pompous. If you really want to teach, you first have to establish yourself as someone who is respected for his knowledge. Like it or not, that is unlikely to happen if you continually disagree with people who are known to be knowledgeable in the areas under discussion.

As far as learning goes, if you really want to learn, you shouldn't be antagonistic towards those who have more experience. There were a half dozen people with years of experience playing different systems including ones with ferts and they were trying to let you know how your statements were mistaken. My impression is that you ignored them.

[foo]

Thanks for all the replies. Fred sent me a pm that I have asked him for permission to quote here unedited and in its entirety. I'm waiting for his permission to do so.

[inquiry]

foo, on Jul 13 2007, 11:08 AM, said:

Thanks for all the replies. Fred sent me a pm that I have asked him for permission to quote here unedited and in its entirety. I'm waiting for his permission to do so.

I can not believe you are bothering fred with this tripe. First, you have already posted essentially all that richard said, second, richard has agreed he sent the message, and he might even post the whole thing if you ask him. Third, BBO does not montor private messages or websites other than our own. Richard or anyone can say what ever they want in private messages (assuming not private messages on BBO chat, which if offensive, can be taken as a screen shot, but I mean private email)... without any action by BBO.

I think this has been pointed out by myself and others here. Uday has even read this thread and his only comment is that people have to just learn to stay away from each other there is enough room.

Let it go.

I am locking this thread. If Fred sends you "permission" to post the entire thing, or ir richard wants to post it, I will reopen the thread. Send me a copy of Fred's permission, or richard just message me. Otherwise, let it be, This is just plain useless as it is. Nuff said.

Ben