Censorship, and rumors of censorship...

Samurai6

Samurai6

Joined
Oct 16, 1998
Messages
2,395
The rumors of the death of open and frank discussion on knifeforums.com are greatly exagerated. I made the mistake of light-heartedly editing a post, with admittedly minor cause, from a member who holds his First Amendment rights particularly near and dear. We are having a very open, honest, and uncensored discussion about it, and I have learned something from the experience. If you haven't already, go on over there and read the threads in the General and Politics and Policies forums. Throw in your own ideas on the subject. Any and all constructive input is not only welcome but cherished.

A lot of the same great folks who make this a great forum make knifeforums.com a great forum too, as most of you know.

Harv

[This message has been edited by Steve Harvey (edited 25 January 1999).]
 
Yeahright. If it doesnt help earl sell knives, its deleted or locked by ty. the case of the myseterious missing post. its a little late in the song to change your tune. drwelch, briane, who else is going to be deleted?

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Buddenator!

 
Steve Harvey is one of the more knowledgeable and sensible knife people out there, and one of the better moderators too. And he's had more work to do than I've had. And he and I and nearly all the rest of the participants have no tangible stake in business relationships and former business relationships between respective owners and administrators, which are best not made the subject of a "trial by Internet."

I'd rather not see evil spoken of the Other Forum over here, lest we end up with another flame war. I will note that there are no First Amendment issues involved here, since the owner of a private publication - which is what either of these forums is - has the right to decide what will and will not appear in that publication, just as a newspaper doesn't have to print every letter to the editor. The relationship between any participant and the forum owner is voluntary on both sides.

And check out the new Good News Knife Forum over at KnifeForums. It's a nice positive note.

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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com

 
James, no one is saying that moderation should be stopped. While newspapers can reject articles they cannot change something you said which was the case under discussion. That is plain and simply wrong.

If I wrote a review of a knife and sent it to a mag sure they could refuse it, but are you actually saying they can also alter the wording of my review to alter its meaning? Yeah, right.

-Cliff
 
Steve,

As you know Ty, Earl and yourself are welcome to post here anytime. However, although it is no fault of your own, my posts are deleted from KF each time I go there. The last time was just the other day when I was trying to give accolades to Chris Reeve. Other times where when someone asked a question about a knife I make and so on and so forth. I have no current beef with the owner of that site, some bad memories maybe but no current beef.

There is plenty of room for both forums as evidenced by their success. I have spoken to Earl and we have agreed to disagree on how each forum is to be run. We do not lock threads here just because we have a difference of opinion. It is likened to telling a child to shut up and people take discord to such measures.

People are not robots and we all express ourselves in many different ways. Allowing certain posts to stand and others to not stand gives many the impression that their voice is not welcome or they must in some way be inferior to the intellect which runs the site. I have seen the mysterious disappearance of posts over there myself. It seems to happen most frequently when someone says something about a maker which has a forum there. I agree to a point that there are right and wrong ways to handle such situations and "rude" posts may not be the way to go. Tom Kyle's post was rude but it's point was valid, as we all know. So for me to edit his post because of expurlatives or the like would make him mad and only make him post it again.

I think allowing someone to vent some steam sometimes actually is a good thing. They usually later see the err of their ways and recant or at least apologize for the tone of their message.

I am also getting tired of hearing that these sites are privately owned and that the owner may select what is to be heard and not heard. Although this is true and first amendment rights do not apply here it seems somewhat hypocritical to place a medium in front of someone and allow them to write only to slap their hand should they right something the owner of the site does not like.

Earl told me point blank on the phone that KnifeForums is a marketing tool for his business. That is fine with me but to make it seem otherwise is also hypocritical. I am not going into details here but there is much more to this than anyone here knows and I think it is best we let dead dogs lay.

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Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!
www.wowinc.com





 
Remember folks we are not having this problem here so takes Steve's advice and should you feel the need to express your opinion on the subject please do so. I obviously can't so I will stay here.
<a href="http://www.knifeforums.com/ubb/Forum15/HTML/000181.html">Click Here to add your comment.</a>

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Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!
www.wowinc.com





 
As should be evidenced by your reactions (i.e. who is this guy?), i am basically a lurker. That being said, i will spend most of my time lurking here. It's simply more friendly.

I went out of town for ONE DAY, and returned to about 200 new posts! That's fantastic, and not a single one of them had that annoying padlock thingy beside them.

I collapsed into a hysterical little ball last night, after reading thread after thread, about censorship, that was censored! Just kinda ironic.

It is unfortunate that a forum site is being used as advertising. Not to say that there aren't valid forums to read there, i will just limit myself to a few (4-6 by initial count)

So this is my thanks to everyone who has made this a great site, it's certainly well deserved.

Returning to the shadows
-Poz
 
Thanks for dropping by Poz. We have about 800-2000 lurkers per day so your in a lot of company.

------------------
Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!
www.wowinc.com





 
I've decided to be a big guy and drop this issue.
ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill

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Talk is cheap. Free speech is not.




 
I'm the one raising heck about a post of mine in the General Forum at Knifeforums that was altered without my knowledge. The discussion of that, and several related issues, is now going on in the Politics and Policies Forum at that site -- the discussion moved there by agreement of everyone involved. Although some threads were locked early on, we are currently discussing the issues freely. That might change at any moment, who knows, but as of now we're having a free and open discussion of policy in that forum and on the website as a whole. I've said I won't spread the discussion to other forums as long as we can have a free and open discussion there where it belongs, and currently that's what's happening, so I'm not going to be involved in spreading the controversy. If that changes and threads start getting locked again or anything like that, *then* you can expect to see me talking about it here and on rec.knives.

I think I can talk about some general issues here since they've been brought up -- not in reference to that specific controversy, just talking about general issues that concern everyone on the net.

The Bill of Rights is relevant to restriction of free speech by parties other than the US government only in that nearly everyone on the net believes in the Bill of Rights -- here, it doesn't have the force of law, but it's one statement of some ideas that nearly all of us believe in and are willing to fight for.

The moderator of a forum can't be hauled into the Supreme Court and forced to stop violating those beliefs. He'll just find he doesn't have any members.

Everybody and his hamster owns space on the web, and many of us aren't even using ours. Everybody who's reading this has a computer and an internet connection and the ability to read and type (or use voice software). That's all you need to set up a forum. Many of us may not know offhand how to go about it, but if you can read a help file you can figure it out if you want to. If you choose the web for your forum and it expands to overflow the web space you probably get free with your internet account, you can buy more space very cheaply or get it for nothing if you don't mind a few advertising banners, at Geocities and many other servers.

If we wanted to, every member of this forum could set up a web forum, start a mailing list, start a newsgroup, and start an IRC channel, all within a week in our spare time and without paying any bills we aren't already paying. The only thing more established forums have that all those new forums wouldn't have is members. Without members -- not just numbers, members who write interesting and thought-provoking posts that draw in more members who write interesting and thought-provoking replies -- without that there's no forum.

So when a moderator or administrator thumps his chest and says I own this forum and you're only members and you have no right to voice your opinions about policy here -- we all laugh.

-Cougar Allen :{)

 
Cougar is exactly right, which is why Mike and I work so hard to make sure that we are doing our best to serve you guys, instead of making you jump through our hoops.

This site is here for your use, not ours. This site isn't a sales and marketing tool for us, we don't have any direct public sales. So, if this site is going to be a success, it's in our best interest to make sure that you guys get more out of it than anywhere else.

I think we've done a good job so far. We haven't had any of the problems that have plagued other sites, yet we have (pretty much) the same members. So, clearly, we must be doing something different, and doing it well.

The BladeForums.com members have exceeded my expectations on every level so far, and don't see that changing at all.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here
 
Steve,

I understand your position. As a old time (long ago) SysOp of a PC Users BBS, I had the same challenges to face that you do as a moderator. With the Club's concurrance I only killed profanity. I let stand folks opinions be they obviously flawed, mis-stated or whatever preferring instead to send them a private note with any reactions, guidance or feedback I thought appropriate. Your exchange with Cougar has evolved into civility with you both agreeing to disagree. The problem I had was with how Ty handled Brian W. Edgington, a good contributor from Australia. The removal of his access, albeit with a comment that he could re-register, seemed especially offensive when couched in terms of having read a post of Brian's elsewhere where he had allegedly expressed opinions on the relative merits/values of existing knife related forums. In essense, "you don't like it here? Then go away!" This type of censorship certainly does not reflect well on any of the parties concerned.

Such actions distress me. I'm just thankful that my views, popular or not, may be freely posted in other venues unfettered and free from an ever present threat of removal or alteration.

This will be my last post on the subject as I feel no further comments are necessary given this and the earlier one I made on Mike's censorship thread of earlier in the week. That and in deference to my fellow forumites who would much rather read of knives and the enjoyment of life than petty foolishness.


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-=[Bob]=-

Keep yer powder dry and cutters hair poppin' sharp!



[This message has been edited by bald1 (edited 25 January 1999).]
 
I am a bit late in this thread and, admittedly, have only scanned some very long posts. But I have to dispute Harv's assertion that the rumours of censorship at the other place are exaggerated.
I am not allowed to even READ the forums unless I go back and ask nicely (ok,,a subjective take)because I disagreed with policy on the locking of threads whenever they were not going where moderators wanted.
Yeah...the pretext was that my profile was deleted so I could overcome a cookie problem.
I did not think that this would make me a lesser human being than some surfer stumbling on the forums for the first time.
I only found out about my status because someone sent me a URL that allowed me in the backdoor....I was unable to read Ty's message to me because it was on a forum to which I no longer had access. No email was received from anyone in a position of authority at the forum.
Sorry, Spark and Mike.......didn't intend to bring this here but I don't have a personna at the other site. Won't mention it again.



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Brian W E
ICQ #21525343


 
I don't want to go into any gripes with any other forums, and how they are intertwined with a particular business. It's a free country, so be it.

Mike, thanks for letting BladeForums be what it is.
smile.gif

 
Brian,

I too thought the cookie scenerio was quite funny. If you go to our tech support forum you can see how we have handled the very same problem in the past without having to delete a member's profile. I am not saying this is what happened. Maybe Ty just did not know how to do it or to explain it.

Also I am curious as to how they blocked you from visiting the site. The only way they can do this is by blocking your ISP. Of course I could be wrong. I can not post their either. I was banned for reasons unknown to me other than Earl saying I had a conflict of interest. No problem but as a manufacturer I would like the oportunity to answer a question or two when asked. Either way, we choose to read what we want and I am sure their problem will go away and this very thread will remain at the bottom and life will go on. This thread will not be locked or deleted or censored unless a personal attack is made.

I do not think that is censorship BTW. I would define censorship as altering a message to read in such a way as to not offend either a member, lurker or the owner or moderator. I also feel the although my moderators have the power to edit any message I would appreciate it if they would contact the poster and have them do it. I am sure the poster would appreciate this as well and if this action had been taken at KF the problem would not be nearly as bad as it has become.

Again this is your forum and you can freely discuss this subject. It is starting to get old and we should really move on.

------------------
Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!
www.wowinc.com





 
Mike

Just BEFORE I move on
smile.gif
in all fairness, I have had an email from Ty in which he says he has no idea what the problem is but I should be able to read posts.
I can, in fact, access the site and all the forums......but they contain no messages.
His belief in the correctness of his actions is undiminished.

------------------
Brian W E
ICQ #21525343


 
While censorship by the private owners of a web forum is not a "First Amendment" issue, I do believe that owners and administrators of a web forum who want it to be a successful web forum will err on the side of free speach.

I have VERY rarely gone in to edit or delete a post. Maybe three or three times in my tenure, and normally after consulting the administrators. Partly this is policy, and partly it is limited time to spend on such things. Mike and Spark have done it a few times when they saw a problem developing before I did.

I didn't see either the original or edited version of the post that inspired the current animated discussion, so I can't comment intelligently on it. Editing is trickier than outright deletion.

I don't think that dicussing "What's right and wrong with that other forum?" will do a lot of good over here. "How can we improve this forum here?" is a much more useful approach - here for this forum, over yonder for the forum over yonder. There will presumably be folks who happily continue to post in both places, and folks who are a happier here than there, and folks who are happier there than here, and a huge public out there who would think we are all nuts if they knew about us.




------------------
- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com

 
Earls over there right now trying to maje
like there isnt a problem saying that theres
12 bad apples who are ruining it for
everyone. its funny how everything is always
someone elses fault not his :> there isn't a
problem with the policy, its the members of
course were so stupid.

"Show me the beef?" sorry, im too busy eating my steak at BLADEFORUMS to waste my time with a leftover whitecastle slider. THank you Mike and Spark for making this site! No preservatives no bs filler, no greasy slimey help leaving my meal under the heat lamps. sides if you dont know 'wheres the beef" thats your own damn fault.

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Buddenator!

 
Just one more post....really.

I have an obligation to pass this on :
IT seem I was not barred from READING the other forums.
When I was (justifiably, in my mind) offended by my treatment for the sin of disagreeing, I deleted my bookmark for the forum.
When I was told there was a post that concerned me, I used the link on my bookmarked CFKaT page to check it out. This lead me to what I think is an outdated version of the forums....no new posts since early January.
Seems the CFKaT might need an update.
I post this to keep the record straight.
Ty has graciously given me the correct URL.

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Brian W E
ICQ #21525343


 
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