Posting and Moderation on the message board
 

We previously had a policy of pretty much being self moderating and the only exception to that rule was to insist that there was nothing, abusive, unlawful or pornographic being posted.

Last year the website rules were updated to clarify the situation and to give examples of what was unacceptable behaviour. It is clear that simply updating the rules has not worked as a few message board users continue to abuse the forum rules and test them to the limit to justify personal and abusive attacks on each other.

This will be stopped!


Anyone who incites this kind of behaviour in the future will be banned from this board and the thread / post removed. There is no doubt this will arouse cries and opinions that this is censorship. We can assure you this is not the case but we are not going to have a debate on this issue as there is no way everyone can be appeased by this.

Please be assured that everyone is welcome to participate on the message board in whatever capacity or level of membership you choose so long as you treat everyone else the way you would expect to be treated yourselves (i.e. with respect).

We are of the opinion that anyone wishing to defend their “freedom of speech” to the point of libelous, abusive or threatening posting is not the kind of person who would be welcome on this board anyway.

The role of the moderators is to restore what we all once enjoyed, a club full of likeminded people with a common interest of creating a community where members have a mutual respect of each other, sharing banter, knowledge and generally enjoying each other’s company...and bikes!

We will be deleting any kind of potentially abusive, inciting threads / posts or anything that could possibly descend us back to where we have just previously come from and if the offender persists, they will be banned.

Please note there will be no public justification for closing, deleting or banning a member, I’m afraid you are just going to have to trust our judgment on this which is why we are here so please do not PM the Webteam or start a thread based on this as this will be viewed as inciting behaviour

Anyone can report a bad post or thread by sending a PM to the Webteam – click on the small warning triangle icon next to the relevant posting.


During the course of 2007, the MT has had to review its legal position with regard to the website and its usage. It is quite clear that there is a duty of care upon the website owners and operators to ensure that no libelous and/or defamatory comments are held on the system. Just two cases that appeared in the press this year have vividly demonstrated this; see http://news.bbc.co.uk:80/1/hi/technology/7056659.stm and http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/aug/08/news.newmedia2 for more information. The MT are determined not to allow a few people to put at risk the operation of the club website and the above strengthening of the rules and moderation processes are designed to ensure all members can continue to benefit from the message board facilities.

The over zealous application of these rules and, sometimes hypocritical, enforcement of advertising guidelines has been putting some people off of reading the board, let alone posting on it any more. So we'll probably end up with only nice, polite, supportive people posting on here anyway ;)

Excellent.

bc

Indeed, resistance is futile :lol:

Good.

It is entirely possible to disagree with other people's views, sometimes vehemently, without resorting to personal abuse or threat. That, to my mind at least, doesn't mean that people will not be allowed to express their views, or their disagreement with others, just that they will have to frame those views in a way that does not cause others to start running round to their solicitors.

None of us are perfect, when faced with something that gets the blood boiling we can all be a bit snappy at times, but it is surely not beyond people's wit to treat other posters with the same level of respect that they would apply if they were in the same room with them.

In my view, it's really simple. Obviously, there are laws of the land that quite rightly prevent people from inciting terrorism, inciting hatred of other races or religions. These laws apply to everyone. Other than that, on DSC related issues, say what you want, express any views that you want, but if you haven't got the bottle to say that to someone's face, then don't say it here.

Speak for yourself. I however know myself to be perfect in every way.

How are the MT going to differentiate between banter and personal attacks and who will decide? What if a particular person has an axe to grind with the alleged offender? I'm afraid to say it feels like the thin off the wedge.

Common sense?

In spite of views expressed to the contrary, I think that the webteam does a fine job of making sure that this board doesn't descend into the gutter and that they have performed an extremely difficult job, under a great deal of pressure, for many years. I think that it would be very easy to underate the common sense they have shown to date and the level of judgement required.

Again, it's not rocket science here. The webteam do not have the time to watch over every post and scrutinise it for barbed comment. The individuals involved in the banter, or the people watching the banter from the sidelines, will take a view on when this banter steps over the line. If somebody then feels they've been insulted or libelled, or a 3rd party believes that a post is too near the knuckle, they can press the red triangle to report the post to the webteam as it says in the above statement.

Then it's down to the webteam to decide whether real offence has been caused or whether the complainer is just over-sensitive and take the required action from there.

I don't think it's the thin end of the wedge at all. Other Ducati forums have the 'advantage' of being owned and run by individuals as far as I can see. In that case, he who pays for it calls the shots and there is no arguement. Here, where the site is a resource - paid for by the paid up members of the club then everyone is a stakeholder so debate about what goes and what doesn't is bound to be up for more discussion.

At the end of the day there is no such thing as complete freedom of speech anywhere in the world. People are always held accountable for what they say in some way shape or form and as far as I can see a few simple rules doesn't make for a draconian site

Jools, please stop being so sensible this early on a monday morning. My brain can't handle it.

In what respect? I may be worng, but I think that on the whole we have been pretty even handed with regard to advertising.

I even went to the lengths of posting a poll soiliciting opinion to try to ensure I remained even handed.

I found this site useful for legal aspects......

http://www.ukaop.org.uk/cgi-bin/go.p...category_uid=2

you have been assimilated;) :eek:

That's me told :sniff:

Personally and this is MY opinion,I think its a shame that the MT/WT have to moderate some posts and that some forum users cant be adult enough to moderate themselves.

I dont expect victorian standards of decency but personal insults on public forums is just another form of school playground bullying.

Have to say well put.

The thing is that the law on message boards has changed over the last year or so and now the owners/operators of the message board can be held liable for what is put up there.

Thus if anything untrue/libellous about a person or organisation is put up and they take offence, they can sue the owners/operators of the message board, as well as the person who wrote it in the 1st place, for allowing it to stay on the message board.

Now that the position in law is clear, we need to make sure as a Club that we abide within it.

This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, but if you want to be rude about or libel someone or something off you need to be able to prove that what you say is true and possibly be able to back it up in Court. The newspapers have been having to do this for years and they do loose big sometimes. These days a printed appology is often not enough people want a big donation to Charity!

As Ian Hislop will testify !!!!

Allegedly

I always miss the threads/posts that are the reasons for this, ahve they all gone or can I go read some old fashioned abuse before the lynching ? ;)

could we have a 'libel free' forum where you could go and abuse people free from the prospect of any litigation?

Yes you can! It is called www.not-here.com or the letters page of the Sun!

could you blow a raspberry at someone or is that deemed ott too? lol

i am against censorship etc etc but if this is how it is then thats fair enough. there is no grey area and there should be no confusion over what is acceptable and what the outcome will be if the line is over stepped

Well said Dickie!

There must be a raspberry smilie out there somewhere :o :)

I'm here on a regular basis but miss the posts that prompt the censorship or am I just thicker skinned and don't read into them what others do ?

i think you have to be quick. the few i have seen seem to spiral out of control quite quickly.

thicker skinned. I fear much of this is to do with peolpe opposing the MT and the way the club is run ratehr than me saying you are a c0k suk1ng to$$er!!

:lol: :lol:

LOL ;)

not sure if that would be libel or not. depends if you could prove it i guess!

Paul

I am afraid that you are wrong there, this is a reaction to the way in which the Law has interpreted posting on message boards. Basically yes you can say what you like as long as it is not deflamatory/libellous/sexually offensive/racist/etc just as we all have to be very carefull in the work environment these days. In addition if you wish to make a seditious comment then need to be able to substantiate it or face the consequences.

The opportunity to make unsubstantiated serious comments/allegations against people or organisations is no longer available to us.

It is sad that society is coming to this, but this is the environment in which we all have to exist and we all need to abide by the rules that society imposes.

Cant see much chance of "Love thy Neighbour" being repeated on telly in the near future or for that matter a few of the "Carry on" films being allowed to be shown!

Chris, in that case sad day indeed....freedon of speech truely has disappeared in the UK :(

Whoa hey there, just a minute!
 

The somewhat hand-wringing, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger phaseology used by CB there seems to me a little at odds with the real world.

"The opportunity to make unsubstantiated serious comments/allegations against people or organisations is no longer available to us.

It is sad that society is coming to this, but this is the environment in which we all have to exist and we all need to abide by the rules that society imposes."

I cordially invite posters to consider Visordown, which many here post on. Not I'm not saying this forum ought to be like VD (before you all start wrinkling your noses ;)), but the fact is that freedom of expression, and, indeed, the freedom to give someone a good s l a g ging off, seems hardly to have diminished recently.

Ah, you may say, but VD's owners (now a bike mag, more or less) *could*, in theory find themselves liable in court. Well, maybe. But it's a big maybe.

For an even better example: who would be most aware of the law in this area than the talkboards of a national broadsheet newspaper? I invite posters to consider the International section of the Guardian talkboards. I can't access them at work, but I believe the link is

http://www.guardian.co.uk/talk/0,,546387,00.html

A bigger collection of free-range loonies and psychos you couldn't wish to meet! I know of their rep cos I post on their film and TV board, which fortunately is quite different. But the point remains that if the Guardian can preside quite happily over that farrago, we may be worrying just a teensy-bit too much.

I concur with the poster upthread who said that we should conduct ourselves without personal abuse etc.

Hoever, I also think that occasions some posters should follow couchie's good example, and grow a rather thicker skin! :p

I think there's been a bit too much navel-gazing going on. I am not aware of the finer points of law wrt libel etc but it seems to me that the WT/MT are worrying far too much about something that might never happen. As has been pointed out, there are many more far more "liberal" boards that are never troubled by this subject.

I fear that this kind of censorship will lead to a sterilised board where no-one dares say anything remotely contentious for fear of being "charged", "prosecuted" and found "guilty" in secret by the WT/MT without so much as an opportunity to defend themselves or answer the charges.
Such a policy as laid down in the seed post of this thread goes contrary to all of the principles of a fair and democatic society and, is symptomatic of a wider malaise where we see individual freedoms continually eroded.

Some people need to grow thicker skins.

eloquently put Mr Twpd

So I guess everyone who has replied to this post will now be banned for contravening the no-debate rules :lol:

Or try posting on visordown where they don't give a stuff.

If you don't want to accept this, take a look at what's happened to some posters on Sheffield FC forum. This is real, it's fact and it's NOT going to go away. Sad perhaps, but true.

TWPD sounds all gay to me

Visordown hasn't had the troubles of Sheffield FC and manages fine with little intervention, as I havent seen the posts that caused this I'm struggling to see just what could be said to offend. But i stand by the comments that people need a thicker skin when on a forum tbh

ironically enough that kind of post is no longer tolerated:o:lol:

I don't know where the illusion of ever having complete freedom of speech in the UK came from. We've never had it at any time in our history and it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

Indeed. I'd invite you to say that to my face, but we all know you southern shandy drinkers are too soft to come up here to the far north and we'd get lost somewhere south of Leeds. :)

Sheffield FC? That's you outed then - you should've kept quiet. ;)Seriously...there's a world of difference between here and a bunch of football fans elsewhere. I think some latitude is in order tbh.