— Alcoholics Anonymous saying.
I just built this and it’s quite a mess, but … I’m just going to sit and wait for someone to show up; until then I’ll just do what I feel like doing, but one thing is certain. Here, I’ll stay out of trouble. Or will I? Wanna help?
This domain is dedicated as a place for the community of interest in cold fusion to meet and discuss and perhaps even to cooperate and collaborate. All are welcome. This is a human community and will doubtless have some rules, but … don’t worry, be free, we will let you know if you break the as-yet-unwritten rules, and you’d have to try hard to get yourself kicked out. Or at least you would know you were doing it.
As the AA saying indicates, there is a resentment behind the founding of this particular meeting. Or there could be, if I held onto it. Saturday, I was banned from lenr-forum.com for two days. It was completely silly, but it demonstrated to me that the Forum was unsafe. As far as I can tell, it was simple incompetence. While a reference was made to the terms of service, had those terms been followed, there would have been no problem. In fact, the basic idea was great: civility. But the execution was as if calculated to convince me not to post there any more. If anyone wants to discuss this here, it’s fine, but for myself, I’m leaving it at this.
The ban was initially invisible, not announced, and there was no warning or clear notice. I looked at the site and this is what I saw:
Your user account has been banned: Pathoskeptics
I was sure the site must have been hacked. It was some hours before I found out that, no, I’d been banned, for two days. I was not informed until I created a disclosed sock puppet and mentioned it on-site. Here is that post and then one can see what ensued, and, eventually, I was told what post I’d made that was so horrible.
What the administrator wrote was completely incorrect, he apparently doesn’t know how the site actually works (a ban locks the user out, and a locked-out user cannot read “conversations.” and what the terms of service actually say is not what he did! At this point if I explain further, I start to froth at the mouth, a bad sign.
Meanwhile, here we are. Welcome. Have some tea or coffee. Be at ease. I will be covering Rossi v. Darden here. Posts of mine may be copied from here with attribution under CC By-SA 3.0.
It’s all good.
About lenr-forum.com, I was unbanned, and an apology may be seen above.
Last week, I was banned again for two days, and I’m told that this was done by Alan Smith, after I had declared that I wasn’t going to post there any more (i.e., extensively write), as a response to extensive comment deletions by Alan. There was no warning or explanation of the ban accessible to me (nor is the ban visible to lenr-forum readers) When that ban expired, I attempted log in and it now read that I was permanently banned. I am told that there is conflict among the administrators over this. I don’t wonder. I will be commenting more extensively elsewhere.
This happened before, that a short ban was converted to permanent. It was called a software glitch, but was probably actually another admin acting, without explanation.
@Mr. Lomax:
I’m very sorry. We indeed had a problem with our warning system configuration, which resulted in warning you temporary and permanently in one action.
However, you now are unbanned for sure.
I hope you can forgive us.
barty
Thanks, Barty, particularly for being strong enough to ask for forgiveness. It’s not complete, though.
Yes. for the weird block behavior, forgiven, though I’ll be interested in what will be done to develop lenr-forum.com policy and practice.
As to the intended block, the Terms of Service were not followed, and it’s obvious that there is still no consistent enforcement of any civility policy. Policy without consistent and predictable enforcement is worse than useless, it becomes abusive — or is easily seen as such!
Ramping up enforcement abruptly is also abusive. Warn! Do it visibly! And then announce any blocks of regular, possibly good-faith users. Basically, warn with green ink. To understand civility policy, users must be able to see what created warnings. How to do this with existing software, if it is appropriate to blank, is a problem, but it can be done. (how about “invisible ink”? To read it, copy the text into a text editor? Would that work?)
Another device would be an ancillary mailing list, and deleted material would be mailed there. There is no way to stop users from insulting each other. However, it can be regulated so that it doesn’t get publicity from the site itself. The deleted posts would be seen only by those interested.
Or simpler: deleted content is emailed to the user, and published in a side-list only if the user wants to appeal.
Procedure for blocks and bans should be made explicit, or it is easily abused, even unintentionally so.
Is it desirable that lenr-forum.com administration become transparent?
I agree with that.
We have to improve our actions and policy executive.
Thank you Abd!
Thank you, Barty, you literally made my day. If I can be of assistance, ask.
It is now noon ET (GMT -5). Server time for lenr-forum is displayed as Nov 21st 2016, 6:03pm. Abd still gets “Your user account has been banned: Pathoskeptics” when logging in (through Facebook) (in a fresh incognito window). I was not unbanned at “November 21, 10:55 am.” They lied or are utterly incompetent. Does it really matter which?
https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/4645-Rossi-blog-comments/?postID=42051#post42051 is where ban details were given. It is not possible for a banned user to read the Conversations. “Pathoskeptic” is in the account lock notice. The Terms of Service were not followed, not even close. Obviously, they don’t care. Hence I am announcing Cold Fusion Community, and the events that came down, waiting is not warranted any further.
Thanks for the love, but whaddaya mean, horrible and awful? Didn’t I say “It’s all good”? Now, stop all this fuss, we need to quiet down for the evening.
Yeah, awful! Keep up the good work! We love you.
That’s horrible! The world is going to hell in a handbasket, on wheels!