Protecting Freedom of Expression

I'm sorry you had to bear the burnt of that awful pun.

ah you wouldn't have gotten a reaction. cause you don't even hold a candle to my prose

just sit there and smoulder

while i raise the temperature a touch

i'm just cooking!

I know, but I'm emberassingly bad

there is a big difference between P-M and GA2G. One has constantly antagonised for no good reason, the other has provided possibly the most valuable resources on the forum. Yes the lists upset some people, though they tend to be ones who are worried about protecting their precious 'scene'.

One was a troll by definition, the other a valued contributor.

P-M was given a great deal of slack and a lot of advice (both on cycling and etiquette) he consistently ignored or argued with the advice he was given.

I was flamed and grilled for my first few posts, with hindsight rightly so. Hopefully I learned from the advice, and have subsequently made some really good friends here.

Hold up here, I've only been around for 5ish months and GA2G's lists have come in handy for a couple of things, I'm struggling to see why people don't like them.

So what was the final straw that led to the banning then?

GA2Gs lists are not disliked, he gets ribbed for them but not flamed. big difference

@Mike - He incited mass car hatred before telling a shit story about sat nav - or so i heard ;)

Some people on this forum are hard to please

tellin me, i have been giving good advice all day and not one thanks!

FWIW I too have found GA2G's "lists" useful and truthfully cannot understand why anyone would object to them. As to PM I agree that he was a twat but my feeling is that his naivety in posting was borne out of a genuine lack of self awareness rather than any desire to piss you lot off. As to whether he should be banned? I dunno. I certainly looked forward to his ejit posts when I logged on and the sound and fury that followed! In PM's absence who is going to be the next sacrificial lamb to offer themselves up to the forum slaughter?

So what was the final straw that led to the banning then?

I didn't see the Top Shop thread until this morning, but it was the sexist remarks in there that then de-railed the thread. Coming only a day after asserting that he wouldn't do that kind of stuff.

It got to me because whilst a troll is an annoyance and can be difficult to keep threads on topic, this was a bit like pissing on someone else's parade. The Top Shop gig is a great thing for Amy and she's worked hard at it for a long time and been involved in several events that the forum has helped publicise or attended... and here we were with the situation that this troll had managed to so successfully wind up everyone with yet another dumb and inflammatory post that no form of appreciation or recognition of Amy's work could happen, instead we had P-M antagonising on one side, wiganwill exploding on the other and tynan attempting to bury the thread... and what should have been a great moment descend into farce.

If all of these things were one-off's, nothing would happen. If they only occasionally happened, nothing would happen. But for almost every post and thread to seemingly be so out-there and with only one possible result, it's extremely hard to see P-M for being anything other than a troll. I kept trying, and I failed.

I ban trolls. But because it can be subjective I do try and gauge forum feeling on it. Spammers are easy... they're obvious, a few reported posts and I'm done. But trolls? Well it depends, someone got reported a few times last year so I posed the question and the forum agreed he wasn't and to leave it. But with P-M the concensus was largely there. And that 85% of those used the ignore function were ignoring P-M really showed that the forum feeling is not with P-M. So I banned.

And what of freedom of expression. Expression? Don't you mean speech? Anyhow, there is no such thing in the UK, and even in the USA it's not enshrined in law that you can say anything (shouting 'fire' in a theatre is the usual example). What we have instead is societal tolerance within certain boundaries. And society is not censuring P-M's ability to say anything he wants... this little website (a very miniscule slice of society) may have enforced a technical block on those views being expressed here, but society is where the restriction of free speech is measured.

All I am doing is running a communications service between cyclists the best way I know how. As it is a communication service you all get free run of the place, but if/when things are reported I need to act to ensure the continued service and standards for the people who use the service. That means I'll ban one person who is affecting the medium so greatly that it has resulted in a degradation of service for others. So I'll ban the spammers when alerted to their existence, delete spam when alerted to it, and I'll ban the trolls when alerted to those and having given enough slack to determine whether someone really is a troll.

I think it also means I have to act to remove copyrighted material if alerted. But I'm hoping that by asserting that we are a communication service and that you contribute your content to the service under a creative commons license, that such rubbish is your responsibility. But the law is vague as hell on it really and I won't lie that I don't understand it really.

The ignore function is a good idea in theory but for the brief time that I used it I couldn't help but click the 'show post' button.. If it somehow removed all evidence of that person's post it would be far more effective but I can't see how that could work.

As far as P-M goes, he somehow danced on the borders of fool and troll.. First he played the fool but recently he's been much more of a troll.

Well thanks Velocio for coupling just my name to Paul Michel's in the 'derailing' aspect: Paul Michel's first post was number 47; mine was 167 and almost all the ones between were about PM not about the OP. By the time I got home from work the thread had already been ruined by Paul Michel, or more accurately, by the responses to his comments. But thanks again.
Probably also not a good idea to invoke Voltaire quite so quickly in future:
Quote; Voltaire wins the day you see... to paraphrase "I disagree with what you say but I'll fight for your right to say it.".

As it happens I think you made the right decision in the end.

Oh he can still be a sexist ignoramus, so I don't mind defending that... but trolls, like spammers, degrade the service I provide, and I don't defend that.

I think banning him was probably the right thing to do, having just read that thread. Its difficult to tell what angle he was really coming from though.

Velocio: Not really the part of your post that bothered me, actually.

G2AG, I like your lists.

Also I come on this forum most days, but I didn't really see the problem with P=M. Sure he posted a lot, but the content didn't seem significantly worse than a lot of old school members here...

The ignore function is a good idea in theory but for the brief time that I used it I couldn't help but click the 'show post' button.. If it somehow removed all evidence of that person's post it would be far more effective but I can't see how that could work.

Yeah, even I have this problem. I've only got a couple of people on ignore and I find myself noticing their posts more because of the thin band saying that they're on ignore... or because someone quotes them and I wonder how I missed it.

I think the settings on this page help a bit:
http://www.londonfgss.com/cis_settings.php

Being able to nuke threads and forums is pretty nifty.

I've just read the thread in question. WTF.

Think the right decision was made - he turned from an idiot (I'll keep my pop-psychology to myself) to a genuine troll.

Oi cunty bollocks, keep me out of your tedious, drivelly threads!

You just joined it?

Ah it's only the Internet, not as if it's real life is it?