Power Line News

Raptavio - 25 January 2008 12:41 PM

arch - 24 January 2008 11:22 PM

Raptavio - 24 January 2008 12:47 PM

arch - 23 January 2008 11:19 PM

she didn’t even get banned from powerline forum let alone be considered a criminal defendent!!

One doesn’t need to happen for the other to take place, arch. While there are lawyers on the PL staff, they are not prosecutors with jurisdiction over the case.

Raptavio, are you a lawyer?

No. As I said, I used to be an admin of a forum larger than this and I did have legal counsel, and I did receive a crash course on the legalities of conduct by both administrators and users of Internet forums - liability, criminality, all that fun stuff.

This helped me muchly when I would receive phone calls on my home phone from irate users who threatened to sue me unless I removed a ‘defamatory’ post by another user. One was particularly fun - he launched a (very poor) DoS attack against my site - from his workplace, and then thought he could intimidate me. I -begged- him to sue me. Too bad he didn’t follow through.

so there are kooks out there who go that far. strange world huh?

My name’s real. Based on some of the horror stories here though, I am reconsidering that.

Clyde, did Jukeboxgrad get banned? How? For what?

I vote to allow anonymity. The arguments here have won me over.

GScott - 03 February 2008 05:28 AM

My name’s real. Based on some of the horror stories here though, I am reconsidering that.

Clyde, did Jukeboxgrad get banned? How? For what?

I vote to allow anonymity. The arguments here have won me over.

you are correct sir!  I give Clyde full credit for getting rid of the juke boy!  I clicked on his link!!!

Okay. But what got Jukebox the banhammer? What was his offfense?

Okay, So ...

It’s agreed: 96.2% of us want to remain anonymous.

Avatars would be nice though.

.

Do we have to show a picture ID too, if not I’m all in favor of real names.

Sincerely,

Jose Rodriguez’s Martinez Gomez

Inquiring minds want to know:

If we use real names, will the forum run faster?

Curtiss - 28 February 2008 01:10 PM

Inquiring minds want to know:

If we use real names, will the forum run faster?

Don’t even go there. Curtis edit your post and forget you even said this.

John florida - 28 February 2008 04:10 PM

Curtiss - 28 February 2008 01:10 PM

Inquiring minds want to know:

If we use real names, will the forum run faster?

Don’t even go there. Curtis edit your post and forget you even said this.

The eye in the sky sees all.

John florida - 31 December 2007 12:44 AM

You have my real name from when i signed on. I would not be comfortable with it out there. We all really don’t know who is following the threads and who it would lead to us personally. I would like the freedom to meet whom i want to. There is a real privacy issue.

Exactly!  :coolsmile:

I mean, “Holy fatwa, Batman!”
There’s too many out there whose job it is to silence truth ~~ with “any means necessary.”

I would think it might represent a legal entanglement if harm to a member could be traced to an angry reaction by a reader. 

Besides, you’ve already got the “report” button for people who might be offended, and I assume you have the ability to edit or completely delete any post you wish to.

1) For something this important, it needs to be crossposted in all the forums. I’ve been here since last summer and had never clicked on this forum til today.

2) I’ve had someone stalk me from site to site, find my home address, my phone number, my email address, the names of members of my family, my bosses’s information, etc. and also deliberately reveal all of that to other people.

I have absolutely zero interest in participating in a ‘Real Names Only’ forum. I’m not very happy to reveal it to site administrators either but I try to be flexible there.

3) Its not only the current members who have a problem with this. Every new person coming along to look at the forum will hit the resister button, see the conditions, and then 95% of them won’t register.

4) The elitism problem. Just as some people couldn’t reveal their identities due to the important job they have, some people here might be housewives, work at McDonalds, a bowling ally, a garbage dump, etc.

Remember how Sean Hannity got slammed for being just a construction worker? You’d be opening up everyone here who doesn’t have a glamorous job to having their opinions belittled. Whose political opinion is going to be respected more someone with a professor in English literature or a florist shop driver?

English literature isn’t any kind of aid in understanding US or world politics. But you know people will more readily attach some sort of significance to the opinion of the person who has the clearly better job or formal education.

5) The apparent goal of insisting on names is to make the place more classy. Having real people with real names giving responsible opinion which will draw readers to the site who are looking to be better informed.

If that really is the goal, you might try selecting a several people who you think write well, are level-headed, and/or have worthwhile opinions. Approach them privately and individually about becoming a “featured writer”.

Create a forum similar to the candidate forums which were recently removed and give them access to create a thread linking to what they consider as their best posts or to create commentary there.

As long as they aren’t claiming some kind of unique expertise or advantage unavailable to other writers, it shouldn’t matter that they are using a pen name.

I agree with the majority and think this isn’t a good idea.  Long ago I was an AOL member and made the mistake of using an internet provider’s forum to post my views.  It turns that the forum moderator—who was continually agitated by my posts regarding Islam, managed to obtain my account information by bribing a fellow AOL employee.  I received a number of abusive and vaguely threatening calls to my home from this person.  I later learned this woman was an Iraqi-American with family still living in Mosul, and had close ties to Tariq Azziz.

I moved on to a better forum, the Atlantic, and remained there as Grey Ghost until the forum decided to require you subscribe to their magazine in order to use it.  It wasn’t the subscription that bothered me—indeed, I often purchased copies at my local Barnes & Noble anyway.  But I was concerned with my privacy and threats to me and my family.  Steven Emerson, whose opinions I share, is forced to live with elaborate security protections and has had a number of death threats made against him.  Even if I could be assured that addresses and phone numbers were safe, I’ve shared information on my location, my profession, and my bio is out there.