[Antrax]

jbrr, I'm constantly amazed by the extent of your mind reading powers. You started by deducing what the poster of the offending thread wanted, moved to knowing what my motivation was, and now you know you can speak for all users on this forum and potentially all other forums on the internet.

[jjbrr]

 Antrax, on 2011-July-26, 23:04, said:

jbrr, I'm constantly amazed by the extent of your mind reading powers. You started by deducing what the poster of the offending thread wanted, moved to knowing what my motivation was, and now you know you can speak for all users on this forum and potentially all other forums on the internet.

nice, that's nice.

[matmat]

 Antrax, on 2011-July-26, 23:04, said:

jbrr, I'm constantly amazed by the extent of your mind reading powers. You started by deducing what the poster of the offending thread wanted, moved to knowing what my motivation was, and now you know you can speak for all users on this forum and potentially all other forums on the internet.

Wow. constantly amazed? you mean, like, all the time? Pity you spend all your time being amazed by jjbrr, think of what you could do with your life if you stopped that for at least a little while.

Am I missing something? the motivation of the OP was clear, especially with some of the other crap that was tossed around the forums for a few days before this post showed up.

I fail to see where it is that your motivation was "known," there is one conditional clause somewhere above that you seem to be misconstruing.

Finally, jjbrr might not be talking for everyone on the forums, but I would be surprised if what he says wasn't a majority opinion. Letting users vote and bicker over decisions like the one being taken here, or the forum rules, leads to unnecessary animosity and overly-heated debate (case-in-point).

IMO it would be better to save some mental energy to argue about the pros and cons of opening xx45 hands 1♣ vs 1♦...

[Antrax]

1♣ if you can live with declaring 1NT and 1♦ otherwise, no?
It's a state of the match thing.

In any case, I personally would prefer:
a) Not to have anyone speak for me or speak in a way that implicitly states that dissenting views must be a minority. Instead, I suggest a mechanism wherein people post their opinions and someone can do a tally.
b) Knowing it would be frowned upon if someone were to post or forward a private message I sent him, regardless of however much I may be in violation of various forum rules.
c) Nobody assuming that if I care about privacy it's because I hate BBF and want to ruin it for everyone.

I didn't think those were such outrageous opinions, but apparently they are.

[jjbrr]

 Antrax, on 2011-July-26, 23:51, said:

1♣ if you can live with declaring 1NT and 1♦ otherwise, no?
It's a state of the match thing.

In any case, I personally would prefer:
a) Not to have anyone speak for me or speak in a way that implicitly states that dissenting views must be a minority. Instead, I suggest a mechanism wherein people post their opinions and someone can do a tally.
b) Knowing it would be frowned upon if someone were to post or forward a private message I sent him, regardless of however much I may be in violation of various forum rules.
c) Nobody assuming that if I care about privacy it's because I hate BBF and want to ruin it for everyone.

I didn't think those were such outrageous opinions, but apparently they are.

Antrax:

I promise in all my posts I
a) won't speak for you. I don't care about your opinions anyway.
b) won't ever post a PM. OK? Even if it's justified.
c) won't ever pass judgment about what someone might or might not care about on these forums. OK? Does that make you happy?

I hope we find these terms agreeable. Unfortunately, I will continue to post as I always do.

Regards,
jbrr

[matmat]

 Antrax, on 2011-July-26, 23:51, said:

In any case, I personally would prefer:
a) Not to have anyone speak for me or speak in a way that implicitly states that dissenting views must be a minority. Instead, I suggest a mechanism wherein people post their opinions and someone can do a tally.

The first part is not unreasonable, I think running a forum via democracy is a bad idea.

Quote

b) Knowing it would be frowned upon if someone were to post or forward a private message I sent him, regardless of however much I may be in violation of various forum rules.

I am really torn on this. I think the expectation of privacy in the context of BBF is much, much, much weaker than via other methods of private communication. I don't immediately see a difference between forwarding a PM to a yellow or posting it to the forums.

Quote

c) Nobody assuming that if I care about privacy it's because I hate BBF and want to ruin it for everyone.

errr.... i must have missed this point being made somewhere.

[Antrax]

I didn't suggest all decisions be accepted via a majority vote. I just think a better way of finding out what people think is to ask them. Then you can make your own deductions about what part of what crowd is in favour of what.

matmat said:

I don't immediately see a difference between forwarding a PM to a yellow or posting it to the forums.

Neither do I. I disagree with either.

matmat said:

errr.... i must have missed this point being made somewhere.

 jjbrr, on 2011-July-26, 21:23, said:

If you actually sympathize with the guy whose PM was posted, I think that's not at all in the best interest of BBF.

Unfortunately I sympathize, even though I agree with jjbrr and others' assessment of his motivation. Nevertheless, I don't think that my tendency to consider private messages private should be taken to mean I don't have the best interest of BBF at heart.

jjbrr, not sure why you seek my agreement seeing as you don't care about my opinions, no doubt due to already holding the correct ones yourself, so all I can contribute is either useless agreement or clueless disagreement. In any case, if I somehow managed to offend you I apologize, it was the opinions you expressed on those specific posts that I disagree with, nothing more.

[diana_eva]

 jjbrr, on 2011-July-26, 21:46, said:

Sorry but I don't agree with this. I do honestly think a PM should be kept private.

However, for anyone who can read, it was painfully obvious that the sender of the PM had no intention of keeping anything he said private. On the contrary he wanted as much attention as he could possibly get. Sympathizing with his privacy, in this case, is really, really bad, though. Diana, that's the type of passive aggressive response to BBF situations that doesn't make BBF a better place. In this case, posting the PM was perfectly valid as evidence for the OP's intentions. If OP's feelings got hurt, that's a small price to pay to keep BBF honest.

Ben: I, for one, would like to see the mods take a firmer stance when problems arise in the forums. You don't need to make a public poll to check if your actions were right. As someone who spends several hours every day reading internet forums, I can say confidently that 1) we, the users, WANT the mods to take firm stances against the shenanigans we saw today, 2) we WANT you to keep these types of decisions consistent, 3) if you're unsure of your decision, we WANT you to discuss between the other mods in the yellow forum and NOT leave it up to the users.

What we don't want is for you to lock a thread and then seek validation for your decision. We trust your decision! We have a thread to check and make sure you're doing the right thing! If we disagree, we'll say so!

IMO your statement:

"I do honestly think a PM should be kept private."

and my post saying:

"I disagree with the PM being posted"

are equivalent.

Sorry, i am not that subtle with words but in any case the idea was simply to not post private messages on the Forums.

Quote

In this case, posting the PM was perfectly valid as evidence for the OP's intentions. If OP's feelings got hurt, that's a small price to pay to keep BBF honest.

I don't see why taking such action in private would not keep the Forums honest, as opposed to publicly exposing his intentions.

I think there is a difference between forwarding a message to a moderator and posting in the forums. The forums are a public place, while forwarding a private message in private to a moderator is not a public action, hence the message remains private while proper action is being taken against the offender.

[wyman]

 jjbrr, on 2011-July-26, 21:46, said:

Sorry but I don't agree with this. I do honestly think a PM should be kept private.

However, for anyone who can read, it was painfully obvious that the sender of the PM had no intention of keeping anything he said private. On the contrary he wanted as much attention as he could possibly get. Sympathizing with his privacy, in this case, is really, really bad, though. Diana, that's the type of passive aggressive response to BBF situations that doesn't make BBF a better place. In this case, posting the PM was perfectly valid as evidence for the OP's intentions. If OP's feelings got hurt, that's a small price to pay to keep BBF honest.

Ben: I, for one, would like to see the mods take a firmer stance when problems arise in the forums. You don't need to make a public poll to check if your actions were right. As someone who spends several hours every day reading internet forums, I can say confidently that 1) we, the users, WANT the mods to take firm stances against the shenanigans we saw today, 2) we WANT you to keep these types of decisions consistent, 3) if you're unsure of your decision, we WANT you to discuss between the other mods in the yellow forum and NOT leave it up to the users.

What we don't want is for you to lock a thread and then seek validation for your decision. We trust your decision! We have a thread to check and make sure you're doing the right thing! If we disagree, we'll say so!

I agree with everything in this post.

[Phil]

I got edited this morning, but I guess it was so inconsequential that it didn't make the censored list.

I think about some of the flame wars we used to have on here, and "ceaseless nonsense" is pretty f****g tame.

[aguahombre]

I believe I am responsible for creating the monster problem about PM's, in this case. And for that, I apologize to all.

Way back when the person in question's OP had not yet gotten any replies, and the OP had posted no follow-up hands or posts, I PM'd him. The message was that it was clear what he was starting. I sympathized with him and complimented him on his subtlety (at the time).

Then I sent him a follow-up suggesting that if he had a compilation of hands involving a certain player or pair he should instead send them to "abuse@".

Only later, when the thread was really getting out of hand, did I go with public posts suggesting that it be curtailed.

Apparently this sewed the seeds for the guy to generate PM's to me and to others who had participated in the thread.

So sorry, folks. My intentions at the outset (avoiding what occurred) turned sour.

P.S., This post here does not show up on my content, so perhaps a moderator is reviewing it, too.

This post has been edited by aguahombre: 2011-August-03, 11:21

[inquiry]

 Phil, on 2011-August-03, 09:05, said:

I got edited this morning, but I guess it was so inconsequential that it didn't make the censored list.

I think about some of the flame wars we used to have on here, and "ceaseless nonsense" is pretty f****g tame.

That one was me! I edited it

Keep in mind that the pretty "f******g tame" snark of yours was in the Beginner/Intermediate forum and you were in a knife fight against an unarmed man. If it had been in another forum, or if you had a more formidable opponent to argue with, I would not have edited it. The Beginner/Intermediate forum is SUPPOSE to be a ZERO tolerance place so beginners don't get turned off by the attitude of better players.

It had not made this forum yet, because considertion of other edits was (and is) underconsideration. I tend to lump the reports together then post here. BTW, the post was reported to me or I would have never seen it, so at least one forum member found it objectionable.

[Phil]

 inquiry, on 2011-August-03, 12:54, said:

That one was me! I edited it

Keep in mind that the pretty "f******g tame" snark of yours was in the Beginner/Intermediate forum and you were in a knife fight against an unarmed man. If it had been in another forum, or if you had a more formidable opponent to argue with, I would not have edited it. The Beginner/Intermediate forum is SUPPOSE to be a ZERO tolerance place so beginners don't get turned off by the attitude of better players.

It had not made this forum yet, because considertion of other edits was (and is) underconsideration. I tend to lump the reports together then post here. BTW, the post was reported to me or I would have never seen it, so at least one forum member found it objectionable.

That unarmed man (or woman) you refer seems to be carrying around a backpack of little cherry bombs and doesn't have a problem flicking the noses of some people that have been around awhile, B/I or no B/I.

I'll see how this person responds to Mike's post, which I have nothing more to add to.

[Free]

My lovely heart symbols were edited but it's not mentioned here. Who did this, what rule did I break, and why isn't any reason given?

[shyams]

 Free, on 2011-August-05, 01:38, said:

My lovely heart symbols were edited but it's not mentioned here. Who did this, what rule did I break, and why isn't any reason given?

I agree with Free's concern. If his post is edited, why are the other posts not a problem?

[pooltuna]

 Free, on 2011-August-05, 01:38, said:

My lovely heart symbols were edited but it's not mentioned here. Who did this, what rule did I break, and why isn't any reason given?

and the WINNER of this week's "pot calling the kettle black" award is FREE {which is a funny choice of handle for someone who wants to restrict civil liberties)

[Free]

 pooltuna, on 2011-August-05, 07:30, said:

and the WINNER of this week's "pot calling the kettle black" award is FREE {which is a funny choice of handle for someone who wants to restrict civil liberties)

[inquiry]

Several actions have been taken in the last 24 hours.

Simple one, I moved a book review by Mikeh to the bridge review forum.

Next one, I have at least temporarily removed a post by Free that had in quotes of another poster material that was not in the quoted section. To be fair, Free used the FYP (fixed your post) abbreviation to make it clear that he changed the wording to those who know what FYP means. I am not sure I like the concept of editing quotes with the original poster's name listed as saying them. Thinking about this one.

Third one. I have removed all replies by one BBO poster in the last 24 hours, because, I am sick and tired of dealing with them individually. Some (many?) of these post may have been quite harmless. No matter, I had the software remove them automatically. In addition, I have placed a moderator review of all future post by this same individual, so they can be reviewed BEFORE they show up.

Finally, as for the string of hearts issue, I have modified the forum software to prevent long strings of hearts. If you are a sick individual, or you really work at it, you can get around this restriction (or you can use spades, or diamonds or clubs as I have not tried to block strings of those). I will seriously frown on anyone trying to circument this restriction. I have also removed the automatic signature line of one person who abuses the forum on this issue.

As to why the string of heart thing was done. There is a member who insist on using long strings of hearts, that causes problems with some browsers and simple upsets many users. I had an agreement with this person to stop doing this. They did, for a short while. They have started again. Therefore, I took a few steps, first to prevent others from following suit as best I could by instructing the forum program to not accept heart-heart-heart commands. Second by automatically deleting all recent post by one offender, and third by requiring all future post to be moderatored. Should one of those moderated post attempt to circumvent his rule, that poster will permantly banned. See the post of forum symbol abuse for some details on a little bit of the background on this. But I assure you I have gotten more calls to the moderator on the string of heart issue than any other single topic.

[inquiry]

Free's post has been slightly modified to make it clearer the change to the quoted material and re-inserted.

[matmat]

 inquiry, on 2011-August-06, 12:55, said:

Third one. I have removed all replies by one BBO poster in the last 24 hours, because, I am sick and tired of dealing with them on an individually. Some (many?) of these post may have been quite harmless. No matter, I had the software remove them automatically. In addition, I have placed a moderator review of all future post by this same individual, so they can be reviewed BEFORE they show up.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Thanks, Ben!