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policy on uncivil behavior

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In the past 2 months we have been disturbed by an increase in the number of
personal attacks, snide remarks, and inflamatory posts on this forum. This
is a violation of the longstanding policy forbidding uncivil behavior. It
threatens to undermine the reputation of the board as a place for
reasonable, intelligent conversation, and causes legitimate posters to
refrain from posting or stay away entirely.

If you can't be civil, if you can't treat your fellow posters as adults,
then we will take away your posting privileges for a period of at least
three days. The decisions will be final. We will err on the side of taking
away privileges.

If you have questions about this decision, please post them on this forum or
contact us directly.

Thank you for understanding and cooperating with this new policy.

Jeff Jilg jjilg@sbcglobal.net
Steve Worcestor Steve@turningwood.com
Your friendly neighborhood AAW forum moderators
 
I support the concept of removing offensive individuals from the forum.
I enjoy differences of opinion but I dislike mean spirited comments.

The forum's solution sounds good, but it seems to me that
controlling membership pre-supposes resolving the issue of anonymous members.

If the forum were to eliminate xxxyyy whose registration is based on an email addreess of xxxyyy@hotmail what prevents xxxyyy from re-registering as yyyxxx?

Perhaps I don't fully understand the controls available or the complete registration process.

-al
 
I have to say, Jeff, that I'm becoming less of a fan of anonymous postings also. I personally don't feel anyone should be restricted from viewing the site but I'd be willing to provide any information within reason on registering prior to being able to post. I'm an AAW member and VP of the local turning club so it shouldn't be too hard to verify my info.

And please let me know if I become one of the folks that is getting a bit hot under the collar.

Thanks,
Dietrich
 
Thank you for taking action to put a stop to this occasional uncivil behavior. I am a fairly new articipant on this forum, but sometimes I am hesitant to post a message when the flamers seem to be restless.

Bill
 
I would like to make 2 suggestions -

1) Anonymous posting be stopped - The AAW reference has all members contact info so you would not be giving out anything new. Amazing how much nicer people are when they have to let others know their identity.

2) I would add that repeated offenses get permanent ban. This is not a kindergarten class!

Thanks to Jeff and Steve for all the hard work!!!!!!

Wilford
 
If it costs me a seat at the table - so be it!

There are currently, individual(s) whose only interest in this forum is for their own personal aggrandizement and or the promotion of their personal websites.
Each post from these individual(s) is crafted to direct the interest to that other forum.
Each post contains either a direct reference or an indirect one in the form of a forwarding address within the posters picture site.
Topics discussed here are promptly "lifted" and used as topics on the rogue site.

Invitations to "visit" the rogue site are frequent here and on other similar venues.
There are no reciprocal links back to the sites being scavenged proving that this is a one way effort to recruit new members at the rogue site for what ever purpose.

It is as ethical as having the "Wal-Mart Official Greeter" redirecting traffic at Costco over to Wal-Mart.
Some of us do care about the integrity of the forums we participate in.
We have little or no voice in the direction our forum takes.
That is completely wrong and undemocratic!

Finally - About PMing!
Those individuals that run to the administrator at the very slightest provocation will no doubt be the instruments of destruction for the forum as a place where adult conversations are not subject to "big brother"

In closing, let me say that there is a lot of talent out here in cyberspace .
Lets' not squander our opportunities to enjoy these folks( excentriciities and all) for a few Narcissistic control phreaks that would rob our sites of members just to feed their egos.

without Prejudice:


Alberta Bob 😕
 
Answers to some of the comments follow.

The forum software is setup to soak up 2 items for registration - an email and an associated password. The other items associated with registration are optional and I didn't see any easy way to make them required. Even if I found a way to make the other fields required, folks who want to avoid those fields would just enter false data. So currently there is no way to force anyone to use their real names instead of anonymous posting.

The forum is currently open to AAW members and non-members as well. This was discussed with the board when I installed the new forum software. They were okay with that.

So far we have not had to ban anyone. I hope we can keep it that way. Certainly a banned user could just re-register using another email ID. But their behavior would be noticed under the new ID and we could just keep banning them. Since we haven't banned a single user I doubt it will become a frequent activity.

If we do end up banning people and it becomes a problem in the future we can re-evaluate the situation.

I have proposed a major software project for the AAW and it has been accepted. (In fact I just made a business trip to the AAW office in St.Paul last week.) Part of the project involves creation of an online database for all membership data. Access will be restricted. But at some point if we decide to disable anonymous posting I could write an automated interface to the database to validate an email ID against a person's membership information during registration to the forum. That interface would not be viable until late 3Q or 4Q of this year. And I'm hoping we can avoid that option. The option would force us to exclude non-AAW members.

...Jeff
 
Thanks Jeff;
I totally agree. The snide remarks and personal attacks especially when they are directed to select individuals when they know that others will not know what they mean are totally unnecessary and disruptive in woodworking discussions such as we have here. It is a great site and I am glad you are taking every action to keep it that way.
Best regards to you and Steve.
W.Y.
 
albertabob said:
There are currently, individual(s) whose only interest in this forum is for their own personal aggrandizement and or the promotion of their personal websites.:
My signature contains a link to my websites... Does that mean according to your values, I am here strictly for "personal aggrandizement and or the promotion of their personal websites". IF SO, there are a lot of us in here... and I really don't see them pushing anyone to go to their websites.. the information is there if someone cares to look at it.


Invitations to "visit" the rogue site are frequent here and on other similar venues.
There are no reciprocal links back to the sites being scavenged proving that this is a one way effort to recruit new members at the rogue site for what ever purpose.[/
B]

What "rogue" site is supposedly trying to drive the membership from here to there.... I believe the membership here is intelligent enought to decide what forums they want to participate in... in fact I would be very surprised to find out that the general membership ONLY comes to this forum.... That is the value of internet information... it is well spread out so we can go where WE want...

Some of us do care about the integrity of the forums we participate in.
We have little or no voice in the direction our forum takes.
That is completely wrong and undemocratic!
This forum is not a democracy... it is owned by AAW and run under it's rules... therefore you do not get a vote... Sorry

Finally - About PMing!
Those individuals that run to the administrator at the very slightest provocation will no doubt be the instruments of destruction for the forum as a place where adult conversations are not subject to "big brother"
In closing, let me say that there is a lot of talent out here in cyberspace .
Lets' not squander our opportunities to enjoy these folks( excentriciities and all) for a few Narcissistic control phreaks that would rob our sites of members just to feed their egos.
Would you rather someone come into open forum and complain about a member being rude and obnoxious. I think the administrator is doing a bangup job here. As for the Big Brother statement... refer to the answer to your above quote. I really don't see any Narcissistic Control Phreaks in here... Actually considering how you apparently don't care for this forum and the way it is run, I am really surprised that are staying around...

without Prejudice:
That statement is a joke, right..
 
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Thanks Jeff. I enjoy this group until it gets bitter. I have to put up with that at work and don't need it in my play.
 
Thanks Tom (oldgriz)
I admit am guilty of posting a link to my own site here
*once* that I sincerly thought would be helpfull to the topic at hand at that time . I understand that it may have upset a couple but my intentions were truly only to share information. I never solicit anyone on an open forum to join my site or any other site. That is totally their perogative. Different people see it different ways. I enjoy this site as much as any others and that goes for all the woodworking sites I participate in . We all learn from checking out the various sites . If the moderators of this great site feel it is necessary to remove any post I make it does not bother me in the least because I would feel that I have over stepped the rules a little and I would accept that. I would also expect a reprimand from the moderators via PM or email but so far that has never happened.
But sarcasim , snide remarks and personal attacks that I have seen directed purposely to certain individulals and members here is something that I feel should not be tolerated and it is good to see that the good moderators are on top of it to keep a nice clean smooth running site just like moderators and administrators of any other site try to achieve.
My hat is off to them for doing a wonderfull job of providing this site for us.
Lets get back to woodworking. It's much more fun.

W.Y.
 
Jeff,

I wear a few hats myself, one of which is designing and maintaining websites, a few of which have forums just like this one (none of those forums are woodworking related, so nobody get in a tizzy or anything lol). There should be a tool in the admin CP of this board which will allow you to ban a member not simply by their email, but by their IP. Everyone connected to the internet has a unique IP address and is identifiable. (theres a few ways around this but those are pretty advanced and not well known) An IP ban eliminates the connection between that users computer and the AAW server, and regardless of how many email addresses that user attempts to re-register with they will never get through. Granted they could go to another computer and re-register, but you should also be able to see all IPs any user has ever posted from and ban those as well. The pain starts outweighing the pleasure when you gotta cruise on over to the neighbors house just to flame someone here. Hopefully you wont need to use this feature, but if you do, and you have any questions, let me know.

Warmly,
Jeff

ps-- could you also stick my refund in the mail like Dietrich?
 
Hi Jeff

I went to the Vbulletin site to research your suggestion about banning IP addresses. Lo and behold they do support banning IP addresses. Good tip. Now if we ever do have to ban someone they will not get around the ban by simply changing email addresses - since I'll just ban their IP address.

Your refund is in the mail. Actually I sent a refund to each of the registered AAW members.....it has really put a dent in my checkbook 🙂

signed,
the Austin Jeff
 
seems that things have changed here on the AAW board since the beginning of 2005. however this bad behavior has been taking place on other forums and newsgroups for quite some time!

admittedly, I've been frightened by the behavior of a particular poster -- not only has it happened more than once, the postings were personal attacks. What was more scary was that i received emails from the poster that could have been construed as threats -- and in fact, had they been sent as snail-mail, they would have been treated at threatening mail!

and apparently, i was not alone as the recipient of this type of bad behavior because several other people emailed me with their similar experiences.

(just a side note here: soon after the last public attack, i started receiving virus-loaded emails sent to my forum-published email account. coincidence? these were coming from within the Eastern USA with fictitious German IP address ... thus squashing the elimination-by-IP idea ??? )

and therefore, i rarely post here or on any forum any more. I don't include email addresses or any other personal information in the public arena and i have traps in my web site. although i might have some valuable information in reply to a posting, i would rather email my reply directly.

truthfully, i don't understand the need for the bullying and negativity -- and i think there's a natural reaction in responding defensively, and perhaps more ferociously to protect oneself. LORD OF THE FLIES rules start to apply.

but isn't my time better spent creating something of joy and sharing with others? there is too little time left to be wasted fighting off bullies and imbeciles. however i'm not dead yet so YOU'D better think twice before sending me another threatening email.
 
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uniquewoodworld.com said:
There should be a tool in the admin CP of this board which will allow you to ban a member not simply by their email, but by their IP. Everyone connected to the internet has a unique IP address and is identifiable.
I don't believe that the statement about static IP addresses is always correct, especially for individuals whose computers connect to the Internet through an ISP. Many, if not most, IP addresses are dynamically assigned each time that your computer connects to your ISP. Further, computers that are behind a hardware firewall can be completely transparent to the Internet.

Bill
 
Bill is correct about most IP addressed being dynamically assigned. Banning one of those does nothing to keep the person out unless they get that exact IP assigned to them again. If the ISP is a larger one it may end up blocking some other innocent people from seeing the forum.

Banning an IP address is only good when you know the person is working from an assigned IP address. Even then it probably is not that hard for them to have it re-assigned or masked by some other means if they are somewhat savvy.

In being involved with another forum not related to woodworking I have found it is best to require registration, which verifies the e-mail to read and to post to the forum. Normally this will weed out some that are not serious about the forums subject and are only there to disrupt. Yes, they can always use a disposable e-mail address. It also keeps the spider robots out of the site. At the very least the good robots (msnbot, gogglebot, etc.) will tie up processor time on the server as they query each post from the database. There are also the bad robots that troll the posts for information like e-mail address (for spam lists), phone numbers etc. Overall I have found it better to just keep the robots out of the forum portion of a site.

Moderating a forum is not always easy, sometimes you won’t be the most liked person. I have found that most members will respect your decisions when they are explained. I also have found that editing a post, noting why it was edited is more effective than just deleting it.

FWIW I think you guys have been doing a good job since I have joined.

Bill
 
Perhaps the fact that there is a policy regardiing uncivil behavor will be enough to remind some of us to think how what we say will be percieved. Hopefully that will be enough.
 
I too applaud your efforts to keep this forum civil and focused.

A few thoughts have occurred to me based on things I learned way back when in a sociology course - not my field at all, but the course made a lasting impression.

A groups have (or develop) individuals that test and push the bounds. This is normal and healthy because they help define the bounds for the rest of the group. -- But, and this is where it can get controversial, this bound-testing and bound-setting function must be visible to the rest of the group for it to be useful / instructive. i.e. We need to somehow know that "this" is acceptable and "that" isn't.

How do we/you do that???

I like Bill's suggestion of editing rather than deleting posts. It helps clarify where the boundary is. And I for one, would rather know where it is in advance instead of finding out by accidentally tripping over it.
 
Just a quick opinion stuck into the thread.

I've never seen this forum as a financial entity so that kinda rules out the concern that folks would "poach" forum members to other sites. We're all in this for information and community (I'd hope) so pulling threads to other sites, posting personal site links, and encouraging folks to shop around is part of the process.

I'm personally completely ok with anyone who wants to make a post stating openly "ditch this forum and come to mine." First, they would need to show that their forum is worth coming to. Second, why would anyone stop coming to this forum just because they found another one that is good? The only competition here appears to be coming from some folks that feel a need to shoot down others so as to establish a heirarchy within the forum of who is allowed to post freely.

And, -e-, you're not the first person I've heard report personal email attacks from some of these folks. Kinda scary. For what it's worth, I think that some court cases regarding email threats are getting heard these days and I know you can report it to the police and, surprisingly, to the FBI (crosses state borders) if the threats become clear enough. Just make sure and save all the mails in a secure folder. Also, notify your IP and provide copies of the emails, including attachments. They don't like that kinda thing happening to their customers.

Dietrich
 
I guess when Jeff and I talked about posting a policy on uncivil behavior, we didn't anticipate anyone to actually reply to it (at least I didn't).

While it was certainly precipitated by some posting on the board, it was not directed at any one person specifically.

I suppose we always expected that since we were all adults, we would act as such. Attached to the very same posting about uncivil behavior, came more thinly veiled and pointed attacks. Then, more postings in retaliation.
Quit taking the bait, for God's sakes.

I will tell you right now, in plain and simple terms,

knock this crap off. It is distracting us from the very reason we are here. We all have a passion for woodturning and want to share and receive information about that subject. Use the board for that.

This line of postings are a reason why several people only lurk and don't post, they are afraid that their question will be interpreted as if you perceive them to be stupid and will only berate them with your vile fingers and demeaning responses.

If you feel it necessary to belittle ANYONE here, I will personally tell you now, go somewhere else. I plan on being here and contributing for a long time and sharing and receiving knowledge on woodturning and an occasional off topic. If you can't play nice and act as the adults you should be, don't come here.

IT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED ANY LONGER.
We, Jeff and I, have not taken any issue with anyone here in their postings, we have long been tolerant of rantings and even some of the personal attacks. We know who they are pointed at and with a little forethought, so does everyone else. As far as posting links, there is plenty of room for more boards and web sites, I personally am active on plenty, in woodturning and outside.

This forum is open to anyone, period. AAW member or not, for the express purpose of teaching everyone, on all skill levels.

Just look through your local clubs, how many members are under 20, or even 30 for that matter. The future of woodturning also has exposure to this forum (and a greater percentage of them look to electronic means for learning), do you really want to be perceived as a bunch of bitter men? If you don't like someones work, so what, why do you feel it necessary to publicly tell them? Would you enjoy the same public humiliation?

Disclaimer: Remember that our words do not express the views of the AAW, we are volunteers here.

If you have a beef, email me at steve@turningwood.com , or send me your phone number and I will personally call you to discuss the matter.
And can we learn to use spell check? (A personal annoyance of mine)
 
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