This IS An AVIATION Web Site

[bandaid]

As a moderator on this site is it unreasonable to say we have more to lose than the average poster on here. As I see threads on hatred, racism, making fun of a disease process.... and any other questionable topic you may have seen, is it not reasonable to consider that if it were to come to light in either a legal or ethical way that we, as moderators, will bare much of the blame.
As I read through this thread and a couple of the others, I can't help but get the impression that this site is all about "you" with no regard for others. I personally don't want to be labeled a mocking, cop hating, biggot and racist which could be argued if these threads were allowed.
I look at the misc section as if I were sitting having a couple of beers with friends. Topics come up and you chat respectfully with your friends. If you were to show your buddies the type of disrespect you have shown the moderators and Joe, you would have no friends in a very short time.
Now having said this, this site IS about you. You make it what it is. Joe is a facilitator by giving you this venue to participate and discuss and we (moderators) try and keep it respectful. I have no problem with the misc section returning as long as it is treated like a group of friends discussing topics over beers, no agendas, just fun.

[Doc]

I have no problem with the misc section returning as long as it is treated like a group of friends discussing topics over beers, no agendas, just fun.

That is a line of thought that's very hard to fault. It would however, require a slight increase in the average maturity level of many posters.
A big problem is, some of the MODS have a life away from avcanada. Not all, mind you......it's going to take 24/7 policing.
The "aviation" oriented forums are simple by comparison. No aviation content? Off it goes. But the misc forum. That's going to take cooperation from everybody. Can we do this? Sure we can. Will we? Only time will tell....

[PanEuropean]

I have no problem with the misc section returning as long as it is treated like a group of friends discussing topics over beers, no agendas, just fun.

Although I have clearly stated my preference to see the Misc forum dropped completely, I would not object to it remaining if posts from the Misc forum could somehow be filtered out of the "View New Posts" and "View Unread Posts" shortcuts that appear in the upper left area of the forum window.

If this was done, I think it would make everyone happy. Those who have no interest in the Misc forum would never see content that is posted there, and those who enjoy the conversation in that forum could access it easily by clicking on the forum shortcut on the main page of AvCanada - Misc. / Political Debate / Aviation Humor.

Michael

[mdscientist61]

For those of you who remember Archie Bunker from the 1970's show "All in the Family", there was one line spoken by daughter Gloria. "But Michael, you rember the three things you should never discuss with Daddy: religiion, politics, or anything else." There will always be difficult people no matter where you go.

I enjoy the Misc section, and like other posters have said, it is like having a conversation over beers.

I enjoy listening to people and finding out what makes them tick. You can learn a lot if you pay attention, and people who know a lot about airplanes can teach you a lot about other things too. There is much to learn.

Respecting each other is the key, as other people are saying.

Most people know how to have an intelligent discussion on a topic that they disagree on. The challenge is to keep your cool when another person is pushing your buttons and rubbing you the wrong way.

I hereby resolve to speak respectfully and not lose my temper again

[. ._]

I promise not to make personal attacks if/when the Misc. forum comes back.

Except for niss's flying pants, that running dog lackey OFD's right wing delusions, I WAS Birddog's love of bluetooth headsets, my hateful jealousy of STL and his awesome life and picture taking talent and hazatude's ample biceps. I'll harp on that stuff as I damn well please.

-istp

[Hedley]

it's going to take 24/7 policing

No, it isn't. Garbage is always going to get posted to Misc.

Here's your solution: each posting in Misc needs a garbage can icon next to it. Any senior member with more than (eg) 100 posts, who feels that the posting is offensive, irrelevant, etc can click (only once) on the garbage can. More than 10 garbage votes from 10 registered members, the post is deleted. If is is the first post of a thread, the entire thread is deleted.

You can fiddle with the 100/10 numbers above to suit your taste, but this simple algorithm will ensure that crap which does not meet community standards, is gone from Misc without any moderator intervention.

[JakeYYZ]

In keeping with the call for civility and tolerance, I have resolved to bury all inciting rhetoric, and to stick a dagger in my heated prose. I will fire off barbed bon mots no more; the mine field of public discourse will no longer bear my footprints. I plan to put a bullet in the head of anyone who comments abusively here, and if you don’t like it, you can go hang. Intolerance is in my cross hairs, and my finger is on the trigger of acceptance. We are at war with anyone at war with peace. We won’t let our minds be poisoned by those who use the language of violence, or the violence of language. And I will see to it that this policy is swiftly executed. With one blast, we can obliterate hate. Shoot, it’s the least we can do. We wouldn’t want to see this site get a black eye. But really. Be civil. That’s what’s important. Well, that, and a clean planet.
Yours in liberal superiority,
JakeYYZ

[cdnpilot77]

In keeping with the call for civility and tolerance, I have resolved to bury all inciting rhetoric, and to stick a dagger in my heated prose. I will fire off barbed bon mots no more; the mine field of public discourse will no longer bear my footprints. I plan to put a bullet in the head of anyone who comments abusively here, and if you don’t like it, you can go hang. Intolerance is in my cross hairs, and my finger is on the trigger of acceptance. We are at war with anyone at war with peace. We won’t let our minds be poisoned by those who use the language of violence, or the violence of language. And I will see to it that this policy is swiftly executed. With one blast, we can obliterate hate. Shoot, it’s the least we can do. We wouldn’t want to see this site get a black eye. But really. Be civil. That’s what’s important. Well, that, and a clean planet.
Yours in CONSERVATIVE superiority,
JakeYYZ

I would like to join you in this quest...with the above correction

CP77

[I WAS Birddog]

Censorship is to progressive thought, as lynching is to justice.
However 'r3tard3dness' need not waste a days' court as lynching will be justice enough.

Jus' sayin'

[Hedley]

Censorship is to progressive thought, as lynching is to justice

Yes, but if a dogs poops on your doorstep, do you:

1) Admire it as an expression of the dog's 1st Amendment right to free speech, and lovingly leave it there as a symbol of your tolerance for the expression of others, or

2) get a shovel and scoop it up and toss it into your noisy neighbour's backyard when he's not looking?

One person's "progressive thought" is another person's dog poop

What I am suggesting is a simple method of voting idiots off the island.

The problem with AvCan is that we have more than our allotted single village idiot - we have scads of them. You many think I am one of them. That's ok. Add the garbage icon, and let people vote to remove idiotic and offensive posts - including potentially, this one. Let the community decide what the appropriate standard is. It will do a good job, if you let them.

It's just software, man.

[Beefitarian]

it's going to take 24/7 policing

No, it isn't. Garbage is always going to get posted to Misc.

Here's your solution: each posting in Misc needs a garbage can icon next to it. Any senior member with more than (eg) 400 posts, who feels that the posting is offensive, irrelevant, etc can click (only once) on the garbage can. More than 10 garbage votes from 10 registered members, the post is deleted. If is is the first post of a thread, the entire thread is deleted.

You can fiddle with the 400/10 numbers above to suit your taste, but this simple algorithm will ensure that crap which does not meet community standards, is gone from Misc without any moderator intervention.

Seriously, this is the way to go. If 5 of your posts are garbaged you get a 3 day no penalty ban. Of course I'm going to be cranky when it happens but it's fair. You could even decide who has the power to vote based on nepotism or what ever instead of post count.

[Hedley]

If 5 of your posts are garbaged you get a 3 day no penalty ban

I know. This is so easy to automate. Let the community decide what is offensive.

Hint: there are much, much more complicated pieces of software that have been written before. I have spent years of my life working on solving particularly difficult problems in software. This is not one of them.

[JakeYYZ]

No right to opinions but those approved by 'superiors'? Well, that doesn't seem so great to me.
It takes a special kind of arrogance to believe that one’s opinions are so correct that acknowledging other perspectives grants those perspectives more air time than they deserve. That’s not the way I roll.
You surprise me, Hedley.

[ktcanuck]

Here's an idea, but it would allow those who have an opinion to voice it, why not ignore those whose posts you don't like. I know this is a bit of a stretch for those who think rational thought belongs to a few heavy posted long timers but, well, you never know what might happen, do you?

[Beefitarian]

Here's an idea, but it would allow those who have an opinion to voice it, why not ignore those whose posts you don't like.

How's that working so far?

Here's a hint. viewforum.php?f=49 notice the lock? There seems to be more than a couple of people here that either have no sense of humour and or don't have time for people that do. Never mind a tolerance for morans.

It's not free speach here, this is someone's personal work, so they need to figure out how "they" want to move forward. One of the options they are considering is not having a misc. area so we'd have to take the fun somewhere else. I agree that there's some simple ways to crack down on the fun without having to stop it or make modding here a full time job.

It's probably allready a lot of work that results in someone being cranky about every decision.

If someone wants to make a better site based on free speach maybe they'll put a link to it where misc. forum used to be.

[The Old Fogducker]

Hedley:

How long do you think it will take for one overly sensitive, hypocritical, insensed so-called "Progressive" to register from three or four machines, and then get us thrown in the dungeon because we make a well worded post advocating self-reliance and excellence in endevour as opposed to a social welfare system where everyone is allocated a sequential Commercial Pilot Licence number based upon date of issue and flying jobs are assigned by seniority number as if its the railway in 1956?

I know one of the guys I worked with for the last few summers has several registered identities here ... one from his machine at home, one via his laptop using a neighbours open wireless network, and another from the staff flight planning machine at work. Its pretty easy to do. A few years ago, he even engaged in arguments with himself by posting sequentially under his various personalities.

Nope, I'd rather let the mods figure it out ... not trust members of the great unwashed to determine which of my posts is acceptable or not and throw me into his little version of hell because I caused him to be offended, his visual field of view to narrow to the diameter of a dime, and begin feverishly pounding away at the keyboard to tell his mommy I'm a bad man, and "Please Mommy ... make him stop."

With the moderators, it least you only have to follow some consistent published guidelines. If the envelope gets pushed and offends a mod who is a raving advocate for being Politically Correct or an extreme left-wing loonie toon intolerant of any view except those sympathetic to his own, at least we'll find it out over time and decide if our well considered and expertly written contributions to the site are worth swallowing our sense of what is right or wrong, and potentially move elsewhere.

The Old Fogducker

[OceansEdge]

If 5 of your posts are garbaged you get a 3 day no penalty ban

I know. This is so easy to automate. Let the community decide what is offensive.

Hint: there are much, much more complicated pieces of software that have been written before. I have spent years of my life working on solving particularly difficult problems in software. This is not one of them.

ahh yes, but can it be written to work with (and not violate any licensing agreements) for the out of the box forum software?

and ... 100 posts or 1000 posts - doesn't necessarily mean someone is any kind of accepted authority (by the membership or the mods) - in some cases it just goes to show you can't shut up the stupid.... we all know there are people here who will comment 25 times on every thread a) just to hear themselves talk and b) cause it ups their post count and makes em think they're important - I really don't want them having any say over whether my posts stay or go

[Siddley Hawker]

Nope, I'd rather let the mods figure it out ...

Agreed Foggy. This board is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship. A benevolent one but a dictatorship nevertheless. We are all here at the whim of the owner and those whom he has designated as mods. I have no problem with that. Them's the breaks and those who can't live with that should get hit on the ass with the door on the way out.

[Frank Gallagher]

No right to opinions but those approved by 'superiors'? Well, that doesn't seem so great to me.
It takes a special kind of arrogance to believe that one’s opinions are so correct that acknowledging other perspectives grants those perspectives more air time than they deserve. That’s not the way I roll.
You surprise me, Hedley.

While I do agree with you Jake that censorship is not a good thing moderating posts and controlling what goes on here is not censorship. Censorship is something governments do to silence opinions or facts.

This as has been stated is a privately owned message board. It truly is the same as being invited into someones home.

If you were sitting at the kitchen table in someones home and got into a heated debate over religion or politics and it turned into a gong show mud sling fest would the owner of that home not be well within his rights to ban the discussion or boot someone out of his home?

That said I'd hate to have the misc section gone all together as I think the misc forum is a big part of what created the large volume of traffic to this site. The humor and witty content as well as the occasional heated debate helps to keep the community together and offers a means to really get to know who each other is.

I think all the site needs is a better job of moderation. I don't mean that as a way of trashing on the mods and I hope they don't take it that way as I realize how tough a job it can be. However if they were to bring down the ban hammer a little more often I think in time the user base here would learn what is and isn't fair game.

Once again though an all out ban on Misc discussion would be a big mistake and I think it would turn this site into the Canadian version of pprune which the few times I've gone there is a pretty desolate place in the Canadian forum. The problem here doesn't require drastic change. It just needs a little tweaking.

[Hedley]

How long do you think it will take for one overly sensitive, hypocritical, insensed so-called "Progressive" to register from three or four machines

That's why you require a minimum number of posts to qualify, as I stated originally. I suggested 100. Perhaps 1000 is a better number. It really doesn't matter - it's just a variable that you store somewhere, and can easily change. Again, not rocket science.

That prevents people from creating a number of accounts and voting multiple times. You could also look at IP addresses - they would have to be unique. Again, you can get around that with a proxy, but it starts to raise the bar high enough.

The unpaid moderators cannot keep up with doing it manually. Self-regulating automation is the way to go. Nothing is perfect, but it would be a lot better than what we have now.

Jake wrote:

You surprise me, Hedley

Yeah, yeah. Free speech. First amendment. Got all that. But let's say someone posts an advertisement for kiddie porn in misc. Similar stuff has happened before. I guarantee you, it would be gone in minutes, with senior members clicking "garbage".

Everyone is free to create their own web site and put whatever they want on it. That's pretty free speech, IMHO. I'm not saying you can't create your own web site, Jake.

But when you're on someone else's, politely obey the rules. If you don't want to, leave. That's
pretty simple.

For example, lets say the mods post a new guideline, which states that you can't make fun of left-wing people any more, regardless of how silly they are, because it hurts their feelings.

I might personally disagree with such a rule, but I will abide by it. I will create my own web site which is dedicated to ridiculing left-wing people. I might call it:

www.foxnews.com

if it's not already taken

[albertdesalvo]

let's say someone posts an advertisement for kiddie porn in misc. Similar stuff has happened before. I guarantee you, it would be gone in minutes, with senior members clicking "garbage".

Let's say someone unintentionally hotlinks to an avatar that is both amusing and offensive. What would you do about the ensuing jokes?

[JakeYYZ]

Hedley:

But when you're on someone else's, politely obey the rules. If you don't want to, leave. That's
pretty simple.

Following the guidelines set by the site owner, are fine by me. Moderators wielding the 'hammer of Thor', again are fine. With my limited interaction with them, I find them to be ‘moderate’ moderators, with no particular agenda. On the other hand, you know we have a certain population here, who I am convinced, search for offense in every possible situation; they would have you leave your sense of humour with security when passing through reception. What a great night out these committee types must be, eh? About as much fun as contracting genital warts, I reckon. Which reminds me, did I ever tell you the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, and the miserable, overpaid, diversity compliance officer?
I much prefer the ‘hammer of Thor’ to the diversity compliance committee.

[JakeYYZ]

I don’t object to the forum being moderated, Frank. In my opinion, the moderators do a fine job. It’s clear to me they were not randomly selected. I find them balanced. Believe me when I say; I walk a very fine line in my postings. The inmates running the asylum is what I have a problem with.

[Hedley]

The inmates running the asylum is what I have a problem with

Bad news, Jake: you live in a democracy - with jury trials!

If a lot of senior members think your (or my) post belongs in the trash can, off it goes. I may or may not cry myself to sleep if that happens.

People treat their posts here with astonishing gravity. They are merely trivial dust in the wind, on an obscure web site in a country which can be fairly described as "Mostly Harmless", or perhaps even "Harmless" in the abridged version.

[JakeYYZ]

Leave me alone, Hedley! I've sobbed myself to sleep every night after learning Palin didn't do the actual shooting.