Thank you EstefanTT! Merry Christmas to you too!

Fuzzy, your team's  efforts are massively appreciated....and you've accomplished a great deal! The tip bot is a fabulous tool with a variety of applications. Can it be refined? Perhaps. Can the supporting info be improved, probably. But that takes nothing away from the accomplishment. You guys have established that you can work effectively to deliver something of value to the community. Really well done!! Please keep going, this is only the beginning.

Quote from: Ben Mason on December 11, 2015, 04:08:16 pm

Go tuck. You de man.

I am Tuck's disappoint.

Man you gave up so easily. I would never ignore you, I respect your differing opinion no matter how much I vehemently disagree with it!

I just needed to make a point.

Anyway, I'm glad we had our talk and now we can be friends.

Good times are ahead my friend, cheer up!

Life is too short to dwell on silly words used by silly people when there is so much work to be done, just ask Stan!

You guys put me on ignore and move on with your lives and get shit dun while I continue protecting the forum from misguided bans.

It's sometimes difficult for me to work out when you are being sincere. But I think you are here so.....absolutely no hard feelings! You've helped me think through this difficult subject matter. I respect your passionate defence of the ideal of freedom of expression and belief that there are adequate tools available to mitigate any unwanted contact within the forum. I retain my conviction that verbal violence is unnecessary and that a more proactive countermeasure is useful. There are great similarities between physical and online interactions.....I could never sit passively while someone is bullied for instance. I still believe in a culture of respect. I absolutely do not condone the censorship of journalism, criticism, disagreement, humour, non personal rudeness etc.

I hope lzr1900 can apologise to Stan or at the very least, offer to stop attacking him (wether Stan cares or not) and comes back in order to participate civilly and productively.  I believe it's on him if he values this community enough.

Consider the shit, fuck, cock, balls hatchet buried good buddy!

Quote from: Ben Mason on December 11, 2015, 07:55:29 am

None of these are examples of repeated personal attack  It's like you don't want to see the difference??

The only difference I see is that you're far more offended than I am by other peoples words.

I get that you don't like what he said, repeatedly, but did Stan ever complain about what he said?

I never saw Stan say a word. Stan appeared to handle it like a man ... a really strong man that's secure in his own skin.

Personally I don't think Stan needed anyone to come to his defense and I'm fairly certain Stan has the ability to ban someone himself.

Why did you two, not the Community, feel the need to ban the guy when Stan apparently had no issues with what was said?

Stan's obviously not a liar and anyone thinking that is dead wrong. He may play the salesman part at times, but isn't that his job?!

It's like me calling Stan an elephant. He's not an elephant and it's just a word with letters and sounds that you make when you move your mouth. Nothing more.

You chose to get offended, for who? For Stan? No for your own sake it appears.

Stan didn't need any defense, that I can see. He moved on with his life and ignored the asinine comment, as you should have in my opinion.

And before any ban request come for me, which obviously is all the rage today, I'm not "attacking" you. I'm expressing my own opinion and you can do with it whatever you like.

You should probably ignore it though, as you should have that user, but you appear to want to be offended and make it into some political statement that agrees with your current world view.

So be it. That's just my opinion and I frankly don't give a damn what you think about it. I'm just freely expressing myself in a rebuttal to what I think was an overreaction.

Quote from: Ben Mason on December 11, 2015, 07:55:29 am

I think I'll leave the discussion now. I continue to believe that personal attackers should be warned and encouraged to find other ways to express themselves, then banned if they persist. I don't believe it harms the ideal of freedom, but enhances it. Many people find it difficult to express themselves properly in an environment in which they may be personally attacked. I'd rather 100 attackers were silenced than one victim.
Thanks for your time and consideration.

How difficult do you think people find it to express themselves on a forum where they see people getting banned for expressing their opinion or apparently giving out a token? 

I'd rather have 100 attackers voicing their discontent than watching two people ban everyone they disagree with personally. I get enough of that from my government thank you very much.

I believe people are less afraid of others ridiculous opinions than they are of being banned for speaking their minds, but that's probably just me.

You on the other hand appeared to have put a lot of weight behind that guys opinion, so much so that you got awful offended and like a fascist asked for him to be banned for speaking his mind.

"As long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone".

^^^ That's what you guys have said and Ben, that's fascism!



Wake up brother, you've gone to the dark side trying to protect someone who didn't need to be protected.

Disclaimer: These are simply my thoughts. They probably differ from yours and that's cool! I love differing opinions especially one's that prove me wrong. So go ahead Ben, prove me wrong so I can learn!

Seeing as you've called me a Facist for my beliefs (i do hope you comprehend the irony here,) by all means, let's continue the discussion.  I will say that i'm not interested in proving anybody wrong.  I'm interested to analyze my own view and wanted to acknowledge that others (at least you and Toast) had a different opinion.  So far i've not heard anything that dissuades me from my belief that the censorship of repeat personal attackers is appropriate.

I accept that Stan has not asked for anyone's help or support and he may be completely comfortable with lzr1900's comments.  But do you know that for a fact?  Do you know that everyone who may ever come under personal attack is comfortable with it in the future?  My offense comes from the principal that everyone is entitled to civility and that disagreements can be handled with respect.  Many disagreements are the result of miscommunication after all......and let's face it, once personal attacks begin, disagreements can become infinitely harder to resolve. 

If you can provide a well reasoned argument for why a culture of respect should not come to the defense of someone under personal attack (who may not be as easily able to shrug them off as you say Stan is,) then you'll definitely increase the chance of changing my opinion.  You may very well be impossible to insult, offend or otherwise verbally harm tuck, for that i commend you, but not everyone is as robust as you and possibly Stan.

You have not yet explained how you would deal with 100 lzr1900's......I guess just keep ignoring until you're reading 1 in every 100 posts?

If you were in a meeting with a group of people (in person) and one of your colleagues kept shouting 'Liar fucker!' every time you were attempting to make a point, what would you or the others present do? 

The point is that there are a billion examples where individuals self limit their freedom in order to fit social norms that are partly in place to enable large groups of people to live together in relative harmony.  For the most part, those social norms like non aggression towards others are desirable.  Just because communities now exist online and people are physically removed from the traditional consequences of breaking social norms, it does not mean they have any less value when observed or cause any less harm when flouted.

Quote from: Ben Mason on December 10, 2015, 08:29:13 am

but any sane person should realise

I'm offended by your comment.

I request that Ben Mason be banned.

You've lifted part of a non personal comment that is absent any vulgarity or slander and are judging me more harshly than lzr1900.....given the number of his comments?  Your singular point being that anyone can be offended by anything, therefore we cannot set and enforce any standards for communication.  I think this is a lazy argument.  First, the argument throws any victim of abuse under the proverbial bus. Second, its perfectly possible to apply reason to each situation, allow for extenuating circumstances or reconciliation. Third, I hope that there exists a majority who's ideas of communication have a great deal of commonality, grounded in freedom & courtesy.....there's a great deal of evidence of that being the case in the pages of this forum!

Thank you fav.

This is a great step towards establishing a decentralized governance system and considering that our committee's members are located across the globe with several different timezone, I must say that I am impressed by the progress you guys make and proud of what this ecosystem has already achieve!
 
Nuf said, let's conquer yet another unexplored territory!
Cheers

Well said