REMINDER: This forum is a NOT a free-for-all free speech platform

[EEVblog]

Today there was a recent temporary banning of a 10,000+ post user because of their continued persistence to make political posts at every available opportunity in response to anyone mentioning their pet topic. Even after they were asked to stop this many times they persisted and quoted their right to "free speech".

This forum is NOT a free speech free-for-all platform, it has rules, and one of those is about political discussion.
Of course there are political discussions on this forum, and threads often drift into the subject, and that is inevitable and is generally tolerated in the most regard. Mods give the occasional poke to stay on topic etc, and generally work well enough to keep the forum focused on engineering.
And there are of course political topics that are fairly "on topic" that remain as large active threads.

But when you are asked to stop because you do it too often and do not want to change, and you actively know it's against the rules and know it will get posts locked (even encouraging such locking), there has to be a limit. This extends to everyone. We do generally cut more slack for long standing members, but the goodwill will eventually run out.

I'd LOVE to debate politics all day long, and have a "free speech" forum (or section of the forum), but this forum cannot be one of those places. I have seen good forums destroyed by devolving into these topics which is why we have some rules here to try and keep it as engineering focused as much as possible, and to do it in a lead by example way that requires as little moderation as possible (too much moderation is another way to destroy a forum).

In the case today, the user said they wouldn't talk about this stuff if others didn't "start it". Well, the solution is simple, if you don't like that stuff and you see that stuff on the forum, then report it instead of responding and fueling it.

I hate having to ban users, especially ones with an otherwise large, productive, and well liked post history, but there are limits.

Thanks.

[Halcyon]

I'd LOVE to debate politics all day long, and have a "free speech" forum (or section of the forum), but this forum cannot be one of those places. I have seen good forums destroyed by devolving into these topics which is why we have some rules here to try and keep it as engineering focused as much as possible, and to do it in a lead by example way that requires as little moderation as possible (too much moderation is another way to destroy a forum).

That forum is called Whingepool Whirlpool. They have topics for just about everything. So if you enjoy over-zealous, selective and inconsistent moderation or you want your posts continually trolled, Whirlpool is the forum for you! ;-)

[tggzzz]

I can't comment on this specific case, of course.

All your points are sound and have an interesting benefit: many of the frequent contributors nudge things in that direction without having to involve the moderators.

[brabus]

I had a similar experience. As a moderator I was forced to ban a prolific historical member in an electronics Forum; he was just causing more flames than good.
I remember feeling bad about it and discussing the action with the other members for many weeks.

But in the end, the situation is way simpler: sometimes there is just no choice.
Since then, my "ban" button has become way lighter and easier to press.

[tszaboo]

The human mind is very interesting, as it develops and gets modified by experience. I recently read through my Tweets from about 10 years ago, and decided to delete each and every one of them. I just dont speak like that anymore, and it wasn't "presentable". I've seen people change their mind about something, political views, sometimes 180 degrees change several times. There are people that experience cyclic behaviour, almost like a bipolar disorder person, that go on "online forum rampages" and then behaving again.

[brabus]

The human mind is very interesting, as it develops and gets modified by experience. I recently read through my Tweets from about 10 years ago, and decided to delete each and every one of them. I just dont speak like that anymore, and it wasn't "presentable". I've seen people change their mind about something, political views, sometimes 180 degrees change several times. There are people that experience cyclic behaviour, almost like a bipolar disorder person, that go on "online forum rampages" and then behaving again.

Ditto. The guy I banned was exactly like this, toggling from bevahed to brat about every six months.

[magic]

I'd LOVE to debate politics all day long, and have a "free speech" forum (or section of the forum)

You wouldn't

Take Silicon Valley's word for it

[EEVblog]

All your points are sound and have an interesting benefit: many of the frequent contributors nudge things in that direction without having to involve the moderators.

And I think that's one of the unique things about this forum compared to dozens of others that I'm on.
Because it's more focused, with rules about the usual trigger topics, there is less political fighting. So all it usually takes is for one person to post an on-topic comment again and the thread is back on track with most willing to forget about the political argument and get back to technical talk.

[EEVblog]

That forum is called Whingepool Whirlpool. They have topics for just about everything. So if you enjoy over-zealous, selective and inconsistent moderation or you want your posts continually trolled, Whirlpool is the forum for you! ;-)

Yep, classic case of a technical forum that because of the other broad categories it offers, people spend all day in the other sections fighting with each other, and that attitude spills over into the technical sections. This is why I refuse to have an "Anything goes" section on this forum, it's a terrible idea in practice.
I believe that AllAboutCircuits has a such a tight moderation policy that it's driven many people here. You can't even post a link to another forum or your own website!
If you want to see what completely unmoderated gets you, aus.electronics and sci.electronics.design are for you!

[tggzzz]

If you want to see what completely unmoderated gets you, aus.electronics and sci.electronics.design are for you!

Just so, but...

s.e.d. can be entertaining, it has some very high quality posts in amongst the noise, and Win Hill - one of the authors of the classic "The Art of Electronics" - is a frequent poster.

All in all that is merely typical usenet. Ah, the good old days

[floobydust]

Extreme nationalism has no place here. I don't think it accomplishes anything at all aside from fueling hate. Although the rants were eye-openers

[EEVblog]

s.e.d. can be entertaining, it has some very high quality posts in amongst the noise, and Win Hill - one of the authors of the classic "The Art of Electronics" - is a frequent poster.

Yes, quite few  brilliant high quality contributors, unfortunately often drowned out by the trolls you cannot ban.
Usenet, whilst being an old platform was it's own problem, attracting new people to the group was difficult because they'd just get insulted and trolled out of existence in short order. I go back and take a peek once in while and it's still the same few dozen people from 20 years ago, hurling the same exact same insults.
Apart from two resident trolls, I used to be the top poster on aus.electronics back in the day.
I set up the Aus.electonics Yahoo group as an alternative for a while.

[jpanhalt]

This is why I refuse to have an "Anything goes" section on this forum, it's a terrible idea in practice.

Agree completely.

I believe that AllAboutCircuits has a such a tight moderation policy that it's driven many people here. You can't even post a link to another forum or your own website!

That is simply an "urban myth."  I have posted links at AAC on occasion to other forums, including EEVBlog and your YouTube.  None of them have been edited. 

AAC is tight on editing self-serving commercial links, but not commercial links per se.   That is, links by others to your You Tube, DigiKey, Mouser, etc. are not censored.  Now, if you posted a link to your own You Tube that might be.  Quite awhile ago, Jack Ganssle posted on AAC and included a content link to his paper on debouncing that also included a link to his company.  That was censored.  But a link to his paper itself was not censored and has appeared on AAC many times.  The expressed purpose for doing that is to prevent spam.  I felt that the decision in the Ganssle case was a bit narrow minded, particularly since one is allowed to include such links in their signatures. 

As I recall from quite awhile back, I posted a link to another forum here, and that got edited out.  Mistakes happen.  Maybe a moderator was upset, who knows.  But a single instance does not mean it's policy here or there.  I felt the rule was applied too rigorously in the Ganssle anecdote, but with any busy forum, one has to accept that errors will get made.

[tggzzz]

s.e.d. can be entertaining, it has some very high quality posts in amongst the noise, and Win Hill - one of the authors of the classic "The Art of Electronics" - is a frequent poster.

Yes, quite few  brilliant high quality contributors, unfortunately often drowned out by the trolls you cannot ban.

That has been a problem since "eternal september" (and earlier), so there are filtering techniques to address it. In my case I set my newsreader to "ignore subthreads" from persistent twats, so that I don't see them nor responses to their twattishness.

That requires a usenet newsreader (Thunderbird/Seamonkey) in my case. Using a standard browser just wouldn't work.

Usenet, whilst being an old platform was it's own problem, attracting new people to the group was difficult because they'd just get insulted and trolled out of existence in short order. I go back and take a peek once in while and it's still the same few dozen people from 20 years ago, hurling the same exact same insults.

No arguments there. It is "the wild west".

Contrariwise some of the extremely high quality posters are still posting. That plus filtering makes it still worthwhile to me.

[xaxaxa]

I didn't get to see all the posts before they got deleted, but from what I can see there *WAS* some xenophobia in there. The thread starter brought in politics and nothing was done about it, but people who pointed out that fact got their posts deleted. I also get the general vibe from other threads here that moderation here is a bit biased. I see constant derails about Chinese counterfeit parts (law: any thread about troubleshooting electronics that goes on sufficiently long will end in people concluding that Chinese and thus counterfeit parts are the culprit despite all other evidence). OTOH I looked at blueskull's post history and can't find much wrong.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

The bit (by a north american no more no less) about "spilled blood in the supply chain" was as much uncalled for as blueskull's reply if you ask me.

[SparkyFX]

But when you are asked to stop because you do it too often and do not want to change, and you actively know it's against the rules and know it will get posts locked (even encouraging such locking), there has to be a limit.

It is a common human behavior to stick to a certain topic like sh*t attracting the flies, but when that starts to become a game to bug others as much as possible it can't become constructive, especially if it is done with the sole purpose to counter effort driven by people that do it voluntarily. It is a complete waste of time to tell people that must know better that this is the wrong place for certain discussions or at least the wrong way to enter certain discussions.

Even after they were asked to stop this many times they persisted and quoted their right to "free speech".

Depending on where you live, in some jurisdictions the right of free speech is guaranteed toward the government and it's institutions or in public only. An internet forum is not necessarily considered public, as no one is obliged to publish any opinion or speech. Ofc once it enters the realm of discrimination or outright libel there are things to argue, but in general the EEVBlog has a technical focus, which makes this less likely to be the right place for politics.

[Black Phoenix]

The bit (by a north american no more no less) about "spilled blood in the supply chain" was as much uncalled for as blueskull's reply if you ask me.

The right thing to do instead of replying is report the comment, explain why and the moderators will edit the post in accordance. Not to reply back with all the guns and strength , specially when his opinion is mainly one sided, and that's OK, is his own thoughts and believes, they should be respected even if they are right/wrong, but in this case the best was report and ignore.

I'm guilty also, but I try to justify and also give arguments to the other side. I have cases where I bash China, but others where I defend. I have cases were I bash the West, but other that I defend. I try to provide links as a support to my own opinion. Trying to be unbiased is very hard, but I try my best to. But you can't be totally unbiased. So I try to limit myself into replying in sensitive topics. But probably I also was reported already too.

[SiliconWizard]

I was kind of "shocked" when I saw the user you're probably mentioning got banned, as I think he's otherwise a valued contributor, but I can understand. I admit he tended to be much too political too often (I've never really been bothered by it myself, and thought it was sometimes even interesting just for the sake of getting to know about "borderline" opinions, but I can understand this has no place here.)

And all in all, I think the moderation on this forum is very light and reasonable compared to most other forums. And you're spot on, allowing more of those political discussions, as interesting as it could be, would make it all the harder to moderate and would eventually kill it.

[wnorcott]

Thank you Dave.

[xmetal]

I've administered and moderated on various forums over the years and political debates can get way out of hand. It's trying to keep a delicate balance between a free-for-all of chaos to being over zealous on the moderation. I think the balance is about right on here and I run my own forum in a similar manner. It can be a thankless task but necessary.

[T3sl4co1l]

A few philosophical questions, if you'll entertain them --

1. All speech is political.  To some degree or another; it's a continuum.  Agree?  Discuss.

A related statement: all money is violence, to some degree or another.  Agree?  Discuss.

(This more or less encompasses the two trigger statements, so if we entertain a discussion about it, these are excellent points to consider.)

2. What is our decision point, what counts as "too political"?

Which, philosophically speaking, is an interesting question in general.  Many will take it to mean, "what is the exact line, so I can toe it and cause the legal maximum amount of chaos possible?" -- and rightfully so, rule griefers need to know this precisely.

Well, as a moderator myself, and moral person (so I would like to think), I will cut to the chase: a decision point should not be a point as such, but a fuzzy margin, subject to additional considerations.  This gives moderators some leeway in making a call, and discourages griefing.  (Note the present case, the ban is only temporary, despite the clear and repeated offenses.)  Downside, it also introduces inconsistency; an appeal process is desirable.

Tim

[Johnboy]

I looked at the text exchanges prior to the ban, and even as recently as yesterday the poster in question was trying to be helpful to other forum members. I can't blame him for feeling insulted by the thread in question; I don't pretend to understand his political stance but there were some rather negative things stated about his home country and he took issue with it. My take on it is that he was banned for defying the warning and insisting on his "right"  to speak here, but I also felt he was baited into the response that got him warned to begin with. In my view the other poster should also have been warned directly.

[james_s]

I do enjoy the relative lack of politics here. For many people politics are a branch of religion and not something they are able to have a rational debate about.

Usenet really went downhill when services like Google Groups started interfacing with them. People were absolutely clueless to the fact that they were posting on a worldwide unmoderated forum rather than a walled off Google forum. Then soon after that the massive proliferation of spam was a salvo of nails into the coffin.

[tggzzz]

Usenet really went downhill when services like Google Groups started interfacing with them. People were absolutely clueless to the fact that they were posting on a worldwide unmoderated forum rather than a walled off Google forum. Then soon after that the massive proliferation of spam was a salvo of nails into the coffin.

That started as a result of "eternal September" a.k.a. "the year September never ended" plus Canter and Siegel.