Banned members

[Howard Walker]

I recently received a long letter from the administrators explaining why they had banned a member from the forums. I agree with the reasons for banning him, as the forums should not be used for political reasons.

On the other hand, the administrators did display a biased and one sided opinion which is what people living in the world at large have come to expect over the years from people living west of the pond.

I am an Englishman with 70 years of experience in what goes on in the world. One important thing that I have learnt is that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The converse also applies. A political group considered by one country to be a terrorist organisation is often a legally and democratically recognised organisation on its own patch.

Take the IRA for instance. The UK considered it a terrorist organisation, yet the USA supported it financially and politically for many years, until it became in the interests of the USA to change its policy in exchange for assistance from the UK on other matters.

If an American was to ask the average Englishman "which is the biggest terrorist country in the world", he may well find that the answer would be a lot nearer to home than he had thought. Of course it would depend on which average Englishman he was to ask.

It was not neccessary to write a whole page explaining why one guy was expelled from the forum. All that was needed was to do it and keep quiet about it. Forums should not be political items from either side of the keyboard.

[patcooke]

Fully agree with all you say. Another excellent example is that of Nelson Mandela who spent a large part of his life condemned as a terrorist, imprisoned for many years and eventuallyly elected president and hailed as a champion of human rights. Freedom of speech is a precious right which has been purchased at great price and it must always be defended, like democracy it can be an expensive commodity but the alternatives command an even higher price. It's a question of where we "draw the line". We also need to bear in mind that the primary purpose of these forums is to be offer support and exchange of knowledge in matters relating to pc's and that there are many more appropriate online platforms for making political statements.

[Mike]

Still, I don't recall Nelson Mandela hijacking a commercial airliner with civilians on board, executing one of the passengers, and throwing his corpse onto the tarmac. If we're a bit biased in that area, I'd say we're guilty of having a conscience.
TWA Flight 847 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hezbollah And Andrea Sites.

No thanks.

[whs]

This discussion is not going to go anywhere because different people have different value systems. I think we should accept that the forum banned these people because it did not fit into the value system of the forum owners. And that is alright with me.

Let me tell you 2 little stories that really happened and you will see the difficulty to make a correct judgement.

1. About the time when the Iraq war started, a young Palestinian boy was throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. He was shot in the process. The Isreali army then arrested the father, drove the mother and the younger brother out of their house and bulldozed the house.

Following that the younger brother got himself a bomb and strapped it on his body. He went into a cafe and detonated the bomb. He was killed and also 3 Isrealis that happend to be in this cafe. Is this boy a terrorist?

2. At about the same time, a Navy officer launched a cruise missile from a submarine stationed in the Mediterranean sea. That cruise missile landed 1000 miles away in a marketplace in Bagdad and killed 300 people that happened to be there. When that sub returned to it's base, the crew was praised as heros. Was this officer a hero?

I think it is very difficult to judge in both cases - all depends on your value system.

[Mike]

I understand your thinking in this regard. I am a pacifist at heart, but it has nothing to do with the decision making. Andrea's constant trolling of the site was one thing - it barely skirted the line of acceptability on the site, and we ended up amending our policies because of these types of argumentative rants that she was starting. (Not flame wars, per se, but simply re-iterating the same talking points just to get everyone fighting over nonsense).

I believe that the situation in the Middle East is a pure tragedy. However, our servers are based in the United States, as the owner of this website; I am a United States citizen. Our admin team is comprised of a British national and another American. We have a worldwide moderator team. We are not against any nationality - we do not restrict access. I have actually been sad to look at our online user map and never see a single connection from North Korea. We want to engage with the people of the world.

However, any member of the site that is found to run websites that are sympathetic to, and promote the plight of, organizations listed on the United States Department of State Foreign Terrorist Organizations list at Foreign Terrorist Organizations may find themselves removed from this website. This is also to protect our servers under U.S. law concerning the harboring or concealing of terrorist sympathizers and enemies of the United States government. I do believe Andrea was somewhat innocuous, but my belief is not enough. She runs multiple Hezbollah related websites and this crosses the line until the government our website is hosted in (and that we live in) removes them from this list.

(And yes, I do read and watch Chomsky all the time and know it is very often argued the list is political and arbitrary - but we are not taking risks when it comes to individuals who identify themselves with paramilitary organizations that have targeted civilians in the past to such a degree that her favorite organization did).

Again, I have no interest in debating the politics with you. We have made a decision that we believe was right for the viewers of our website, given the negative nature of her messages, as well as her affiliations with these potentially dangerous groups. I hope you will understand. Even discussing it upsets me, because it was a difficult call to make, but one I knew that we had to after so many negative rants - and so much really insane commentary from her about this group. Whether or not she even knew them is something we have talked about... but if it leads to someone getting hurt, we don't want it on our site.

[whs]

Mike, there is really no need to explain. You are doing the right thing. You have to play by the rules to stay in business.

My point was a bit different. Life is sometimes more subtle than the cookie stamp views that we are being told. That's all.

[Titanic]

This discussion is not going to go anywhere because different people have different value systems. I think we should accept that the forum banned these people because it did not fit into the value system of the forum owners. And that is alright with me.

I'll agree with that. I was a moderator in UESP.NET for two years, we rarely and hardly banned anyone, but every time it was a controversy. To be honest, with my style, I'm quite astonished I haven't been banned anywhere... I was attacked twice by Denial of Service while active in YouTube, by some nasty members, that was all, people to decide seem to have understood the certain class and dignity I represent.

Discipline is difficult. But sometimes it has to be applied. May be nasty, but needed. And I do believe, understanding will be found when once want is understood to be asked for.

[Highwayman]

I don't see a problem in banning folk with or without a public posted reason, unless they happened to be financially supporting the site. Free members shouldn't really expect anything more than acceptance of the T&Cs, which did happen to me by accident last year. As for Andrea... about time she got banned, she became a "Meme" of herself very quickly due to her utter bogus arguements and statements which never held a drop of truth or fact in regards to PC software or hardware.

[Titanic]

I admit, hands up, who is right? Not a very easy question, is it?

[kemical]

And here's me thinking it was a forum about computers using Microsoft operating systems.