Asking For Opinions on Negative Discussion

[admin]

I understand many of you are not happy with the state of racing especially in Australia at the moment, but honestly we were hoping this forum would become more than a place to vent. Almost daily we receive calls and emails from various parties, often with accompanying legal threats, and if it does come to it we will simply have to shut down as currently the forum is free and not ad supported so there's not much business incentive there.

Even when I edit a name somebody names personally with an accompanying taunt for that person to sue, I get "don't you dare edit this admin", so it's becoming impossible to keep everyone happy.

I'm not sure what the best course of action is from here. In a perfect world I'd allow anybody to say what they liked, but internet being what it is, and racing being what that is it wouldn't take long for everything to fall apart. Easiest course of action for Harnesslink would be to simply not allow any talk of suspension, rule breaking etc. In my opinion this wouldn't make us any better than industry bodies (who I won't name) that don't mention the "dark side" of racing, and want to pretend all is well.

I'm going to repost this in the help/announcements section, and I'd appreciate some feedback. Last time I checked internet law in NZ (where Harnesslink is based) is pretty outdated, meaning that Harnesslink, as hosts, are somewhat legally responsible for your comments. And imo staying out of a court room on your behalf trumps my inclination toward free speech, so something has to change.

I understand many of you are censoring your real opinions on this type of stuff somewhat which I appreciate, but it's not enough at the moment and as the forum grows it gets harder and harder to oversee. If we can't find another way we will need to instigate a hush hush rule where cheating etc isn't allowed to be discussed. I understand most of you won't like this, and you're free to leave, though we'd appreciate you staying and continuing to discuss the overwhelmingly positive aspects of the sport.

Options from here, feel free to suggest your own:

1) Shut forum down - not preferred

2) Ban any negative stuff

3) Private members only forum for negative stuff. This wouldn't really solve the problem, but it would reduce complaints somewhat.

4) Bring more moderators on. This is a little tricky because we have consistency issues, and we would still be editing a lot of posts and threads, which members don't take kindly to. It's also a lot of work.

[aussiebreno]

Members probably shouldn't be putting admin in the position of editing posts. A lot of immature posting and keyboard warrior posting is happening. We probably don't need/want these posters so if they complain when there posts are edited tough titties imo. On the occasion a respected poster needs a post edited I believe they will be mature enough to handle it. (I haven't actually taken notice of the editing but have seen things that should/could get edited and probably do after I've seen them)

For every poster that whinges about the editing there would be at least 5 who are right behind you Admin.

I don't think we should ban negative stuff. There have been quite a few threads that have run their course without modification (I could be wrong here because I don't really see what you do behind the scenes). I can see from your point of view as the guy doing all the work you may want this though.

Shut forum down......where else would I waste away my life????

[ringman]

Well im one of the culprits and in future i will tone down what i post as its not the way this forum should be heading.as for the best thing to do it could be a warning system. 1st time a warning, 2nd time a weeks ban from the forum, and 3rd time a 12 month ban.
Then if the person comes back and continues ban for life.

The ban should only be for threats or fowl language directed at a person

[Shawshank Redemption]

Hello Admin,

Agree with your decision regarding locking the thread, it was obvious that things were going downhill fast !

Love Harnesslink with all the great stories and have found the forums very educational and informative for the most part.

Understand that for business reasons a few ads to help fund would be okay and not objectionable to that.

Would appreciate the chance to post questions to harness officials such as what were their thoughts on incidents in races such as the locked thread, to have questions answered in a sensible format. Give people the chance to raise concerns and have them addressed.

Keep up the good work !

[justdoit]

Admin,
You have the power and should use it in any way you see fit.
Ringman has a good idea there, set some rule as far as naming people goes and if broken give us the punishment
If posters complain well they came go else where, all the good people on here at the moment will continue to post.

[aussiebreno]

Thing with banning posters is aliases.

[ringman]

Thing with banning posters is aliases.

Im sure in admin tools they have a way to ban the ISP

[aussiebreno]

Im sure in admin tools they have a way to ban the ISP

Yeah hope so; but on 3 other forums I frequent (one footy related; one gym related and one thoroughbred racing related FYI) they either don't have it or don't utilise it.

[Flashing Red]

I'm a moderator of another very large racing forum.

We have a rule that if it won't pass a Disney movie then don't say it. People can vent but they have to be diplomatic. I don't expect it to be that strict on here.

We also issue forum bans for 2 weeks etc depending on infraction - so temporary bans. I'll leave this decision up to you guys. I don't feel negative stuff should be banned (but I must admit that negative stuff on here lately has got me down) and admin you're not covering HarnessLink's butt re defamation with a private forum.

That only leaves closing the forum or more moderators.

Perhaps another option is having to post with your real name, not non de plume. It's amazing how much things clear up when people use their real name. The keyboard ninjas disappear...

[admin]

Hoping to get some more opinions but I can respond these so far:

Members probably shouldn't be putting admin in the position of editing posts. A lot of immature posting and keyboard warrior posting is happening. We probably don't need/want these posters so if they complain when there posts are edited tough titties imo. On the occasion a respected poster needs a post edited I believe they will be mature enough to handle it. (I haven't actually taken notice of the editing but have seen things that should/could get edited and probably do after I've seen them)



For every poster that whinges about the editing there would be at least 5 who are right behind you Admin.

I don't think we should ban negative stuff. There have been quite a few threads that have run their course without modification (I could be wrong here because I don't really see what you do behind the scenes). I can see from your point of view as the guy doing all the work you may want this though.

Shut forum down......where else would I waste away my life????

Thanks, from the feedback here we won't ban negative stuff at this point.

Well im one of the culprits and in future i will tone down what i post as its not the way this forum should be heading.as for the best thing to do it could be a warning system. 1st time a warning, 2nd time a weeks ban from the forum, and 3rd time a 12 month ban.
Then if the person comes back and continues ban for life.

The ban should only be for threats or fowl language directed at a person

Yep we have received more than one phone call about you Ringman But yeah if you could just tone it down we would appreciate it. I've seen infraction systems implemented on forums I've frequented with mixed results.

The good is that it's fair, members get a couple of warnings with points deducted depending on the offence, and by the time they are banned it's usually pretty clear they deserve to be.

The bad is that 1) People still complain, 2) It does feel a little like disciplining a child 3) Fake accounts, which we could probably deal with but still more admin for us 4) We would still need to moderate fairly aggressively which is a lot of work (not just making edits, but literally trying to read every post isn't easy, especially when you already have a full time job).

Hello Admin,

Agree with your decision regarding locking the thread, it was obvious that things were going downhill fast !

Love Harnesslink with all the great stories and have found the forums very educational and informative for the most part.

Understand that for business reasons a few ads to help fund would be okay and not objectionable to that.

Would appreciate the chance to post questions to harness officials such as what were their thoughts on incidents in races such as the locked thread, to have questions answered in a sensible format. Give people the chance to raise concerns and have them addressed.

Keep up the good work !

That's definitely something we have been wanting to do on Harnesslink for a long time, and were hoping it would naturally happen here without us needing to solicit industry people. The tone of the forum as it is currently would definitely put quite a few people off though. One thing posters need to keep in mind is that for every member reading a post there are about 200 other unregistered people reading it, and forums are subject to a tribe mentality which can put people off.

Admin,
You have the power and should use it in any way you see fit.
Ringman has a good idea there, set some rule as far as naming people goes and if broken give us the punishment
If posters complain well they came go else where, all the good people on here at the moment will continue to post.

Not necessarily as easy as it sounds (at least to me). For instance if somebody hears something unofficially that a driver is in trouble, then yeah this is probably hearsay (even if true) and shouldn't be talked about on a public forum. If then HRNSW publishes a story confirming it, then that can be posted. But then somebody comes along as says "this cheat ***** ***** etc then that's too far. That's just one example, but the problem is it's pretty hard to draw a line in the sand... though we need to be the ones to draw it and I'll look into some formal rules. If you have any feedback regarding this please let me know.

Thing with banning posters is aliases.

We can detect this, not a perfect solution though. For example there are a couple of posters who I suspect are different people from their writing style, but they are using the same computer.

It seems you guys aren't to keen for a private forum or anything like that. And at this point I'm a bit reluctant to get into a infraction type system, though this might need to be implemented in the future.

From the experience he had on Harnesslink, requiring facebook/real names, I'm thinking the cleanest solution would be to require everybody to list their real names alongside their username. I know some people might object to that, but honestly if you have a big problem with that your probably not the type that people want on here in the first place.

If you do have a legitimate cause to not post your real name just PM me the reason and I could circumvent the requirement on your account. For example I work online, so my when somebody Google's my name I don't want them getting hundreds of harness racing forum results, but that wouldn't be a problem for most people.