Administration & Moderation Notices

[AdminSTB]

Just to say I am on my holidays for few days in lovely Yorkshire. I will try and check in twice a day, but the moderation team will I'm sure spring into action on any spammers etc. whilst I have a bit of serious relaxation.

[AdminSTB]

I have returned from my little holiday, which mainly consisted of trains, beers and chips. It was very nice and quite relaxing.

I have just found four people all trying to register as new members from the same IP address within 30 minutes, a search revealed that the IP address was implicated in the production of spam and they have been banned (as has the IP address)..

[AdminSTB]

Strontium Dog has been given a three day kick from the forum for calling people Assad apologist with no logical basis.

[AdminSTB]

I have disabled guest posting on the General Election threads.

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Obviously as we get into the General Election period, people will have some pretty heated arguments. I expect that, it's all part of the robust rough and tumble of politics and long may be so.

However, with regards to rough and tumble, especially with fellow members of the site, play the ball, not the man.

[AdminSTB]

I have had to edit two posts for potential libel about candidates. I do not enjoy doing this, but can we remember that some candidates are fond of lawyers and that these forums are read by outsiders. If we could be a little more careful, I hate defending people I'd really rather not.

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After consultation with the moderators, we have agreed that the weight of the evidence is that @caulkhead is a sockpuppet of a previously banned user and therefore we have come to the decision to ban them as well.

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After consultation with the moderators, AndriyChikatilo has been banned for a week. After complaints they were asked to remove his avatar and on failing to do so it was edited. The user reinstated it on their next log on.

[AdminSTB]

A member has asked for his account and all his postings to be deleted.

I have complied with this request.

[AdminSTB]

A few moderators comments:

<puts on best Joyce Grenfell voice>

1) Yesterday there was a posting made which suggested that it might be a good idea if someone assassinated a foreign Head of State. This was followed by a bit of handbag the other way. Don't do this, please feel free to have a robust debate but let's not go all tumblr about it. The posters have since deleted and there will be no further action.

2) I have had an enquiry rather than a complaint about a member who has advertising on their avatar. We came to the conclusion that we really weren't that bothered as long as it wasn't offensive and that the poster had a record of non-shilling posts.

3) The other day I received a report in which the complaint consisted of the single word "Twat". I didn't think a lot of this to say the least, don't do it again.

4) Remember that your mod team have jobs, lives (and at the moment) elections. We try and deal with non-spam complaints through consensus which can take a bit of time. I may start temporarily locking threads "pending moderator review" if some of you can't put down the handbags - whilst we make decisions.

5) I am seriously considering an IP ban on the whole of Cameroon, just to save time each day.

[AdminSTB]

Following the DIane Abbott thread, which was locked by one of the other moderators after a short message discussion

boogieeck a) decided to post in a thead which had been locked pending review and b) posted content that a number of users considered racist.

The moderators have decided:

1) @boogieeck has been given a temporary ban until the 13th of June.
2) Moderator powers have been taken from boogieck with regards to the Conservative Room, the Conservatives are asked to select another moderator
3) Until the Conservative Room has selected another moderator for their room, I have appointed Devil Wincarnate to stand in, although I understand that mods have rarely intervened in the private rooms.

[AdminSTB]

User albion has been banned for a week for personal attacks and thread derailment even beyond the standards of this board.

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Users janwhitby and @jamesdowden have been kicked for three days for personal attacks.

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User beastofbedfordshire has been kicked until Sunday morning (19th November) for repeated personal attacks and trolling. This was a unanimous moderators decision following several reports and after they had received a warning by PM.

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I have just rejected a couple of particularly blatant attempts at sock-puppetry in registration.

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User Merseymike has been kicked until Sunday for personal attacks and goading.

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I have archived the Northern Ireland Assembly election thread. I had kept it on the main board as there was a chance that there would be a second election this year.

I will be archiving the 2017 GE threads at the end of the year, the archives are, of course, accessible and contributions can still be made there.

[AdminSTB]

Yesterday, there was a fairly serious amount of forum drama on the Haringey thread, which has lead to the thread having to be temporarily locked after several complaints.

The thread had been dragged wildly off topic and was discussing what was essentially a personal issue and the situation became heated after some ill-thought out postings.

The local elections and general elections threads contain a great deal of very valuable information, both in terms of the psephological information which is given out, the local knowledge which is given and the general tonor of them is good. They are some of the most visited parts of the site and generally a credit to the posters. The Haringey thread had been particularly wide ranging, which is not surprising as the selections and various events had been in the news considerably and whilst the discussion had moved on from the local elections, it was still reasonably germane to Haringey especially with regards issues which would be raised during the campaign. It was, however, derailed onto personal issues and then suffered from an attack of handbags.

The moderators have reviewed the complaints and come to the following decisions:

1) carlton43 made two particularly complained about postings, the first was a mixture of personal abuse and advice. The personal abuse was near the knuckle and would have attracted a penalty anyway, there was nothing wrong with giving the advice, unsolicited as it was and perhaps not in tenor with the poster, we've all done it and people can choose to ignore it or not. The second was a personal attack which would also have attracted a penalty, but I have given some mitigation as it was a provoked attack. Carlton will be kicked for 5 days.

2) East Anglian Lefty made an personal attack on carlton during this outbreak. It carried on with the unpleasant and persistent meme from some people to others of an opposing group that the persons concerned are drunk. I am getting rather fed up of this particular unpleasant way to try and silence people, especially as it usually done in a tone of moral superiority. East Anglian Lefty will be kicked for 3 days

3) @goodoldcause decided to weigh in to express his distaste for the poster who was being attacked whilst loudly stating that he normally had them blocked. This was uncalled for and bad form, if you have someone blocked, leave them blocked and don't use blocking as a sniping point. Consider this an official warning.

4) I am going to keep a more careful eye on the local election threads, the two common problems appear to be talking about another authority on a different board and off-topic wibble. Both are understandable to a mlld degree, but they are spoiling some of the best and most knowledgeable local election commentary on here. In future, I will be moving postings about incorrect authorities to the right one unless it is being used for comparison purposes and deleting completely off-topic posting if they start to overwhelm a thread. If people continue to post off-topic persistently and heavily those threads then other sanctions may have to be taken.

We all understand that this is a political board and that debate can get robust and sometimes heated, that's the nature of politics and very much the nature of politics at present. However, when it gets onto personal attacks on forum members, it has gone too far and needs to stop. We could also do without some of the trollhunting that is going on, trolls thrive on it.

The Haringey thread has now been unlocked.

[AdminSTB]

We have decided that in the interests of sanity, when local election threads wander across the boundaries for extensive discussion of other authorities without comparisons, the moderators will just move the content to the correct thread. We don't want to lose what is often valuable potential insight.

[AdminSTB]

The mods have removed a image at a users request.

There will be a more formal ruling about appropriate use of users personal images at a later date.

There will be no sanctions in this particular case.