IMO, what this place doesn't need is some additional "rule" to enforce on the user base. Posting a PM in a public forum may be bad manners, but should hardly constitute a crime of some sort. Also, remember if you send a PM to me--its now mine. If you fear that someone might post your PM publically, and that you may be embarrassed as a result, you might want to think twice about sending that PM.

From Curt, in the original thread that I inadvertently screwed up. ..

thanks amber for re-posting curt's previous post. he hit the nail on the proverbial head. now you can lock the thread. :wink:

Keep in mind that all private e-mail is considered to be copyrighted by the original author. If you post private e-mail to a public list or board, or forward it to an outside party in whole or in part, you must include the author's permission to post the material publicly. Not doing so can get you into some deep doo-doo legally or with your friends and associates. Think of it this way... how would you feel if a personal private e-mail that you had written for a specific purpose/person is then plastered across the Internet or forwarded to folks you do not know? Always ask for permission before forwarding or posting any private e-mails!

What is the purpose of the poll?

Are you going to allow the majority to dictate?

Or just give the illusion that this is the case?

With so many registered users, how many people does it take before you feel you've reached a consensus?

I voted for the 2nd hardest violation (meaning it leads down the standard issue path towards banning, but is not an immediately banable offense), but also think the offending thread should be nuked.

The reason for this is simple:

It is called a PRIVATE Message. Not a personal, not a semi-private, not a "may get posted" message, but a PRIVATE Message. Considering the current wording of PRIVATE message, and if the course of action is to remain with private messages being "publishable", they shouild be changed to be called "Personal Messages". Private implies, hell not even that, is SAYS it is private.

Private, in this context, merely means that when the PM originator sends the PM, it goes only to the designated private party--and not to the public at large.

so i think what the original question is asking is when "the designated private party" actually does turn it around "to the public at large" should this behaviour be addressed??

Private, in this context, merely means that when the PM originator sends the PM, it goes only to the designated private party--and not to the public at large. To expand upon this meaning is quite absurd.

Curt

- Secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others.
- Designed or intended for one's exclusive use
- Of or confined to the individual
- Undertaken on an individual basis
- Not available for public use, control, or participation

There are no copyright issues here, absent a properly executed confidentiality agreement previously entered into by both the originator and the recipient of such information.

Curt

Actually, private in this context does not just mean that it only goes to the designated party. Go to any other reputable website with a Private Message system and look at their TOS concerning Private Messages. You will find pretty much universally that they have strict policies regarding the publication of private messages.

If RC.com wants to change the meaning of a Private Message to a Personal Message, which more adequately describes what you are saying the current "context" of the messages by which thet are sent under, then they should do exactly that, change the title to "Personal Message".

Look up "private" in a dictionary, it is clear as to what the definition is:


I think that last one hits the nail on the head.

If a PM is sent to you that you find offensive, forward it on to an admin. Though I would chose your admins wisely. A few of the current ones have either directly supported or have personally published private emails, private messages, and personal information in the past to the general forums.

I'm sorry but i take offense at this! I don't have prior knowledge as to what happened before i joined rc.com

What is the purpose of the poll?
Keep private messages private, and like communications between clergy, doctors, spouses, other priviledged people. Maintain the integrity of the communications system. Penalize harshly those that have disregard for this simple, yet so fundamental, issue, no matter what position they may hold. In fact, the more "official" a person is, the higher the standards they should be measured up against. What has happened to integrity?

Yes, but that definition applies only to the initial transmission from the original sender to the original recipient as being private. After that, the recipient of such information is quite free to do with it what he/she sees fit. The recipient is under absolutely NO obligation to keep the information sent to him/her private.

Curt

- Secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others.
- Designed or intended for one's exclusive use
- Of or confined to the individual
- Undertaken on an individual basis
- Not available for public use, control, or participation

If a PM is sent to you that you find offensive, forward it on to an admin. Though I would chose your admins wisely. A few of the current ones have either directly supported or have personally published private emails, private messages, and personal information in the past to the general forums.

Persuant to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. 2510 et seq.), notice is hereby given that there are no facilities by this system for sending or recieving completely private or confidential electronic communications.

Your continued use of this online system constitutes acceptance of the above notice.

The big differnce is that the conversations with the people you mentioned above are privileged for very specific resons, basically because they ussualy concern very personal matters. Tarpitting people for disclosing PMs would be like giving people fines for blabbing other peoples' secrets in real life. Unles there is a very powerful reason to do this, it makes very little sens, IMHO.

There are very strong legal arguments for including verbiage as follows, in the TOS:



- d.

People shouldnt say things privately if they arent prepared to take public responsibility for their words.

That about covers it for me.

At first glance, I want to agree with you. But the behavior that is encouraged (or "not discouraged") in the public forums can have pretty significant impacts on people. A number of Timy Fairfield's friends signed up for the express purpose of defending his character. Do we want people coming to the site to stem the tide of a character assassination -- is that the best we have to offer? If not, is there any reason to encourage such a negative climate?

Our existing policy should be reconsidered, in light of what's happened. Even if only to let people know that attempts to use the website as a bully pulpit for character assassinations simply cannot be tolerated. It's not decent and it's not acceptable, regardless of the mechanism. Whether through discipline or simple 'cleanup', this degree of malicious misconduct cannot be allowed to stand or the site will become a cesspool.

(more so)

Our existing policy should be reconsidered, in light of what's happened. Even if only to let people know that attempts to use the website as a bully pulpit for character assassinations simply cannot be tolerated. It's not decent and it's not acceptable, regardless of the mechanism. Whether through discipline or simple 'cleanup', this degree of malicious misconduct cannot be allowed to stand or the site will become a cesspool.

Have you ever been misquoted in a newspaper? I worked in DC for long enough to see this happen to numerous people -- the power of the press can be a terrifying thing. And with the exposure this site has, it has effectively become part of the press.

Does it? Look at the bolded sections which clearly state that it is not just the transmition but also the intended use that is covered:

This is pretty much my take on the situation. While I'm all for personal accountability, I'm not in favor of rc.com becoming more of a rumormill than it already is. I've had my words twisted and used against me, and it sucks. And, although I learned some valuable lessons along the way about how crappy people can be, I dont really think that providing this lesson should be a core value of rc.com.

I've had my words twisted and used against me, and it sucks.

Christ people, get over it already. There is no law preventing people from sharing what is delivered in mail or email, there's no reason to ban people for publicly sharing that what is intended to be private. If you don't think it'll stay private, don't share it. It's like telling secrets as a kid. Nothing's really secret. Duh.

What is this, 3rd grade but we're going to send you to the principal's office if you tell Jenny what Johnny told you?

Pfft what a bunch of poosays.

What is this, 3rd grade but we're going to send you to the principal's office if you tell Jenny what Johnny told you?

Have you ever been misquoted in a newspaper? I worked in DC for long enough to see this happen to numerous people -- the power of the press can be a terrifying thing. And with the exposure this site has, it has effectively become part of the press.

Blah Blah
DMT

This is pretty much my take on the situation.

Then I urge you to read my rebuttal post. Sincerely, I do not think you have fully considered the ramifications of what you are suggesting. When people have an expectation that they can say anything they want to you and you are bound to keep it private, they eventually WILL SAY ANYTHING! Now you may choose to take on that burden, hear all that crap. Do you want a 12 year old kid to endure it too?

Because of a stupid taboo that was born in the days of DARPANET to enable competitive and hissy throwing scientists to bad mouth one another without fear of public reprisal? You do know that right? All along it was to defend bad behavior, from the git go.

Don't you see?

Please read the rest of my rebuttal, you and all the other admins and mods. You really should stop thinking you should be controlling people's conversations. It isn't right, and you know it.

Cheers
DMT

When people have an expectation that they can say anything they want to you and you are bound to keep it private, they eventually WILL SAY ANYTHING!

You really should stop thinking you should be controlling people's conversations. It isn't right, and you know it.

I'm sorry but i take offense at this! I don't have prior knowledge as to what happened before i joined rc.com, but don't start hauling out the trash. As far as i know, all admins and mods can be trusted with questionable/personal pm's.

sorry roughster, but that's just bad form!

It was chicken s--- and you know it. "Oh no, he's a mod!!!!!!!!!!"

In light of your comment on the rec.climbing thread:

Quote:
Now there's the old Aaron Rough SOB we know so well at rec.climbing;


I thought it would only be fair to at least give you the courtesy that you did not give me. In the future you will be addressed on all forums as:

Craig Harris

Just thought you would appreciate the heads up.

...this leads me to wonder to what extent admins have access to pm's..... is it only when they are sent to them directly, due to harassment or offensive pm's? or can they just brouse willy-nilly through random pm's through the site..... just a thought, that's all....

When people click the harassment button in the PM box, it forwards a copy of the PM to all active admins.

As far as I know, the only way that someone can access your PMs is by logging into your account.

Let's say you have some abberant social deviant that worms his way into your mod or admin group, and under the color of authority starts sending say, sexually harrassing pm's to underage girls.

Because a mod lacking in self restraint tried to intimidate the wrong person you would silence these victims?

What's more. In my experience, people who have been sexually harassed really have no desire whatsoever to have the incident publicly announced - they'd rather things be dealt with quietly because of the unfortunate perception of humility associated with being sexually harassed.

Again, I would encourage users to hit the harassment button and know that multiple individuals will receive notice of said PM.

I recently found s--- in my inbox Bro! Perhaps you're remember the smell?


Clearly an effort at intimidation. From a mod.

...this leads me to wonder to what extent admins have access to pm's..... is it only when they are sent to them directly, due to harassment or offensive pm's? or can they just brouse willy-nilly through random pm's through the site..... just a thought, that's all....

So I guess I have to just remember the position of authority that is harrassing me, to understand if it is safe to hit this magical harrassment button, that was of course born out of an abuse of power scandal.

Clearly an effort at intimidation. From a mod.

Now I don't want to imply this would ever be the case with Aaron, cause I'm sure he's a peach of a guy really. We obviously have some baggage, he and I. But consider the following scenrio, one that *could* happen here, rumor has it anyway.

Let's say you have some abberant social deviant that worms his way into your mod or admin group, and under the color of authority starts sending say, sexually harrassing pm's to underage girls.

Because a mod lacking in self restraint tried to intimidate the wrong person you would silence these victims? Yup, this is what happens when you abridge freedom of speech.

It really, REALLY, is an important issue, the tender ego of a mod notwithstanding.

Cheers
DMT

LOL you are "the wrong person"? Yes, Craig your one bad mofo aren't you? And you talk about the ego of others? lol. As for the harrassment button, it existed well before this whole BS.

This is really simple. Treat people like 3rd graders, put up tons of fences and lots of rules and they'll behave like 3rd graders and look for holes. Treat people like adults and those that are adults are more likely to act like adults.

You should use your best judgement in deciding who to trust, on rc.com as in life. In general, it is in extremely poor taste to post the contents of email or private messages, but some people simply have no taste...

whaaa go cry about it! Depending on where you climb you need the stuff, try climibng with timmy fairfield, he loves the shizza! and try making him eat it overlord, im sure you will be hurting the next day

Jesus Craig if that constitutes intimidation, you're an even bigger sissy than I thought you were.

That about covers it for me.

Dingus,

I read your post, and while I have great appreciation for the points that you're trying to make, I think you're pushing left field a bit. We have a harassment button in the PMs for a reason. This will not go away. If someone is harassing you, please hit the link and forward the PM to the admin staff. We take harassment seriously.

If we were in favor of controlling people, would we have started a poll to collect community feedback before making a decision regarding site policy? ;)

Nope. You'd need to be a developer, and have a whole hell of a lot of time on your hands, to read any PMs. I made sure that was the case right around the time I started working on the site, similarly to passwords being encrypted.

When the site was small, 'little' privacy matters like that didn't seem too important, or at least that's the impression I got. Eric and I both disagreed with that philosophy. No one gets to see your password, and no one gets to read your PM's besides the recipient. It really is that simple.

You deciding (as a different person said) that people should take responsibility for what they say in private is s---. You don't get to decide for someone else how they should conduct themselves.

I think its important to folks to realize that people *can* see your PM's. They aren't private by any means. What Tim has implied here is that at a minimum, *he* can see them. Don't get me wrong, the only was a system like this can work is if the developers can access the DB to get stuff out. It sounds like Tim went through some special effort to ensure that its a limited amount of people. The fact remains, however, that there are people who can see your PM's. Same with the fact that there are people who can see your email at your ISP, etc. Not important to the discussion perhaps, but important to realize.

As for the password info, one would honestly have to have FTP access to the root level of the domain, and in many cases, that won't even suffice, if they are being stored in a sub-domain or on a remote server. This is something that I have done, to make damn sure that nobody other than the site owner or top level coders have this level of access. It also protects the member database, if the event of a server crash. :wink:

See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if you are really interested in web related issues, because they have less effect on my work as of yet, so I know less about them. Give me a couple of years, and I'm sure that will change.

I just wanted to clarify the copyright issue. I deal with this issue alot with my job.

If I send you a letter, I'm giving you physical ownership of that letter, but that does not convey ownership of copyright. For that to occur, it would need to be written down somewhere.

With just physical ownership you'd be allow to show your copy to whoever you please, but you have no right to make additional copies (unless you happens to be a library or archive, or if the letter was created as part of government business). If you feel the need to talk about someones letter or even email, you'd do best by just giving a summary, and you may be able to quote segments under Fair Use, but certainly not an entire letter.

Copyright is often violated, and many times it is not punished. That being said, if you do reprint parts of someone elses letter or email, it would be wise to get permission first simply to protect yourself.

See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if you are really interested in web related issues, because they have less effect on my work as of yet, so I know less about them. Give me a couple of years, and I'm sure that will change.

Indeed. They get to decide how they should conduct themselves. And they can deal with the consequences if they decide to be duplicitous, craven, or abusive.

Posting the contents of an email is considered poor form, but people do it. There is no more privacy (less, in fact) for email sent across a public network than PM's sent through the database, yet people can (and do) send patently ridiculous things via email to one another, then squirm and protest when they are 'outed'. But the fact remains that they chose to write the email in the first place...

nb. Yes, this means I have come around to the majority point of view as a result of this discussion. What the recipient does with a private conversation -- one not legally bound to be confidential -- is up to the recipient, not the sender. Just like in real life.

I'm sorry but i take offense at this! I don't have prior knowledge as to what happened before i joined rc.com, but don't start hauling out the trash. As far as i know, all admins and mods can be trusted with questionable/personal pm's.

sorry roughster, but that's just bad form!

Of course - 'just like in real life', people that have possesion of your private thoughts can and do pass them on despite your wishes. That makes them unethical and untrustworthy pieces of garbage in my book.

From my perspective all these posts stating the obvious (that this is the net and everything you write 'isn't really private') seem to be beside the point. Just because one can do something doesn't make it right - and isn't that what we're really talking about?

Seems that the will of the people is followed when it synchronizes with the wills of the powers that be. There have been many time when a consensus reached was not implemented

I don't want unsolicited PM's, or better said I want to be able to prevent receiving them if I so choose.

I do too....Especially since I happen to have PM in my inbox where "roughster" threatened to reveal my full name to the site

It's a bit laborious, but you can killfile people on the PM level, which means that you can see their posts but wont receive their PMs. As for a global, "I dont want anymore PMs from anybody" option - that'd be up to Tim.

And Darth, no more PM's from you, M'Kay?

DMT

The gist of this is private messages should be used ethically by the sender and reciver. If the message is about someones private buisness than respect it, if it's really a public opinion stated privatley or the person is offened about the content than post away.

And Mr. Milktoast, if I was not your type, could you not have said so in private,

Please, call me Sylvester, or my working name: Sylvia.

Personally, I would like to see site policy changed to provide additional privacy protection for our users, [snip] I realize that we cant provide complete anonymity on the web, but it would be nice to provide more privacy protection than we currently do.

In the real world, (the working world with e-mails and such) if you don't want the whole world to read your e-mail you don't write your e-mail.

Just wondering, because these two issues have the same heart beating behind them, but consensus on them seems to be very different. Forsoot:

If you leave your words hanging, they can hang you. If someone else takes them, you are sol because of your own actions.

If you leave your draws hanging no one is to take them. If someone else takes them, you are sol by your own actions.

I like the idea of PMs only being from whom I choose instead possibly from anyone. It would eliminate the stalking type or pick-up lines.

Mingus, Darth, you rely on tired ethical arguments that were designed to protect bad behavior behind closed doors. Fine. You wanna badmouth your colleagues with the assurance that the people you bad mouth won't see your words. OK, I guess that would be a nice security blanket. But the privacy simply doesn't exist and in the context of a threatening correspondence, copyrights are simply laughable.


DMT

I like the idea of PMs only being from whom I choose instead possibly from anyone. It would eliminate the stalking type or pick-up lines.

Mingus? Darth?

DMT

The email was mine the moment it landed in my inbox. If you sent me some draws in the mail, those draws would be mine too and I could feel ethically secure clipping some bolts *in public* with them.

It would be different if I plucked this PM from someone's outbox or removed your draws from a public route. But of course that isn't the case.

This is like, pretty simple stuff. Are you following?

DMT

Legal thoughts


An email or private message can be used anyway that the sender or reciever choose, with or without permission. We use emails in court all of the time (it's amazing what people write) If someone sends me an email they are knowingly recording their words and providing them to me, what I do with it is up to me.

For some of us the email is given to you alone for you to read - not to use as you see fit. An email (or a conversation) isn't quite the same as a gift...

I don't know how they do things in Canada, but in the US our laws are generally stongly in support of ownership. You guys can read this stuff if you want to know a little about copyright, though I doubt it will help much because it doesn't explain how courts apply it (all of this is from http://www.copyright.gov/...e17/92chap1.html#102)

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use38
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.