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