The recent poster suspension suggests that there needs to be discussion on the purpose of this forum and what content is to be discouraged.

Your moderator, John W, has posted the reasons for the suspension. Members may accept these reasons or not, and in the absence of 'rules' it is expected that some members will not agree with the poster suspension.

Anyway, Tommo has kicked off the discussion and I quote his recent posting. This thread is going to be a measure of how interested members are in introducing new rules.

BobbyZ,

Of course. I hope this thread can run for a while, without too much disagreement, and maybe come up with a small guidance note or something; I'd hate to have a list of rules, punishments etc - that works elsewhere but I sincerely hope we are all mature enough, and honest enough in our intentions as members, to avoid such a system.


Yes, Tommo has made a good start so I look forward to responses.

After private exchanges I have re-instated Ian Pace's access to the forum so everyone now has the chance to contribute to this thread.


John W

In fact I was off-line from Monday night till Thursday afternoon but things didn't get out of hand 


John W

I am pleased to see Ian Pace reinstated, and support the moderators's decision to do so.  His breadth of knowledge and individual viewpoint make a refreshing and challenging counterpoint to popular assumptions.

One of the most serious problems at TOP was the rigid enforcement of insane rules, and we must avoid falling into that trap here in the forum we made for ourselves.  Let me give two examples from TOP. (i) In a discussion about The Ring (in the run-up to Ring-In-A-Day), a post of mine was removed - because I'd cited four lines of text in German.  My purpose in doing so - on a forum where you couldn't add musical examples, attached files, graphics etc - was to make clear to other readers the part of WALKURE I was referring to.  Citing an English translation wouldn't have helped in this case, because everyone has different translations and it would be guesswork to translate backwards in the hope of finding the moment. (ii) I was banned from TOP for citing my own (c)opyright translation of some poems by Daniil Kharms.  It was only by pursuing this matter to the BBC apparachik in charge of all online interactive services that my membership was reinstated.

You can have any Rules you like, rigid or flexible - but if they are enforced in the purposely obtuse way in which "Chris", and now nameless, faceless Moderators on TOP are operating, you can still use them as a pretext for doing anything you wish.

I believe this forum is well-moderated - especially by comparison to TOP - and that the moderators do a difficult job well.  Ian's reinstatement is proof of that,  and those who seek to paint this forum as the police-state they seem to "need" to justify their paranoia ought to bear in mind that in a genuine police-state, their remarks...  which have all been left on view...  would have been squelched in seconds, and their memberships abruptly and permanently terminated.

Endorsed. I would add only that many of Ian's contributions display that breadth of knowledge in ways that are more interesting than they are "challenging" per se (the Chopin thread, which he initiated, is perhaps one example of this); by the same token, there are plenty of examples in his writing where what he presents leaves "popular assumptions" to one side altogether, even though at the same time shedding new light on a variety of subjects (again, the Chopin is a good example here). Whilst I can understand how some may have been intimidated by Ian's tendencies to polemic, there has always been much more besides this in Ian's writings here and elsewhere, otherwise I would not personally have found myself so drawn to engaging with it.

Let us hope that, from the recent incident, more positive things now emerge for the benefit of the future of this forum as a whole.

Best,

Alistair

I would also endorse a system that tends towards self-governance, with moderator intervention where necessary (and as light as possible). I appreciate that it's a tricky balance to set, but in my (fairly limited) messageboard experience, there is very often an initial period in which individual posters, and the board as a whole, establish their personalities and the general social dynamic; this includes regular board members as a whole being broadly aware of what they might expect to read in a message by X or a thread started by Y and choosing to read/reply or not accordingly. I think we've been quite fortunate in that that state of equiibrium seems to have been achieved fairly quickly, and with Ian's welcome reinstatement I've no doubt that this can be continued.

Hello again. First I want to thank all those who offered support - the circumstances of the suspension and so on are all water under the bridge now, which I don't think need to be raked over any further (it's that mixed metaphor time of the morning, I know!). Anyhow, thanks in particular to Tommo for posting my earlier statement and his suggestions here, which all sound eminently reasonable. A few quick thoughts.

1. On musical, cultural (and political) issues many people have strong convictions, passions, etc., which inevitably are sometimes going to clash. And that can lead to very heated exchanges. If this was disallowed, I reckon it would severely circumscribe many posters' ability to express their views, knowledge, etc. Just to say that there is a fundamental difference between challenging someone's expressed views, positions, etc. and attacking the person themselves.

2. The virtual nature of the medium needs to be borne in mind; whilst quite a few of us know each other in real-life, that's not true of everyone. One engages with another in terms of what they choose to post on here, and in terms of their cyber-persona, which is not necessarily the same thing as the real person. Many people use pseudonyms; I choose not to on any public forums like this, but respect the fact that others do. It's worth simply bearing in mind, if there is a dispute with another poster, that often you really don't know them, nor they you, and perhaps as a result take it all a bit less personally?

3. Online communication is still in its relative infancy, and there is much to be studied and understood about the types of interactions, dynamics, etc., it creates. There are e-mails, real-time online chat, forums like this, and blogs, all of which have their own individual characteristics. I've engaged with all of these quite extensively over some years and have some feeling for the benefts and problems each entail. In particular, written text on a screen can come across very differently to how it would be if you met the person in real-life and they were speaking to you (in case t-i-n is reading this, let's leave the speech v. writing dichotomy alone at the moment ). Also, if you know a person outside of the forum, you probably start to imagine their overall 'tone' based upon other knowledge you have of them. Furthermore, one (perhaps unconsciously) develops styles of debating, interaction, through experience of doing so online in various places. Just to conclude from this that one should be aware that the whole 'tone' one reads into messages here may be much more ambiguous than it seems.

4. I have been a moderator myself, for quite a period of time, a few years ago, not in a forum like this, but in a real-time chatroom I created. I'm not going to go into the details of this for various reasons; let's just say it was a place where people of rather unusual interests came to communicate, make contact with one another with a view to real-life meeting, and so on. Believe me, the problems in moderating a place like that way exceed anything that's even possible somewhere like here, when you have everything going on in real-time, many anonymous people coming there, some of whom may be very fragile or disturbed, and the whole temperature is continuously heated. But I generally found it's perfectly possible to keep things under control simply by not so much trying to 'take sides', just telling some people that, when they have issues with one another, to keep those in private. The room managed to stay safe, welcoming to new people, and relatively free from feuds and so on. I'm not necessarily advocating any strategy, just passing on an observation.

5. I'd prefer not to get embroiled in the debate about what constitutes extremist views, and so on, but reckon some sort of clarification is probably necessary in this respect.

Otherwise, I imagine the more a place like this can be self-moderating, the better, but perhaps there's no harm in making a list of informal principles that members would do best to adhere to for the most part, and having these readily accessible?

And great to see many of you last night!

Ian
Welcome back. And well-said, all round.