Spectrum Computing

This thread will be locked for a two weeks cooling-off period.

We are also proud to announce that Rorthron will be the artist and level designer of a new game coded by C. Born.

[mention]Ast A. Moore[/mention] Sorry if I came across defensive I apologise.

I was indeed offering to show you the original post if you wished, but would need agreement from Chris first.

Peter

Hikaru wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:54 am

Pegaz wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:44 am Much more than this controversial discussion, I am bothered by double standards and some attempts to put equality between wos and SC moderation.
One wos chitchater is banned and the whole revolution is rising, but I didnt notice those voices of the righteous, when recently another long-time wos member was permanently banned.
After so many years, only a small avatar "User banned, carry on" remained.
No, gentlemen, we are not the same...

Eh, it's getting there from what I can see. Plenty of subtle (and not so) pointing at the door even ITT already. Got one in a PM yesterday too despite hardly even posting these days lul

OT, is it because most of those people moved to /sc/ perhaps? Idk who did they ban this time, but surely it should be common knowledge by now that the /wos/ moderation is absolutely inadequate

Just to be clear, I contacted [mention]hikoki[/mention] because he brought up again the wish he has for being able to edit all his posts from the start of time. I explained again that 2 hours is very generous compared to other sites. We had a robust but friendly discussion and I did thank him for his support. He has done some great stuff for the site around images, and whilst we will never agree on the forum edit issue, that is not an issue with me.

No worries, [mention]PeterJ[/mention]. No apology necessary. Slight (and not-so-slight) misreading of the tone of a post in an online debate is inevitable. Part and parcel of our digital presence.

I’ll see if I want to go on and contact Chris about this. Perhaps, in a few days he’ll cool off and I’ll lose interest.

PeterJ wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:40 pm

Hikaru wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:54 am Eh, it's getting there from what I can see. Plenty of subtle (and not so) pointing at the door even ITT already. Got one in a PM yesterday too despite hardly even posting these days lul

OT, is it because most of those people moved to /sc/ perhaps? Idk who did they ban this time, but surely it should be common knowledge by now that the /wos/ moderation is absolutely inadequate

Just to be clear, I contacted @hikoki because he brought up again the wish he has for being able to edit all his posts from the start of time. I explained again that 2 hours is very generous compared to other sites. We had a robust but friendly discussion and I did thanked him for his support. He has done some great stuff for the site around images, and whilst we will never agree on the forum edit issue, that is not an issue with me.

Just to be completely clear, I'm not [mention]hikoki[/mention] and I don't intend to take credit for those images either (I didn't do them, of course). The rest of it is correct, I think.

Hikaru wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:51 pm Just to be completely clear, I'm not @hikoki

Embrace it :-p I get called R-Type all the time. I wish I could take credit for that.

R-Tape wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:59 pm

Hikaru wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:51 pm Just to be completely clear, I'm not hikoki

Embrace it :-p I get called R-Type all the time. I wish I could take credit for that.

Ahah, okay, you got me. We're actually the same person. :c
(I only think it's important in the sense of who-did-what this time, other than that Idm of course)

I need a drink! Sorry [mention]Hikaru[/mention] and [mention]hikoki[/mention]. I may well have been getting you confused for months!

[mention]R-Tape[/mention] can you add to those updated rules that no two users can have the same three initial letters in their username!

R-Tape wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:59 pm I get called R-Type all the time. I wish I could take credit for that.

It's not all champagne, private jets and beautiful women throwing themselves at you you know!

Well......OK.....some of it is.

Bizzley wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:20 pm
It's not all champagne, private jets and beautiful women throwing themselves at you you know!

Well......OK.....some of it is.

You've misspelled Tizer, Chinese takeaways and sleeping under your desk :-p

Hikaru wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:08 pm Ahah, okay, you got me. We're actually the same person. :c
(I only think it's important in the sense of who-did-what this time, other than that Idm of course)

^^^Etot muzcina platit za vse! Gde moi gitlerovtsy?!! My inoplanetyane pokhitim @Cborn

Looks like they lost patience on WOS and closed his thread.

Ralf wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:04 pm Looks like they lost patience on WOS and closed his thread.

I noticed that too.

Ralf wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:04 pm Looks like they lost patience on WOS and closed his thread.

But, why? A discussion like any other discussion...

Pegaz wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:41 pm

Ralf wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:04 pm Looks like they lost patience on WOS and closed his thread.

But, why? A discussion like any other discussion...

No, it wasn't a discussion like any other discussion. It was mostly mud slinging and not ever going anywhere. Locking threads are always unfortunate ... but no good or constructive things was going to come of this one. It's not a big loss. I'd admire a place that doesn't need policing, but every once in a while a person like Crisis/C.Born comes along and stirs things up ... and sometimes locking a thread is just needed to help get things back on track.

I was just ironic.
Otherwise, I completely agree with you.

utz wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:20 amNo, no, no. I don't think calling out the mod team on stifling free speech, exercising their wielded power etc. is fair. Until proven differently, I remain completely convinced that this decision was born out of inexperience and a genuine desire to "keep things nice" around. I do think it was the wrong decision, though.

Absolutely.

I disagree with moderation judgement on the best course of action in this particular issue. However it's quite obvious there was no malice or abuse of power here. On the contrary! All moderators have been very transparent on reporting everything, patiently discussing it, opening their actions for scrutiny, even making clear they never expect to be trusted blindly. Despite disagreements, the way all moderators handled everything made me respect them even more.

Moreover, their comments here indicate they gave this incident a lot of thought and importance. It means their hearts are in the right place!

PeterJ wrote: ↑Tue Mar 06, 2018 3:22 pmYou are right, this is not a good start.

I'm still convinced it was a moderation mistake, but frankly I never expected moderation (or anybody else) to be perfect. Mistakes and problems can always happen. How people deal with them makes all the difference. And we may never reach a consensus here on this particular case. Even so, the simple fact that the first really complicated issue at Spectrum Computing could be discussed openly and freely, in a civilized way here, means it was a great start. I'm proud to be part of this forum.

PeterJ wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 7:11 amI have read through the WoS thread and most of the posts seem to be openly mocking him. This is not positive or helpful.

Mocking and diverting subjects is part of WoS humor and culture. Perhaps it shouldn't, but anyway it wasn't much different than many other threads there. Even so, I'm sure he's feeling much better about WoS that gave him the chance to express himself, and very upset about Spectrum Computing that censored it. Also a couple people were annoyed but I doubt anybody considered it offensive.

There's certainly no perfect solution here. My point is just that censorship was probably even less positive and helpful.

PeterJ wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 7:11 amWe are looking at the Off-Topic area and reviewing the future for it (including maybe renaming it).

I think that's a good idea.

PeterJ wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 7:11 amWe are trying to be different from the other place.

You already got that!

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:02 amMy real world analogy is this. You can stand out on a pavement holding a banner saying whatever you like - "TRUMP IS GREAT"; "#METOO HAS GONE TOO FAR" or even, to be controversial, "C64 IS THE BEST" - but the second you walk into my house bellowing such opinions, I have the right to throw you out.

However he didn't come uninvited. A better analogy is, you placed a soapbox in your backyard and invited all neighbours to freely speak their minds about any off-topic subject, and long as they didn't offend each other. Then one of your invited neighbours steps into the soapbox to present an inflamed political speech and you think "Ops, that's not what I expected". Should you throw him out, or allow it but change the rules to prevent it from happening again? I think that's basically the issue here.

Personally I like the idea of replacing the "Off Topic" section with something like "Other Retro Topics". There would be still room for a wide variety of subjects like old TV series or Atari games, but not for completely unrelated and/or controversial discussions that are apparently unwanted here. Also many people seem to be concerned about chit-chat outgrowing Spectrum discussions like somewhere else, this change would solve that problem too. In practice we would probably just loose dinner pictures, but Facebook is a more appropriate place for them anyway.

I would be more comfortable on a forum focused on Spectrum and other somewhat related subjects only, instead of a forum with "gray areas" that is open to all kinds of discussions but subjected to censorship analysis on each case.

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:44 pm Personally I like the idea of replacing the "Off Topic" section with something like "Other Retro Topics". There would be still room for a wide variety of subjects like old TV series or Atari games, but not for completely unrelated and/or controversial discussions that are apparently unwanted here.

That's a great suggestion, I like it!

I have to admit the idea of trying to moderate a pure Off Topic forum, especially after this week, brings me out in cold sweats.

Changing it is something we've been discussing, now it's been raised it'd be interesting to hear what people would prefer.

Binning it entirely could result in lots of non Speccy things in Miscellaneous (and unpopular decisions when they are removed for being out of place), that's why Chitchat was created on WoS. So it seems some kind of repository for 'not quite Speccy' is needed.

Looking at Off Topic now, the good news is that almost all of it can be kept. Things like "Merry Christmas" can be move to Website, and all but a couple can be kept as retro something or other.

One suggestion was Retrocomputing. I liked that but it does exclude a lot of general computing and modern gaming that fits well here. Can anyone think of a way to include that?

Einar's suggestion of "Other Retro stuff" allowed even more scope.

Still no modern computers or gaming though. Is there a way of fitting that in too? Do we want that in?

Any more thoughts on this? How "not quite Speccy" do we want to get?

Einar's suggestion of "Other Retro stuff" allowed even more scope.

Maybe this but it is hard to say for sure. I don’t look at individual forums per se, I just look at the thing at the top and cycle through the recently updated threads and read or reply to stuff that takes my interest there.

I wouldn’t be able to post about the new guitar i bought recently if we only allowed retro stuff but then there isn’t much chance i’d create a thread about it if it was as allowed anyway! It seems a shame to remove or change a section that may be beloved by some members.

To summarise: no idea.

Perhaps "Other Retro or Computer-related Topics"? What do people think?

Whatever we choose, let's make sure the scope is clear and easily understood, otherwise this change won't solve anything.

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:44 pm A better analogy is, you placed a soapbox in your backyard and invite all neighbours to freely speak their minds about any off-topic subject, and long as they didn't offend each other. Then one of your invite neighbours steps into the soapbox to present an inflamed political speech and you think "Ops, that's not what I expected". Should you throw him out, or allow it but change the rules to prevent it from happening again? I think that's basically the issue here.

This is not correct. A more accurate analogy would be:

You host a ZX Spectrum party in your back yard and invited all your neighbours on the conditions that they behave nicely and discuss only subjects you consider appropriate. (Read the forum rules.) Then one of your invited neighbours starts screaming and calling people Nazis. You politely ask your guest three times not to speak about this, but your guest becomes abusive, refuses to comply with your requests, insists he should be allowed to shout about high-school shootings, refugees, "real" Nazis, etc and starts screaming again. So you decide to throw the person out at least until they calm down.

That's quite a different situation.

(Incidentally, I specifically considered the soap box analogy in reaching the decision I took.)

Not a moderator and not speaking for the moderator team.

I would like to make one other point.

Several people in this thread have voiced strong opinions about circumstances where they actually have no knowledge. For example:

- Some have defended the content of the deleted posts, when they haven't even seen those posts.
- The mods have been accused of being heavy handed by people who have presumably never seen any of the communications with C.Born.
- Actions have been described as knee-jerk by people who have never seen the communication among the mods that considered the issue at great length.
- People have criticised the imposition of a permanent ban, even though the moderator team never said the ban was permanent. No decision had been reached on the length of the ban at that time.
- ‎People have accused me of being on a power trip, when quite obviously they cannot possibly read my mind and know my intentions.

There are many more examples, but I think these are enough to make the point.

I think it would help the moderators do their job and make the forum a better place if in future people are more circumspect. It's not just the mods who need to learn from this episode. Before any of you start describing events as "screw-ups" or suchlike, please make sure you pay as much attention to the information that you don't know as that which you do.

Not a moderator and not speaking for the moderator team.