Free Speech

[bomber]

"Please read the whole thread. Did you miss that Lydiots signature refers to "Der Fuhrer"? Did you miss that all Lydiots assumptions about the functioning of the moderators group are nothing but that, assumptions? Did you miss Lydiot declaring in his pre-latest post that Jwocky is "Der Fuhrer"? "


Are you taking the piss ?

Is it your time of the month ?

Are you genuinely telling me this whole thread is about his signature which frankly I needed a magnifying glass on my phone to see ?

[KL-666]

Yes, Bomber, no matter how small the letters are, an allegation is an allegation. Do you mind that i defend myself against a false allegation? How would you feel if i falsely alleged you? Would you say: Ow well, the false allegation is hardly readable, so it is no problem?

Kind regards, Vincent

[Lydiot]

Yes, Bomber, no matter how small the letters are, an allegation is an allegation. Do you mind that i defend myself against a false allegation? How would you feel if i falsely alleged you? Would you say: Ow well, the false allegation is hardly readable, so it is no problem?

Kind regards, Vincent

But yesterday:

Also the fact remains that if someone else does something bad in your perception, that should not be an excuse for doing something bad yourself. Thinking like that does not show much sophistication.

So you get to start an attack-thread on me because of my signature, but I don't get to respond to JWocky in threads where he attacked me? Is that correct Vincent?

Like I said, just hypocrisy.

[bomber]

Vincent, when did it become an attack on you ?

Is it when you perceived the words were about you, because I never did as they seem just general.... if it's a personal attack it's very lame.

However the bottom line is you're a moderator.... this thread is an act of instigation which is at odds with your role here.

What did you expect you'd achieve with this thread ?

[KL-666]

So you get to start an attack-thread on me because of my signature

Wait a minute, let's keep the order of things straight here.

1) Lydiot calls me Der Fuhrer in each and every post of his
2) I explain that name calling is not part of free speech
3) Lydiot starts spreading false assumptions about the functioning of the moderators group
4) I explain that the assumptions are false
5) Lydiot maintains spreading the false assumptions, and starts shouting "hypocrite" at me in almost every post

Spreading false assumptions even after having been explained that they are false is damaging and insulting in itself. Great, we have 3 counts of insulting now, when i do not count the repetition.

And now you want to accuse me of attacking you? You really lost it. What twist comes next?

Kind regards, Vincent

[bomber]

Grow a thicker fecking skin.... this is a forum.

In Internet forum someone will always be called der Fuhrer.... if you want to take part in a forum then you have to accept the risk that'll be you being called it.. if you take a role with any authority then you can rest assured it's going to be you.

Frankly I'm fecking amazed that this simple fact wasn't already understood by you.

If you are of such a fragile nature that this tiny insult that is not aimed very well such that I didn't even appreciate it was aimed at you upsets you so much I suggest you fall on your sword.

And a person who doesn't accept the verdict of the people , their peers. Is in fact a dictator and as such can be compared to all other previous dictators going back to juleus cecsar.

I'm sorry Vincent that we seem to have differing opinions on this... I'm not in agreement with all that Lydiot writes now, in the past and most probably in the future.

And free speech does allow for name calling, that is the price... what you have is the right to defend yourself and be heard, which is where free speech is not allowed you're not...

What is your argument to counter his claims ?

At present it seems to be to have behind doors discussions what by a core team. In which a person is found guilty using a process that is not understood by those using the forum. At it conclusion a personal attack is initiated...

Sound familiar to anyone ?

What's to say that this process is not next aimed at me ?

[KB7]

When I read the sig, I thought:

1) Wow, that's an over the top insult against jwocky.
2) Everything lydiot says from now on is suspect in my mind. A comment like that, without any context, is revealing of someone with diminished capacity.
3) It's a 'free speech' forum, therefore it's allowable even though it reveals lydiot's stupidity.

If there is ANY rule that people can be moderated or censored.... Can we please have a clear link to where we're told that is a condition here? The ONLY rule I've ever been aware of is "no spam." And Vincent, I'm not saying there isn't such a posted rule, only that it doesn't exist that I've seen, and that it should be VERY clearly marked as a forum rule. (As in a clear section in the stock FAQ or a link to "the rules" in the board footer.) Not a demand, but an expectation.

And my personal commentary on the situation:
Just because someone else throws around stupid terms does not excuse one's own stupidity to engage in the same. There appear to be more people than Lydiot who needs to bone up on Godwin's law, Reductio ad Hitlerum and just how insulting it is to all victims of the Holocaust to have any sort of hyperbolic comparison drawn to the National Socialist party - any such comparison accuses the linked subject to some of the most absolutely horrid acts EVER committed in history and needs to be handled VERY carefully lest your audience immediately start disregarding everything else you say. (Which is true even if the comparison is valid.)

'Nuff Said from me, I'm reasonably sure.

[bomber]

Well put...

[bomber]

All animals are equal just that some are more equal than others....

Now that's a far greater insult to this forum in my mind than anything that's Lydiots wrote.

[jwocky]

Okay, okay, okay, it's obviously time to make a statement here from my side.
When this started, it was because IAHM-COL and me were banned for using our right of free speech on the other forum about something relative technical, FGMEMBERS vs FGADDON or maybe both parallel. Now, we know how this played out.
Anyway, so I created this forum as a place where we can have free speech. Each and everybody of us. And I called friends in to help. Now, those friends and me have not always the same opinions about everything and that wasn't really the goal anyway. The goal was a group with some diversity in some critical aspects. Not just core devs or plane tinkerers only, but pilots, terrain makers, plane tinkerers, ATCs, ... see, once flight simming was here the main thing. So, this group, mods and admins, runs the show here because someone has to. Most of it is forgotten password trouble, now and then maybe a new board up, that kind of things.

See, here is what Bomber didn't get right. Normally in an Internet forum, the owner is the one who says booh and then someone gets banned in a conflict like that. The owner owns the forum, and usually, that is the end of the story. But I am no Curtis, I am also no "Führer" in the style, Lydiot tries to paint me here. I have, on an organizational level, abandoned many of my owner rights in favor of a group making the decisions. Like Bomber, I felt, this all animals are equal and some are more was something, we had enough of on Curtis' forum. Thus, me (owner, big hairy monster animal) made myself willfully an as equal animal as everybody else. Up to the point, when I am personally attacked, I have the same options as everybody else: I can make a complaint and wait for the outcome. Just as anybody else.
However, for mods and admins, an additional rule applies here. If one of us is party in a complaint, he obviously can't be at the same time a fair judge and thus, should withdraw from this decision. In the decision about this complaint against Lydiot, I was therefore not part of decision and neither did I participate in the discussion that lead to it. And the result was, that Lydiot and me both got some things, we shouldn't say anymore because, well, things got heated, words fly, oookaaay, as the mods and admins found, I was also not entirely okay in all I said, even a little bit more on the border than Lydiot often, who has this attitude to rip out parts of sentences from a longer text and built with them his own versions of reality.

Sooo, we have a system, in which even the biggest and hairiest animal can be reprimanded. The true reason, Lydiot can sport such a signature and we have to discuss it is, that there is no Führer here. Lydiot is aware of that. If he would pull a stunt like that on Curtis' forum, he would be gone in a minute and that would be the end of the story. We all know that. And especially Lydiot knows that. Which is why he dares to abuse this system for his trolling. See, if he would really believe what he writes in his signature, he wouldn't dare to write it because he would assume, this alleged Führer would ban his sorry rear out of here instead of wasting my Sunday to explain the basics of group versus individual administration, knowing, he will find another attack point anyway.

However, since I am already burning through the first part of my Sunday instead of doing work that really needs to be done, lets take the time to look at the big picture. Some of us remember still when things went downhill over in Curtis forum quite rapidly. For quite some time, IAHM-COL and me were standing alone there under fire. SkyBoat made a statement and followed, but most other people were quiet ... dodging the attention of Curtis and namely Thorsten and the omnipresent helpers Bugman and Stuart. Of course, a lot of ugly things could have been prevented back then if more people would have opened the mouth there and thus, I don't see it as something negative, that there is always something rumbling in this forum. Nothing is deadlier than leaden silence, but hey, that is only my opinion. So well, yes, speak up, people. This is not just "my" forum. I am kind of the host, okay, but, sorry, I have to borrow from a much greater man here, I have a dream: To make this "our" forum. "our" as in "our all". Actually, I worked and paid for this dream for almost two years now. Others do to. We put our money and our work where out mouth was.
Here is the rub: To make this "our", people need to speak up and not only contra but also pro on occasions. The community leaves cases like a troll to a small group of people because most here want just to work on planes or fly or build another airport. That's okay, but not saying anything leads to two things:

- no statement is a statement in itself
- and those who care will in the end have to make the decisions by pure presence

Soooo ... lets just take Lydiot as a learning example here. Fine, we have a troll. And once this troll dies of cardiac, old age or boredom, it won't be long till we have a new one. Trolls are like the germs of the Internet, they always come back in a new form to bother one. That is why we get each year a new flu.
On a forum, we got a case of trolling instead. Normally, we can take that relative easy and if it gets too wild, the mods & admins reprimand someone, the message is received and the thing gets toned down a little and life goes on. However, once someone intentionally lies and makes wrongful placative statements like Lydiot's signature, we have to react in one form or the other. Bomber may thinks it is not important because it is printed so small, but it is important because Lydiot wrongfully tries to paint me and all the mods and admins as the same kind of persons who once kicked IAHM-COL and me from the other forum for speaking up in a technical matter.
So, here are the options:

- we try to explain Lydiot once more the basic rules and every community has its rules, just to be clear about that. If that doesn't work, we have to discuss what we can do and, without having this discussed yet with the other mods or admins, if he has nothing to offers but more lies and twists, he forces us to use the last measure, means ban at some point because his actions are not aimed at a fiar discussion but only destruction.

- or the community as whole could of course stand to its responsibility for itself and maybe take a stand against someone who never contributes anything but all the time tries only for his own psychological needs throw stones into the gear and enjoys those grinding noises.

However, before you make decisions, think about one little thing here: Each and everybody here can come into the situation to draw the attention of a troll. How the community now decides will show every member here, whether he will enjoy some shelter from the community when the line comes at him. One may try to decide this for himself on the base of "not knowing" and with generic buzzlines (like all animals ... Bomber, you didn't know what happened but you judged already and obviously on the wrong base) or by trying to get the facts together. Some may decide from personal sympathies or antipathies, some from the thought, what would they feel if they were in for example my shoes. Regardless what criteria you use ... the bottom line is always the same: Since everybody here wants a voice, everybody has also to assume the responsibility for what he says with that voice. Only once, a community is not only able to talk but also to make decisions, sometimes decisions, nobody really likes but which are necessary for the protection of the community as whole, only once we have this culture down with some stability in it, we can even start to think going down further and explore better ways to organize an actual democratic forum. Who knows, maybe, in a few years, time flies so fast nowadays, this community can run itself, determine the mods and admins by other means as "suggested to the owner" and said owner (me) can in all peace sit somewhere on tinker on planes (or dealing with nasty people outside of flights simming).

Those were my (more than) 2 cents in this. Just how I feel it, probably way too long and definitively with too many attack points for the troll. It doesn't matter. The troll doesn't matter. Funny thing, not even I matter in this. Should for any inexplicable reason a plane engine fall on my head, there are enough others to just continue and have fun with planes (and helicopters and ornicopters and whatnot). People come and go. Be honest here, if the plane engine hits Lydiot today, people here will shrug and wonder "Lydiot ... who the hell was Lydiot" and in some years someone will ask "remember that crazy troll?" with this under-sound of "I was there in the big potato war". Yeah, and that is it. What matters however is, how the community now suggests to deal with out acute troll problem.

Jabberwocky

P.S.
I will go offline and I won't read the forum for lets say three days. I won't even read PMs in this time. Then I will come back and see. Just that. So feel free to discuss here all open what to do with trolls. Just keep in mind, I can't condone any threats of physical harm, please.