Was I banned from accessing Gigs and Events

Flaccus

Posted a message a couple of hours ago in Music\Gigs and Events asking people where they thought what row in croke park I might be in for tickets I preordered today for a concert. (the preorder form only listed part of stand and seat no. you see). No longer can access this forum and I am suspecting it is because I mentioned the band in the title of my thread who I just see now are promoted by a company we are no longer allowed mention. Just wondering if I got a ban because of this. If so, this seems very anal considering the purpose of my thread was looking for information on croke park seating and not to discuss a gig. I just mentioned the band in passing.

thanks

Pop the moderators of the forum an aul' e-mail. You can see their details at the bottom of this page.

Creamy Goodness

only thing i can think of is, read the stickies at the top of every forum

Smellyirishman

It's at the top of every forum, you know it is, and it's taken even more seriously in the gigs forum for obvious reasons.

"In light of legal proceedings issued by MCD, we have been advised that there is to be no further discussion of MCD or events hosted by MCD."

copacetic

it's in the charter than you can't do what you did so your thread would have been deleted, not sure why you were banned unless you have done it before.

Smellyirishman

copacetic wrote:

it's in the charter than you can't do what you did so your thread would have been deleted, not sure why you were banned unless you have done it before.

This is why

Discussion of MCD events/venues = banned -- READ BEFORE POSTING

copacetic

Smellyirishman wrote:

This is why

Discussion of MCD events/venues = banned -- READ BEFORE POSTING

no, you're wrong. discussion is banned it's not a bannable offence, there is a difference. The thread was deleted but the sticky says:

General posts mentioning any of these events/venues will be subject to editing and repeat offenders will face a ban.

Flaccus

Thanks. Sent a pm to one of the mods. Never done it before and if I was banned over something like this I would be shocked. The band I mentioned (which I should not have in hindsight) was irrelevent to my question. I did not even discuss them or think you could get banned from a forum for mentioning a band associated with a company you are not allowed talk about. I have read the forum rules but for God sake, it's like someone applying the letter of the law while breaking the spirit of the law. Maybe I am overreacting but if this is the sort of Nazi treatment people are in for, I am better off ignoring that forum.

aidan_walsh

Flaccus wrote:

it's like someone applying the letter of the law while breaking the spirit of the law.

¿Qué?

DeVore

If its a post about MCD or one of their events, its deleted and the poster is banned (temporarily) to draw their attention to the sticky. Seems to have worked like a charm in this case. PM the mod, explain the situation, take on board that you cant do this and accept that and all should be fine...

DeV.

Flaccus

aidan_walsh wrote:

¿Qué?

it's clear from my post that I was asking a question about croke park and was not intentionally going out to break the rules. I was therefore making an analogy however bad with letter and spirit of law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_the_law

DeVore wrote:

If its a post about MCD or one of their events, its deleted and the poster is banned (temporarily) to draw their attention to the sticky. Seems to have worked like a charm in this case. PM the mod, explain the situation, take on board that you cant do this and accept that and all should be fine...

DeV.

Thanks for the advice DeV. Already sent a PM to a mod asking if I was banned for this and accepted I should not have mentioned this band. But still think this is an atrocious way to mod when someone clearly was not going out to break the rules. So now that I think about it, I don't give a damn if I am reinstated or not as I won't be posting again there.

DeVore

Flaccus wrote:

Thanks. Sent a pm to one of the mods. Never done it before and if I was banned over something like this I would be shocked. The band I mentioned (which I should not have in hindsight) was irrelevent to my question. I did not even discuss them or think you could get banned from a forum for mentioning a band associated with a company you are not allowed talk about. I have read the forum rules but for God sake, it's like someone applying the letter of the law while breaking the spirit of the law. Maybe I am overreacting but if this is the sort of Nazi treatment people are in for, I am better off ignoring that forum.

I can't comment further then this. I do understand where you are coming from, now read the stickies and try and understand where we are coming from. You are peeved we stopped you talking about something. What if everyone was prevented from talking about anything. We cant take that risk.

DeV.

Flaccus

I understand your position.
A better approach in this case (and I know mods probably don't have time to do this), would be for the mod to edit out the single offending word in the title and main body, seeing as my question was about concert seating and the band which I admit should not have mentioned was ancilliary. Thanks.

Time Magazine

Flaccus wrote:

I understand your position.
A better approach in this case (and I know mods probably don't have time to do this), would be for the mod to edit out the single offending word in the title and main body, seeing as my question was about concert seating and the band which I admit should not have mentioned was ancilliary. Thanks.

Mods don't have time to do this. Look at the Feedback forum and people are always complaining about laws being applied to one and not to another. Thus if the mod edited the post, every post would have to be edited. Which mods don't have time for.

It is necessary for posters to not include any reference whatsoever to MCD. There's plenty of stickies to alert people. It's on every forum. And if they break the rules they get a slap on the wrist, especially in the music fora. TBH you got off easy, people get banned site-wide for talking about the unmentionables.

I know a slap on the wrist can be a pain though.

Makaveli

As a mod of one of the music forums I spend a fair bit of time deleting posts relating to MCD events. I've come close to banning people for not reading the sticky but have yet to do so.

I can't imagine the volume of MCD related threads the Gigs/Events forum sees and to be honest I wouldn't blame the mods there for banning people for posting about MCD gigs.

Although you're post may have been about the venue rather than the event you still mentioned the event. A bit harsh if that's the case but it shouldn't be up to the mods to have to tidy posts because posters don't obey that one sticky.

rogue-entity

Dev, looking back on that legal business, it does show how little freedom of speech we actually have in Ireland, reletive to the US anyway. Had boards been hosted in the US from day one, such a legal case would never have come up.

Flaccus

Ibid wrote:

Mods don't have time to do this. Look at the Feedback forum and people are always complaining about laws being applied to one and not to another. Thus if the mod edited the post, every post would have to be edited. Which mods don't have time for.
I know a slap on the wrist can be a pain though.

Well I said above I know the mods probably don't have time to do this. So let's drop it now. I still maintain it's a bit harsh as I mentioned the bands name twice (once in title and once in thread) and no more to earn a ban.

honru

Hi Flaccas,

I banned you because you were posing a question related to an MCD gig. If you had not mentioned the particular band/concert, the thread would have been fine (unless of course, it later managed to turn into a discussion about event).

Since I'm not paid for my service, I simply don't have the time to edit or delete every MCD-related thread and then PM everyone who happens to go against the rule. I simply delete on sight and ban the user. As DeVore said, that's our/my way of drawing the offender's attention to the Sticky.

Since you know what the score is now, I'll unban you and reopen the thread with the band blanked out. I emphasise that it was more of a Croke Park seating query rather than a conversation starter about the actual event, but understand our/my position here.

copacetic wrote:

no, you're wrong. discussion is banned it's not a bannable offence, there is a difference. The thread was deleted but the sticky says:

General posts mentioning any of these events/venues will be subject to editing and repeat offenders will face a ban.

That's regarding a post within a thread. If someone starts an MCD-related thread, however, that's a ban straight away.

I will revise that part in the charter in order to clarify though.

copacetic

f®eak s&#169 wrote: »

That's regarding a post within a thread. If someone starts an MCD-related thread, however, that's a ban straight away.

I will revise that part in the charter in order to clarify though.

I actually misunderstood I think and the next line does say if you start a discussion you get a ban, my bad...

Flaccus

f®eak s&#169 wrote: »

Hi Flaccas,
Since you know what the score is now, I'll unban you and reopen the thread with the band blanked out. I emphasise that it was more of a Croke Park seating query rather than a conversation starter about the actual event, but understand our/my position here.

Thanks and yes I understand your position.

DeVore

The location of hosting is irrelevant to Irish law. Boards was hosted in the US for the first two years too....

DeV.

rogue-entity

Thats news to me anyway, it was my belief that if for the sake of argument, this issue occured with a forum that I was operating, and I was hosting in the US, they would have no legal recourse, since the website, and company registration in this case, would be outside irish juristiction. I assume that this site was vulnerable because its irish hosted, and the company is irish registered.

I can certainly live without mentioning the unmentionable, since its of no interest to myself, but the principle of the matter remains, an irish company can silence members on this board by taking legal action, its a rather unfavourable precedent that has been set, since it opens the door for other companies to threaten legal action if we post unfavourable comments about them.

Time Magazine

I worked in MCD I wouldn't be one bit happy with the precedent being set. It's extremely bad PR for them and it's only other promoters' gigs that are getting all the free (and highly effective) word-of-mouth advertising.