My Ban from Biology and Medicine

Tim Robbins

Hi,
I was told my sig was a troll. As for as I know it's ok to have a political message in your sig as long it isn't offensive.

I used to have a Leinster player in big blue in my sig, then another and then I just switched it to Harney.

Part of the reason why I did this is because I feel she gets a lot of unfair abuse and I support her in current actions. I don't think my sig is offensive. Is it? I also think it's sets out my position on the current IPU dispute for those who are just glancing at posts or arrive late to a debate.

I am now banned from the Biology and Medicine forum. Part of the reason I am banned is because of my sig. I was also accused of being a troll.

I was not trolling on this thread. I may not have made some points very well I admitted this. I contacted the mods during the debate several times. Despite the fact I was being flamed throughout the debate they seemed to come down very heavy on the slightest critical thing I said of the pharmacists.

It began when I said a particular argument was "terrible" and then I proceeded to attack the argument not the person. The mod just deleted the post which I found strange because usually mods leave posts to show an example what is not acceptable.

Another mod came in and also started to this to some of my other posts.

This gives the impression I have said something highly offensive, called someone names or the like. None of posts did this.

There were just wiped.

I left the forum for a few days and went back to make some other what I thought were reasonable posts. I was subsequently banned.

I don't think I have been trolling and think the mods have been totally OTT.

regards

tallaght01

You werent banned for your sig. You were banned for continuous trolling, that I had to continually edit out. Then when you were at the height of your trolling, you put that sig up to annoy the pharmacists who were posting on the forum and were on strike.

But you'd have bee banned with it or without it.

I was involved in that thread, and was on the side of the pharmacists. So, I purposely gave tim stacks of chaces. I just kept editing out the trolling, without infracting or banning, for the sake of fairness.

But there comes a time when I just can't keep letting it go. So, I consulted with Sam34 who is one of the other mods and isn't part of that thread at all, in case she thought I was being biased. She agreed with the ban, and I issued one of the very few bans I have ever issues (countable on one hand).

Then Tim started talking about my "biased moderating" over on the Irish economy forum, and this spurred his mate noodler to come over and start trolling. Of course noodler hadn't seen any of the posts before I edited them.

Anyway, seeing as Tim is enquiring about a ban, rather than a sig, and has been mobilising the troops, maybe we could move this into help desk.

Beruthiel

Thread moved and title changed.

DrIndy

As a Co-Mod of this forum - we as mods have made a policy of only banning people in extremis, preferring to thrash out the arguments or lack of with reason.

As there was a lot of pharmacists rowing in behind the thread and the mods having healthcare backgrounds, we let Tim Robbins roll on with his arguments to maintain a balance of opinion which by nature of the forum would be topheavy overall.

He was warned on several, repeated occasions to tone down the rhetoric via PM by me. Tallaght01 edited his posts appropriately to remove the most insulting comments. I however was extremely loath to ban him during the height of the debate despite being openly trolling and flaming at the pharmacists on the forum as he was providing a polar opposite opinion.

There are ways of putting across a completely differently opinion with civillity. Smcarrick, carsinian thau and Nesf managed that and these posters absolutely did not support the strike.

Tim Robbins has stood out universally as a troll for his entire time on this thread - we gave him rather large doses of leniency as he provided a twisted sense of balance to the debate. Enough is enough though.

I fully support this ban.

Tim Robbins

Beruthiel wrote: »

Thread moved and title changed.

If someone outside the mods of this forum is going to look at this I would ask them to look at all my edited out posts beginning at the first one where I called an argument "terrible". I would also ask them to look at the PMs I sent the mods and also the flaming coming from some of the pro - pharmacists which was allowed.

I don't know Noddler or any of the other posters who were also giving out the biased modding. This accusation is baseless.

sam34

Tims posts were in need of constant editing. he was repesteldy asked to cool it a bit by my co-mods, yet did not do so.

a rational, reasonable, non-inflammatory debate fron non-pharmacists would have been entirely welcome, and indeed was provided by some and was greatly welcomed as it was necessary to the whole debate.

however, some of tims posts were out of order, and he ignored repeated warnings.
the ban was discussed with me before it was issued and i fully support tallaght on it.

Tim Robbins

DrIndy wrote: »

As a Co-Mod of this forum - we as mods have made a policy of only banning people in extremis, preferring to thrash out the arguments or lack of with reason.

As there was a lot of pharmacists rowing in behind the thread and the mods having healthcare backgrounds, we let Tim Robbins roll on with his arguments to maintain a balance of opinion which by nature of the forum would be topheavy overall.

He was warned on several, repeated occasions to tone down the rhetoric via PM by me.

You deleted an entire post of mine because I referred to an argument as "terrible". There has been a lot worse use of rhetoric in that debate that you have allowed.

Tallaght01 also wiped some of my posts. Surely it's fairer and clearer if you leave them in:
1. To show clearly what's not acceptable
2. To show consistency, if a susbsequent post is similar it will received the same treatment.
3. So that the readers aren't left with the impression that poster said something so offensive it had to removed altogether.

I however was extremely loath to ban him during the height of the debate despite being openly trolling and flaming at the pharmacists on the forum as he was providing a polar opposite opinion.

Well you have got that wrong. I was never trolling. I passionately disagree with the pro pharmacists stance.

There are ways of putting across a completely differently opinion with civillity. Smcarrick, carsinian thau and Nesf managed that and these posters absolutely did not support the strike.

They don't feel as strong about it as I do.

For example in one post Nesf said:

nesf wrote:

It took an hour and a half (not travel time, just prescription hand in to getting it) for me to get my drugs today. I appreciate the pharmacists' position here but this is making it tough on those of us who require meds regularly, and I'm lucky, I live in the city

see: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055608548&page=21

I have no sympathy for the pharmacists. That doesn't mean I am trolling.
The mods seem to think that if someone has no sympathy for them they are trolling which is absurd. It is a legitimate opinion and should be allowed to be discussed.

Tim Robbins has stood out universally as a troll for his entire time on this thread - we gave him rather large doses of leniency as he provided a twisted sense of balance to the debate. Enough is enough though.

I fully support this ban.

If you even look at the the last posts I made before I was banned. There was nothing uncivil or nothing which violated the charter.

Tim Robbins

sam34 wrote: »

Tims posts were in need of constant editing. he was repesteldy asked to cool it a bit by my co-mods, yet did not do so.

a rational, reasonable, non-inflammatory debate fron non-pharmacists would have been entirely welcome, and indeed was provided by some and was greatly welcomed as it was necessary to the whole debate.

however, some of tims posts were out of order, and he ignored repeated warnings.
the ban was discussed with me before it was issued and i fully support tallaght on it.

It would good if some of the mods here could include snippets of the discussion were they claim I was uncivil or deliberately trolling. That includes all the posts they edited out and deleted.

tallaght01

It's not my call to make in here. BUt posts I had to edit included you telling the pharmacists that you could do their job with a week's training, and they can only make the same types of diagnoses that your mother can make.

That's just not ok on a forum where we have lots of pharmacists who are good and regular posters. I don't have to let you subject them to that type of nonsense. That's before you started accusing people or being vested interests etc. that's the kind of thing I was editing out.

Then you rock in with this new sig to further inflame things. The sig may or may not be against boards rules. I don't know. You can pretend it's for all kinds of lofty political reasons, but you put it there during the height of your trolling, to pis off the pharmacists.

I asked you to come back when you've got rid of it, and when you're ready to be civil. I had to edit another one of your posts where you started going on about how mary harney would be modded as a troll by me if she decided to post. It's nonsense like that that gets you banned. You still couldn't leave it at that. So, the mods had a PM chat (I purposely got them involved because I was the one who was mostly involved in that thread). We decided as a group that you should be banned for one week, to see if you'd get the message.


Your posts were edited and deleted so the thread wouldn't go downhill. Virtually everyone else managed to be civil, on both sides.

I guess it's the irony of being too lenient. I delete inflammatory pieces, so now no one can see them. That means people think I'm banning you for nothing.

But c'est la vie. That thread ran smoothly until the end. You were the only one trying to derail it, and we didn't let you.

Regardless of how anyone thinks we handled it, I stand by everything. And you're still not welcome back with your trolling sig, as far as I'm concerned.

Tim Robbins

Here is a letter from Today's Irish Times

Irish Times wrote:

Madam, – Most high-street pharmacists provide little real value to society. In fact, due to their restrictive licensing protection, the opposite is the case.

They may be “highly-trained professionals”, but the most common expertise practised is to decipher doctors’ hieroglyphics, to read labels and count pills accurately. It was reporting of a failure to do the latter properly that precipitated the recent capitulation by the Irish Pharmacy Union.

A much more effective and efficient dispensing system would require doctors to type prescriptions (maybe even with bar-code – wow!) and allow licensed accounting clerks to control the dispensing – any and everywhere. This would cover the majority of cases; the remaining small fraction of all dispensing could be done by far fewer “highly trained professional” pharmacists, only when required. – Yours, etc,

FRANK DEVITT,

Griffith Avenue,

Drumcondra,

Dublin 9.

I made a similar point about the role of the pharmacist being fairly simple.
I said I'd have a reasonable stab of doing the dispensing. I agree this was ineloquent way of making the point however I all my posts were deleted out for trolling.

I wasn't trolling, I was simply making a point that has also warranted publication in a national newspaper.

They are several examples in that thread of Tallaght01 making sweeping generalisations about the HSE and derogatory, personal insulting remarks about harney. However if anyone made any sort of comment about pharmacists being greedy, they were sanctioned or warned.

I would really like a senior mod to review this thread. It's a hot topic and we should be allowed to discuss it.

Here are also some snippets from Tallaght0:

Tallaght01 wrote:

Frankly, Tim Robbins, as a non pharmacists, I'm getting frustrated with the baseless lies. You're either desperately trying to discredit pharmacists, or you haven't a clue what you're talking about.

Here he accuses me of lieing. He also accused the HSE of lieing.
This is incredible considering how he mods people who are anti the IPU.

Tallaght01 wrote:

to e honest, that's a crock of balls. You've managed to bring baseless accusation to a whole new level, there, even for you.

This is an example of a flame.

Tallaght01 wrote:

quite honestly, you've brought yourself into disrepute here

This was in response to my comment about the forum being brought into disrepute if we weren't allowed to be critical of the IPU. I don't think he needed to attack me personally.

There's a quite a lot of snid remarks from Tallaght01 throughout the thread mainly at the HSE, Harney and a few people who passionately feel the IPU were categorically wrong.

I don't think he picked on anyone who was pro the IPU. One time I got a flame from Bleg who said he always ignores me from the rugby forum and that he should ahve just ignored me in this one. I tried to point out this flame to the mods but again nothing happened.

Tim Robbins

I agree bringing my Mum in to make the point was not a very elegant way of putting it. But the point about the pharmacist job being simple was valid. It was made in a national newspaper today as I have pointed out.

You are also were extremly loose with your language when you referred to the HSE and Harney. If you wish people to be "civil" in their language and posts you should also be. Throughout that thread your language in reference to Harney and the hse is anything but "civil".

Here some examples of what I am talking about.

You are heavy modding people who less about the IPU or pharmacists.

Tallaght01 wrote:

Do you really think this will be career-threatening for Harney?

That would be a great thing for irish healthcare.

Tallaght01 wrote:

Fair play the pharmacists. I'm delighted someone is standing up to this bullying.

Tallaght01 wrote:

There HAS to be some kind of last minute intervention here. Surely? No? Are the HSE dumb enough to believe they can go this alone?

Mad bastards.

Tallaght01 wrote:

You'd think that with so many good people out of work right now the HSE could employ someone who knows what they're talking about.

Tallaght01 wrote:

Having said that, I'm sure most people who work in healthcare could believe that the HSE are actually that incompetent.

Tallagh01 wrote:

How much notice did those incompetents in Harney's dept give the pharmacists before they changed their contract?

I know I'd have been out of there like a hot snot.

Patients don't think pharmacists should be allowed to engage in any dispute that puts them in the centre. Well, that's not really possible. There's very limited options here.

I know if my gaff was in danger, and I had a wife and kids, I'd be standing up for them by standing up to that fool Harney.

She screws over junior doctors as a routine, and they just suck it up. I'm hugely impressed by the pharmacists. Talk about vested interests? That poxy HSE is the biggest vested interest in the country.

Tallagh01 wrote:

The pharmacists want to talk. They want an independent arbitrator.

This is what i don't get. Harney banks on people being pussies. It's about time she got a wake up call.

If someone who was pro the HSE was modding the forum in favour of their case the way you are, you'd be banned a long time ago.

tallaght01

The issue was never your language. It was the way you tried to get a rise from people on the forum.

I wasn't baiting anyone on the forum. If it offended you so badly that I called Harney a fool or said the HSE were incompetent, fine. You'll fine comments like that all over boards.

I have no problems with strong language.

I do have a problem with you coming onto a thread in a forum full of pharmacists and telling them you could do their job with a week long course. You and I both know that's not true. But you do it to rile them, purposely.

We both know you coming on and saying they can only make the kind of diagnoses that Your mother could make when you were a kid is not true, and we know you did it for one reason and one reason only. To get a rise out of the pharmacists posting.

Same with telling me I'd have tarred Mary Harney as a troll, and the users would have flamed her. Again, nothing but trying to piss people off.

This was all about intent. Bio+med has a nice community, where things do get pretty agitated quite a lot of the time, when some of the more contentious issues are discussed. Sometimes things get heated, and they'll continue to do so long after I'm gone.

But what we get far too much of, and what we just won't tolerate anymore, is people coming in to vent their frustrations at our posters, with baiting posts.

You have to look at this in context. Even thought you were purposely baiting the pharmacists on the forum, we didn't take ANY action against you. I just edited the nastier its out of your posts. And I asked you to stop baiting people. Thats all.

Your ban came much later, and was the result of a consensus amongst the mods.

I've banned maybe 3 or 4 people in my 2 years modding, despite having some shocking threads in there, and having some high level trolls kicking about.

If you're desperate to get back in, which I suspect you're not, then I would be happy to compromise. If you got rid of your sig, and didn't replace it with another trolling one, then that would show some intent towards toning down the trolling. If you did that I would be happy to let you back in, subject to the other 2 mods of the forum being ok with that.

That's about all I can do for you.

Tim Robbins

tallaght01 wrote: »

If you got rid of your sig, and didn't replace it with another trolling one, then that would show some intent towards toning down the trolling. If you did that I would be happy to let you back in, subject to the other 2 mods of the forum being ok with that.

That's about all I can do for you.

I'm sorry but my sig is not a troll nor is it intended to be a troll. Nor are any of my comments against the IPU which I passionately hold even though I may not be able to express them very eloquently. The point about my Mother I admitted several times I didn't express it very well but the actual point has some validitiy to it otherwise that letter wouldn't have be published in the times. Instead of dealing with actual core of the point you just ignored it.

If you were to publish what you censored me from saying in that thread and let the people decide which is closer to trolling: what I said about the IPU or what you said about Harney and the HSE, I think it would be very clear how biased and heavy handed your modding has been.

You censor people for making points against the IPU you don't like and look at your own points and trolling with respect to harney and the HSE.

My sig is positive stance for Harney it doesn't even say anything negative about the IPU nor the pharmacists. So I see no reason why I should remove it.

What you are saying is someone isn't allowed have a sig which is a positive support about your opponent you enjoy trolling about in your forum.