Hidden Rules

Little CuChulainn

I'd just like to refer to a thread in the Prison Forum.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057696375

The poster appears to have been banned for a rule that is not actually stated anywhere. The admin stated

Not everything is spelled out in the charters or terms of use.

Seems like the admin is saying that there are rules that people are just expected to know without them being told. Is this correct? Is there any other rules like this? Is there any reason they aren't stated?

duffman13

Probably one of the few threads in Prison where I actually felt sorry for poster. Didn't read what was contained in the PM but provided it's not personal information it's a bit harsh to ban someone and not give them a warning and make them wiser in future.

Zaph

In fairness, the name is a bit of a giveaway - they're private messages. It shouldn't need to be stated anywhere that you don't have permission to publicly post what someone has sent to you as a private message. But as to why it's not explicitly stated in the Terms of Use, you'd need to ask someone in the office that question as they are the ones who drafted them.

weisses

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

Seems like the admin is saying that there are rules that people are just expected to know without them being told. Is this correct? Is there any other rules like this? Is there any reason they aren't stated?

Tom Mann Centuria

A few months ago a PM was posted on a dental issue thread, that post got deleted by an admin, poster wasn't banned, maybe it's all about context, no idea really.

dudara

It's literally impossible to write everything into the Terms of Use, or the forum charters. If they're too tightly defined, it's constraining. But on the other hand, if they're too loose, then they're no use either.

I get your point about the Private Messages, but I must admit that I am surprised people need to be told not to share private messages without permission. We can ask HQ to consider including it in the Terms of Use.

Little CuChulainn

Yes I get that it's called private but privacy is usually a right you can choose to give up freely. It seems like a pretty simple rule to describe and if it can result in a site ban it should definitely be stated somewhere.

dudara

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

Yes I get that it's called private but privacy is usually a right you can choose to give up freely.

Absolutely, but in this case there are two parties, and posting PMs without the consent of the other party is not on. I'll push the feedback to HQ.

rex-x

Surely if you send OR receive a PM then its yours to share with whomever you like, just as with an email, text message etc! I cant think of any legitimate reason why this sort of rule should exist? Don't want people to see it then don't send it in a PM.... This is definitely one of the more puzzling boards rules and I have been around a while

Lovely Bloke

Wait, is Boards.ie going to enact some regulation that is different to how the whole rest of the world works?

If I receive a piece of post in the mail, an email (solicited or unsolicited), a text message on my phone I am free to show whoever the hell I want to show. Even by publishing it in a newspaper of record.

Is Boards.ie going to do something different with received PMs, as in put a prohibition on the publication of messages received by members?

Because that's a bit weird.

Special Circumstances

rex-x wrote: »

Surely if you send OR receive a PM then its yours to share with whomever you like, just as with an email, text message etc! I cant think of any legitimate reason why this sort of rule should exist? Don't want people to see it then don't send it in a PM.... This is definitely one of the more puzzling boards rules and I have been around a while

100%.

If you don't want people to see nasty stuff you send someone... don't send it. Poor form to treat the receiver of abuse as harshly as the abuser.


Victim blaming I think boards mods would call it. Except I guess some people really ARE asking for it in their minds?

The_Valeyard

this needs to be a publicly stated rule. I'd no idea it was a banned or even siteban offence.

Gavinz

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

I'd just like to refer to a thread in the Prison Forum.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057696375

The poster appears to have been banned for a rule that is not actually stated anywhere. The admin stated



Seems like the admin is saying that there are rules that people are just expected to know without them being told. Is this correct? Is there any other rules like this? Is there any reason they aren't stated?

That's bloody nonsense tbh.

Unspoken rules that ordinary users aren't privy to.

TallGlass

Wait. Why shouldn't I be allowed share something someone sends me? What difference is it too posting normally. It's just private. That's nonsense to be honest.

Don't send someone something you wouldn't post normally, would have been how I operate, considering they could do what the hell they like with it.

themagiconion

I remember a post a while back that a poster made asking Mods... Are mods allowed to read other peoples private messages, and the mod said No 'they' can't even read private messages, so I gathered there and then that if the mods can't even look at peoples private messages then it would be a no-no to even think of posting anyone's private messages on thread.

It should be hi-lighted in the charter though.

Deub

I find strange the poster got banned for this but there is a dedicated thread where people are sharing funny facebook posts.
For all we know, the person who posted it has a restricted Facebook account so only "friends" can see.

The_Valeyard

It might not be any harm to maybe take another look at this ban and possibly reconsider. Unless the poster has a bad history of cards n bans.

g2020

The_Valeyard wrote: »

I might not be any harm to maybe take another look at this ban and possibly reconsider. Unless the poster has a bad history of cards n bans.

25k posts.

Doubt they're a trouble maker.

runawaybishop

This isn't a 'rule' I have ever come across here and it sounds completely daft. What gets sent to you is yours to share as and when you choose. There is also absolutely no reason this isn't in the charter.

aaronjumper

It does seem to be a bit unreasonable just going off of the two threads.

If it was in the charter then that would be different.

g2020

runawaybishop wrote: »

This isn't a 'rule' I have ever come across here and it sounds completely daft. What gets sent to you is yours to share as and when you choose. There is also absolutely no reason this isn't in the charter.

Agreed, unless it's personally identifying the sender, how is it anyone's business what you do with that info? Especially fcuking threats.

rex-x

aaronjumper wrote: »

It does seem to be a bit unreasonable just going off of the two threads.

If it was in the charter then that would be different.

I don't see how it being in the charter would make it OK, it's a nonsense rule... Although to me charters are also rubbish, bureaucracy for the sake of it

aaronjumper

rex-x wrote: »

I don't see how it being in the charter would make it OK, it's a nonsense rule... Although to me charters are also rubbish, bureaucracy for the sake of it

A lot of places and sites have nonsense rules but at least if you're aware of them you can avoid situations like this.

Lovely Bloke

That whole prison thread is a nonsense.

It's basically Admins tying themselves in knots to justify a pretty flimsy ban.

The user has been royally screwed over, and in true Boards.ie style it's do your best to not admit doing anything wrong, and use spurious back-reasoning to justify pretty shítty behaviour.

It's not the first time it's happened, and it won't be the last.

duffman13

Lovely Bloke wrote: »

That whole prison thread is a nonsense.

It's basically Admins tying themselves in knots to justify a pretty flimsy ban.

The user has been royally screwed over, and in true Boards.ie style it's do your best to not admit doing anything wrong, and use spurious back-reasoning to justify pretty shítty behaviour.

It's not the first time it's happened, and it won't be the last.

To be honest usually posters in Prison are absolute clowns who are reregs or spammers for the most part.

Someone else mentioned this poster has 25k posts and 7 years on the site. Surely in this situation an administrator accepts it's an unwritten rule and advises the poster it's not allowed with an informal warning.

In the prison thread the OP pointed out someone sharing messages from whatsapp and emails between two posters and this is deemed ok but a Boards PM is too important to be shared. If it's something that is gonna attract a site ban it needs to be in terms and conditions.

Lovely Bloke

I wasn't talking about just prison, far from it.

ArmaniJeanss

Lovely Bloke wrote: »

Wait, is Boards.ie going to enact some regulation that is different to how the whole rest of the world works?

If I receive a piece of post in the mail, an email (solicited or unsolicited), a text message on my phone I am free to show whoever the hell I want to show. Even by publishing it in a newspaper of record.

Should be kind of obvious that you can't post content of PMs because they are not easily verifiable and this would totally spoil a discussion board.


e.g.,
As it happens poster Lovely Bloke pm'ed me 10 minutes ago and said

PM from Lovely Bloke wrote:

I don't really care too much about the issue but I love seeing the mods on the backfoot. P.S AJ you're my fav poster

No-one can know if this is a true quote or not and would make a farce of any subsequent discussion.

Ban should be overturned though and charter updated.

Lovely Bloke

No I didn't.

And, Admin can see if a particular person sent a PM at a particular time.

dudara

Lovely Bloke wrote: »

And, Admin can see if a particular person sent a PM at a particular time.

Actually no, we can't. (Unless there is something I am not aware of). All I can see is the number of in/out PMs.

Special Circumstances

dudara wrote: »

Actually no, we can't. (Unless there is something I am not aware of). All I can see is the number of in/out PMs.

Are you saying armani jeans is banned now?

Lovely Bloke

dudara wrote: »

Actually no, we can't. (Unless there is something I am not aware of). All I can see is the number of in/out PMs.

Apologies, yes, I was mistaken there.

Flint Fredstone

The clue is in the name. Private message.

I would assume anything I send as private message would be kept just that.

I've had someone from this site screenshot private messages of mine and sent them on to his mate who tweeted them as part of some deluded rant.

If I had given his username I was assured he would be sitebanned.

rex-x

Flint Fredstone wrote: »

The clue is in the name. Private message.

I would assume anything I send as private message would be kept just that.

I've had someone from this site screenshot private messages of mine and sent them on to his mate who tweeted them as part of some deluded rant.

If I had given his username I was assured he would be sitebanned.

The name private message is just a legacy from v bulletin, the more modern term is direct message and you have no right to expect them be kept private. I'm actually amazed anyone ever thought they should be...it's madness

Flint Fredstone

rex-x wrote: »

The name private message is just a legacy from v bulletin, the more modern term is direct message and you have no right to expect them be kept private. I'm actually amazed anyone ever thought they should be...it's madness

They're called private messages here. This isn't Twitter.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Chorus_suck

This post has been deleted.

Satriale

I wouldnt consider any electronic message I'd send to a virtual stranger on a forum private. You'd have to be mad. Bit harsh for that dude.

kronnn

Actually, unless the terms and conditions of the forums say otherwise, the person who writes a pm is the legal owner of the copywrite (this also goes for emails, texts, forum posts, images, videos etc) so it's more than just a moral grey area, it's against copyright law to share them without the express consent of the copyright holder. It's unlikely that someone would sue for publishing messages that were not yours to publish like this, but if they were in someway valuable or caused someone enough trouble is a possibility.

KyussBeeshop

Lovely Bloke wrote: »

That whole prison thread is a nonsense.

It's basically Admins tying themselves in knots to justify a pretty flimsy ban.

The user has been royally screwed over, and in true Boards.ie style it's do your best to not admit doing anything wrong, and use spurious back-reasoning to justify pretty shítty behaviour.

It's not the first time it's happened, and it won't be the last.

Yea to be honest, the accusation of 'rules lawyering' in that Prison thread is really awful.

Can we please have a ban on mods/admins being able to just bloody make up self-serving rules-of-thumb like this?

It's particularly rich that one, seeing as it's usually mods/admins twisting the rules and insisting on the strictest most-pedantic interpretation of them (particularly when they have the discretion to ignore an unintentional breach, yet decide to be pedantic about it), in order to fúck over posters - nearly all 'rules lawyering' is done by mods/admins.

If something is not in the rules, or if a rule is being applied inconsistently, then no mod/admin should ever be allowed get away with throwing the 'rules lawyering' statement at someone - whenever I see that, it's almost always used as a way of undermining a legitimate argument - used as a kind of mod/admin trump card.

There are a few phrases like that which get trotted out by mods/admins, which really must stop - including e.g. threatening to punish/ban someone for being a 'timesink', when it's often not the fault of a poster that their interaction with mods has turned into a timewasting clusterfúck.


In addition to all this, mods/admins really need to take a step back and examine their tendency to 'circle the wagons' in the face of criticism, without respect to the validity of the criticism - not just in Prison/DRP, but here as well - it's very obvious to see sometimes, and it really makes mod/admin action look inconsistent and bureaucratic/petty sometimes.

It's not all mods/admins that are like this obviously, I speak in generalizations here for convenience. The ones that do stuff like this should probably be culled from mod/admin duty though, as it seems there's some level of 'groupthink' going on sometimes, which would protect/perpetuate this among mods/admins.

Cookie_Monster

kronnn wrote: »

Actually, unless the terms and conditions of the forums say otherwise, the person who writes a pm is the legal owner of the copywrite (this also goes for emails, texts, forum posts, images, videos etc) so it's more than just a moral grey area, it's against copyright law to share them without the express consent of the copyright holder..

boards owns the copyright of everything on the site, presumably this must include PMs

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

uck51js9zml2yt

If memory serves, the poster was abused in an unsolicited pm and chose to go public about it.

It's no different to a sex abuse case held in private where details are not made known. The injured party has a right to go public without the permission of the offender.

I know my example is extreme but it serves the point.
If it's not allowed, make it clear. But making the rules up as we go along and back dating them doesn't work in the real world.

Beasty

Not going to comment on the specific case here. I do think it should be made clear somewhere that PMs can only be shared with the consent of the sender. That's always been my understanding and it is something that is mentioned in the DRP rules.

I would just add though that the same applies to "Private" forums and I suspect many users would be up in arms if they saw posts from such forums being shared across the site. Again though I am not aware of any explicit site rules stating that they can't be shared. Some things are implicit although this case perhaps highlights the problems with that.

Having said all of that adding more to site rules will encourage even fewer users to actually read them potentially creating further problems.

Mrs OBumble

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

boards owns the copyright of everything on the site, presumably this must include PMs

Link please ...

g2020

Beasty wrote: »

Not going to comment on the specific case here. I do think it should be made clear somewhere that PMs can only be shared with the consent of the sender. That's always been my understanding and it is something that is mentioned in the DRP rules.

I would just add though that the same applies to "Private" forums and I suspect many users would be up in arms if they saw posts from such forums being shared across the site. Again though I am not aware of any explicit site rules stating that they can't be shared. Some things are implicit although this case perhaps highlights the problems with that.

Having said all of that adding more to site rules will encourage even fewer users to actually read them potentially creating further problems.

Why not comment on the specific case here?

Can't be seen to challenge or even question other mods/admins I guess...

Beasty

g2020 wrote: »

Why not comment on the specific case here?

Can't be seen to challenge or even question other mods/admins I guess...

I don't have all the facts here. Even if I did I would respect the privacy of those who had provided me with them.

I was making generic comments which is what this forum is supposed to be about.

Tom Dunne

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

I'd just like to refer to a thread in the Prison Forum.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057696375

The poster appears to have been banned for a rule that is not actually stated anywhere. The admin stated



Seems like the admin is saying that there are rules that people are just expected to know without them being told. Is this correct? Is there any other rules like this? Is there any reason they aren't stated?

A couple of points on this.

First of all, there is more to the banning than meets the eye. What you are seeing in that thread is one aspect of the story, not the full story.

Secondly, would you go outside with no clothes on? No, most likely you would not. How do you know that it is socially unacceptable to go outside with no clothes on? Is it written down somewhere? Did somebody tell you? Most likely not.

It's the same on Boards.ie, we can't legislate for everything. We can't write every different permutation of every different potential scenario down. Some things are just learned, assumed, part of the culture of the site.

Drexel

Tom Dunne wrote: »

A couple of points on this.

First of all, there is more to the banning than meets the eye. What you are seeing in that thread is one aspect of the story, not the full story.

Secondly, would you go outside with no clothes on? No, most likely you would not. How do you know that it is socially unacceptable to go outside with no clothes on? Is it written down somewhere? Did somebody tell you? Most likely not.

It's the same on Boards.ie, we can't legislate for everything. We can't write every different permutation of every different potential scenario down. Some things are just learned, assumed, part of the culture of the site.

This is a complete cop out.

I agree you cant legislate for everything but posting the contents of a Pm is hardly a situation that would never have been thought of when writing the charter or not have occurred to someone to add

Special Circumstances

Freya Thoughtless Marsh wrote: »

If memory serves, the poster was abused in an unsolicited pm and chose to go public about it.

It's no different to a sex abuse case held in private where details are not made known. The injured party has a right to go public without the permission of the offender.

I know my example is extreme but it serves the point.
If it's not allowed, make it clear. But making the rules up as we go along and back dating them doesn't work in the real world.

I guess its the same as somebody receiving unsolicited electronic messages of an abusive or explicit nature ... they would not be allowed to report it as the perpetrator owns the copyright? And didn't want the messages seen by anyone but the victim?

Boards.ie just took the group double think to a whole new level. There's is literally nothing the true believers here won't defend or believe against all common sense.

D0NNELLY

dudara wrote: »

It's literally impossible to write everything into the Terms of Use, or the forum charters.

there cant be that many things that will warrant a straight site ban.

Little CuChulainn

Beasty wrote: »

Not going to comment on the specific case here. I do think it should be made clear somewhere that PMs can only be shared with the consent of the sender. That's always been my understanding and it is something that is mentioned in the DRP rules.

I would just add though that the same applies to "Private" forums and I suspect many users would be up in arms if they saw posts from such forums being shared across the site. Again though I am not aware of any explicit site rules stating that they can't be shared. Some things are implicit although this case perhaps highlights the problems with that.

Having said all of that adding more to site rules will encourage even fewer users to actually read them potentially creating further problems.

So put it on the private message page. Right under where you enter the names. "Note: Private messages can only be shared with consent of both parties." Could probably be done in two minutes.

Tom Dunne wrote: »

A couple of points on this.

First of all, there is more to the banning than meets the eye. What you are seeing in that thread is one aspect of the story, not the full story.

Yeah, I'm more interested in the fact there are undisclosed rules.

Tom Dunne wrote: »

Secondly, would you go outside with no clothes on? No, most likely you would not. How do you know that it is socially unacceptable to go outside with no clothes on? Is it written down somewhere? Did somebody tell you? Most likely not.

Yes, I was told when i was very young by my parents. There are also laws against it.

Tom Dunne wrote: »

It's the same on Boards.ie, we can't legislate for everything. We can't write every different permutation of every different potential scenario down. Some things are just learned, assumed, part of the culture of the site.

It seems a very simple and short rule. And as there doesn't seem to be an issue publishing any other forms of correspondence it should probably be highlighted.