Moderator Abusing Position to deliberately post incorrect tax advice

davindub

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057934405

I am a former solicitor and now an accountant and participated in the above Thread.

One of the posters posted an incorrect comment regarding Rent a Room scheme and I responded with the correct information as of 2017.

The moderator L1011 then responded with the incorrect information again. When I rebuked this, he attacked my "advice" calling it unsafe and not to post it again in the thread.

This is completely an abuse of his position to promote incorrect information and suppress correct information, and I received an warning for responding to these tactics. To be honest I do not even care about the warning, what I do care about is the attitude of this moderator and the dangerous advice given.


This is the PM I received from the moderator:

Appeal as you wish - you received a warning for disobeying a moderation instruction which it is blatantly clear you did. Nothing else matters

If you post on that thread again you will receive a one-day forum ban, as is the normal escalation after a warning.

If you post that "advice" again elsewhere on the forum, as per the original warning, you will receive a one-day forum ban.
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Beasty

If you "do not even care about the warning" I presume you are not appealing it. This forum is for appealing cards and bans, not starting a discussion over the actions of a moderator. Those actions will not be discussed here other than in the context of any appeal against the warning.

Please confirm if you are appealing the warning. If not I will move this thread to Help Desk where your wider concerns can be discussed.

davindub

Beasty wrote: »

If you "do not even care about the warning" I presume you are not appealing it. This forum is for appealing cards and bans, not starting a discussion over the actions of a moderator. Those actions will not be discussed here other than in the context of any appeal against the warning.

Please confirm if you are appealing the warning. If not I will move this thread to Help Desk where your wider concerns can be discussed.

I am appealing both the warning and the threat of further actions if I ignore the imposed censorship. Also I would like to discuss the actions of the moderator.

Thank you.

Beasty

This thread will deal with your yellow card only. Once that has been dealt with you can start a thread in Help Desk over your moderation concerns

I will ask one of the Soc CMods to look at this appeal for you

davindub

Hi,

Any news on this yet?

hullaballoo

Admin: Please note the forum rules - only the OP, CMods and Admins may post in a DR thread.

Big Bag of Chips

davindub, I will look at the yellow card you received.

I hope to look into it properly this evening. Please bear with me.

davindub

Thank you.

Big Bag of Chips

Hiya davindub,

I have had a look at the posts that led up to you receiving the yellow. I see that you offered tax advice, but did add that people should check themselves with Revenue. I do understand that you offered the advice in good faith, but offering professional advice is against the site wide rules. After being asked to not post the advice again, you continued to do so. I understand you were clarifying your position but offering professional tax advice is against the site rules and the forum charter. You posted a number of posts again reiterating the advice. I do acknowledge that you continually recommended that posters check with revenue.

You received the yellow after the moderator asked you to not post in the thread again and you ignored this instruction, that is why you received the yellow, and as such I feel that I have to let the yellow stand. The correct procedure to follow is to report any post you have issues with and to not respond to a moderator on thread, but to PM instead. The behaviour of other posters on thread is irrelevant to this issue I'm afraid, but I would however recommend that you do start a thread in the Help Desk Forum regarding the posting of professional advice in general in that forum. I'm afraid here I can only deal with you and your issue.

If you are not happy with my decision to uphold the yellow, I can Admin to take a look at this issue for you, or if you are satisfied with the response I will ask for it to be marked as resolved. Either way, once this is resolved I would encourage you to open a thread in the Help Desk forum about the issues that you have highlighted about that thread.

davindub

Big Bag of Chips wrote: »

Hiya davindub,

I have had a look at the posts that led up to you receiving the yellow. I see that you offered tax advice, but did add that people should check themselves with Revenue. I do understand that you offered the advice in good faith, but offering professional advice is against the site wide rules. After being asked to not post the advice again, you continued to do so. I understand you were clarifying your position but offering professional tax advice is against the site rules and the forum charter. You posted a number of posts again reiterating the advice. I do acknowledge that you continually recommended that posters check with revenue.

You received the yellow after the moderator asked you to not post in the thread again and you ignored this instruction, that is why you received the yellow, and as such I feel that I have to let the yellow stand. The correct procedure to follow is to report any post you have issues with and to not respond to a moderator on thread, but to PM instead. The behaviour of other posters on thread is irrelevant to this issue I'm afraid, but I would however recommend that you do start a thread in the Help Desk Forum regarding the posting of professional advice in general in that forum. I'm afraid here I can only deal with you and your issue.

If you are not happy with my decision to uphold the yellow, I can Admin to take a look at this issue for you, or if you are satisfied with the response I will ask for it to be marked as resolved. Either way, once this is resolved I would encourage you to open a thread in the Help Desk forum about the issues that you have highlighted about that thread.

I am sorry you feel like that and thank you for your response.

I do not feel the card was for giving tax advice, nor did I actually attempt to advise anyone including the OP, In all instances my responses were to posters giving incorrect information.

My first post was in response to this post:

"Electricity is a utility, so if you charge rent and then charge for electricity on top of that, and the total of the two charges exceeds 14k, then you are outside the rent-a-room scheme."


And the next post was in response to the moderator claiming Revenue would not agree with me.

Please yes, have an admin look at this. I do not feel the actions of the moderator who carded me are irrelevant if I was carded for pointing out the tax advice he was posting is incorrect while he continued to give more incorrect advice.

As regard reporting posts, that has no effect. I actually reported a post in that thread, I did not receive any follow up nor was the post removed.

Big Bag of Chips

No problem. I will ask an Admin to look at it. Bear with us again.

Thanks.

Beasty

OK, just to be clear. The yellow card was for ignoring the mod instruction not to post again in the thread, not any perceived "tax advice"

A yellow card is a pretty standard sanction across the site for ignoring a moderator instruction, and I'm upholding this one

davindub

Ok so back to the original issue, so you are also validating the moderator making that decision because I disagreed with the information he was posting?

Beasty

I am doing what is required under the DRP process. The card is "valid" and upheld