Just to be absolutely clear about corporate interaction here.

DeVore

The problem with the "yay lets all be happy clappy friends" line is that some "people" are willing to blatantly lie to obfuscate their company's shortcomings or to muddy the water. They take advantage of a naive idea that people who are out to make LOTS OF MONEY are going to meekly sit by while we disect their industry.

Trust me, if it were left to them IOFFL and Boards.ie would be shut down to stop people here saying what they are saying.

If I overreacted yesterday perhaps it was from a history between the poster and Esat and a nasty comment being made towards him while he criticised them. Is noone concerned that other posters who are perhaps arent as brassnecked as some of us wont post because a legion of fanboys from company X will tell them to "stop whinging"?

DeV.

eth0_

Originally posted by DeVore
Is noone concerned that other posters who are perhaps arent as brassnecked as some of us wont post because a legion of fanboys from company X will tell them to "stop whinging"?

DeV.

Muck and his IOFFL colleagues will never stop posting because of a silly comment made about them.
And just because you're a "fanboy/girl" of telco X (I prefer to refer to myself as an employee though), doesn't mean you can't think muck or anyone else whinges on occasion, and muck does get all high spirited about things on occasion ;-)

Johnmb

Reply to milobloom

Do we not all not have a vested interest?

Telcos want to make money
Their employees (I work for Esat) want to have jobs
Users want to get a good service and pay reasonable rates
By this reasoning, we should all be outed.

Yes, but it is different when you work for the company. I used to be an auditor, and even now I would be hesitant to give an opinion on any auditing firms. While I would be honest, and give factual information, the simple fact is that I'd look at some through rose coloured glasses, and some not so kindly, giving a slightly twarted view of the facts no matter how hard I try not to. I would feel it only fair to point out that I may have some bias one way or the other to people I was discussing the subject with. I don't think much information needs to be given, just point out that you work in the area. What you have done in the quote above is more than adequate IMO. Also, I don't think you should have to do it unless the thread directly relates to your company or a competitors. The Web Hosting forum seems to get on okay, and there are a number of posters there who have vested interests and openly admit it.

As for my "outing", on this forum I only want a cheap service that is reliable. I have a bit of a grudge with UTVip, but I have nothing against any of the rest (other than price).

flav0rflav

So let me get this straight.

Devore is the US, with god given powers and means, while the mods are the UN?

Yea, that worked.

flav0rflav

(Oh and while I'm here and all you Admins are here, can I get back my original FlavorFlav account?)

cgarvey

Originally posted by Hobart
I think the thread should be re-instated with the offending comments removed as I thought that the subject matter/thread starter was excellent.[/B]

And as for declaring who you work for... DeVore, you're just talking about people who blatently lie/misrepresent on behalf of their company, aren't you? I.e. biddy from eircom can come on and say she's well impressed with her dialup if she wants, without declaring her employer can't she?

Because, if not, and everyone who says anything about their place of work without declaring where they work will either
a) Face unecessary questioning either in private or in public (and it sounds like it was pretty public in the s8n case?)
b) Be seen to represent their employer and, therefore, must watch every word they say, as its a different ball game
c) Not be arsed post at all

Now all 3 are fine for someone who comes on and blatently lies/pimps, I think thats an ugly insult to boards.ie founders.

However if it applies to any telco employee then I think that is way OTT.. nothing I can do about if of course, as I don't pay anything for this service, but I don't think there is need for that.

Besides, whats wrong with the way were? I thought these guys were pretty much rumbled as soon as they posted?

Finally, why was the thread deleted? Is it because there was a potential legal issue in its contents? If not, then please don't tell me it was "personal"!? That would but yesterday down as a black day in boards!

Anyway, I'm sure alot of people are passionate about the topic, but I hope its not censorship, and I hope it doesn't mean employees have to say who they work for if they say anything that involves their employer.

My rant is over, sorry for taking up so much space
.cg

spongebob

Anybody can delete a thread that they themselves started as long as they do so within 24 hours.

So I did.

Others had deleted their own posts before I chopped its ugly head off.

M

cgarvey

Originally posted by Muck
Anybody can delete a thread that they themselves started as long as they do so within 24 hours.

So I did.

Well that's a relief (/me purges brain of conspiracy theories)! I just read

In a very rare move and at some formal complaining from me, I've deleted those posts to protect the "innocent".

and thought it was either way out of line (which I've not seen before, out of line yeah, but not enough to warrant it to be thrashed) or censorship, but I had no way to clarify other than to ask here.

My point about the need for employer disclosure still stands

De Rebel

Originally posted by eth0_
Muck and his IOFFL colleagues will never stop posting because of a silly comment made about them.

Stranger things have happened. Yesterday could be something of a watershed for this forum. Being called a "whinger" is unlikely in itself to scare off any of the regulars, however some of what followed may do so. There are a lot of contributors here who operate semi anonymously for a variety of reasons, and that seems to be part of what boards is about. And it has merit.

I have no problem standing up and being identified, the admins and the IOFFL peeps have my personal details and I have posted enough about myself in this and other forums to be identified. I have declared my interest: sorting out my two monthly €400 eircom bills. Others are not in a position to be so open.

Generally the informal rules about identity have worked well. Newbies with a post count of 1 get the sceptical treatment they deserve when they zone in with controversial views on a hot topic. Regular posters get a bit more respect, as there is usually a general if vague appreciation of where they are coming from. By and large the anonymous rule works well.

Blatant breaches of the "common law" like last weeks Aggie post which exposed her deliberate lie about here identity while sniping at competitors are easily dealt with. That case got up everybody's nose and as I understand it was dealt with appropriately. sn8 was a far less clear cut case.

He/She certainly didn't help the issue with a one line "Muck your a whinger" post. His motivation and reasoning behind the post were open the question and this combined with the "ESAT" context is where the trouble started. If the post had started with "Muck I think your a whinger because....." and gone on to explain his point of view, then I doubt that DeV would have reacted the way he did.

However that is water under the bridge. There is a bit of a cloud (small C) hanging over the forum. Somewhere among the posts by Dustaz, Cloud (big C), and DeV there is the basis of an unambiguous rule about revealing the identity of a poster.

In 6 months I have developed tremendous respect for Boards.ie and for Tom in particular. There is a lot of merit in the anonymity that Boards allows, but there is also a clear need for abuse to be dealt with. Boards is maturing into something really special. Its getting bigger and hopefully better. Hence the need to move from the informality that was adequate heretofore to a few essential rules.

Sorry to go on a bit, but I believe this is a key point in setting the foundations for the future strength of Boards.ie. It may even be worth taking this topic up in the Admin forum, as the privacy issue has implications for many of the other forums also.

The last thing any of us want to see is the suppression of open and informed debate or the disappearance of any of the valued and informed contributors.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by DeVore
The problem with the "yay lets all be happy clappy friends" line is that some "people" are willing to blatantly lie to obfuscate their company's shortcomings or to muddy the water. They take advantage of a naive idea that people who are out to make LOTS OF MONEY are going to meekly sit by while we disect their industry.

Yes, but what can you do about it? Someone from Company X who wants to muddy the water will do so. We might have suspicions about it, but we have no way of knowing. You can tell if someone is posting from the corporate network, but what if it is being done via a proxy within the ISP? A lower-tech solution would be to use a dial up account and bypass the corporate network altoghter.

If I overreacted yesterday perhaps it was from a history between the poster and Esat and a nasty comment being made towards him while he criticised them. Is noone concerned that other posters who are perhaps arent as brassnecked as some of us wont post because a legion of fanboys from company X will tell them to "stop whinging"?

Again there could be a number of posters on here with specific vested interests, i.e, not those of a user of services but those of a provider. We have had the example of someone posing as a user but who, in fact, turned out to be an Esat employee. She was caught because she slipped up. Asking for disclosure would not have prevented the original postings since this assumes a certain level of honesty.

What I'm saying, is that there is no point in asking for a disclosure. Others, who may be working for Eircom, another company or indeed Esat may well be laughing at the idea of disclosure because if they wanted to say they were working for Company X, they would have said so.

None of this should be seen as attacking ordinary employees of telcos who post here.

For me it comes down to this: this is supposed to be the forum for IOFFL, an organisation trying to bring about flat rate 56k and affordable broadband in Ireland. The forum, although it is not limited to IOFFL members should be, at least, for those who share its aims. If not, it is meaningless and confusing.

What is "on topic" for the IOFFL forum is the subject of how to bring about the aims of IOFFL.

Therefore, in addition to asking for disclosure, we should state that by not disclosing, it will be assumed that they are posting as an ordinary user who shares the aims of IOFFL. This won't be perfect, but at least we can tackle overt attempts to muddy the water by the fact that what they are saying is not in line with the goals and aims of IOFFL.

I'm not trying to curtail peoples right to free speech here, merely defining the 'topic' of this forum.

flav0rflav

Ok, I just reviewed what I could see on the 'Aggie' drama. Was she outed by Dev? Didn't see it.

What I did see was that if someone tells lies it'll get found out without any need to remove anonymity.

Christ, if someone stands up and says Esat (or whoever) is ****, without any facts, you ignore it, plain and simple. I only read these boards for opinions backed by facts. And say they do have wrong facts, it's easy to check them.

Take, for example the start of the topic about Esat lower cost DSL. I was most interested to find out if it was just an eircom resell. From all the discussion, I came to the conclusion that it is. But I didn't conclude that from just one post.

The internet is information, use it.

DeVore

Few points.

Johmb... thank you for saying what I was trying to say. You are an ethical person and though I've never met you, you're ok in my book


I am not, regardless of my ego, always right. I feel yesterday I was right. I still feel it but I am willing to accept that my feelings arent always the desires of the community. So be it, from now any anything like that will be run passed the level heads of sceptre and dusty. (I'm not one for unilateral action... )

We split and moved the thread to recycle bin. Unfortunately that put it out of reach of the mods and (because of the settings on that forums) from the users. Muck asked me to kill it to save peoples blushes (I'm still angry about the "burning orphanages" comment directed at me about which noone seems to give a ****).

I strongly objected to Muck and others at the time as I felt (and feel) that "you own your own words" and revisionism is an ugly thing. However I relented and at their request deleted the thread.

DeV.

DeVore

Flav, she outted herself by a slip up. If I had seen it I'd have outted her.

In the new world I would have brought it to the mods and we'd have decided. My vote would have been for public outting, I dunno how the others would vote.

I think the distinction is going to be drawn between deliberate deception and fanboyism.

DeV.