The "we don't discuss things before the courts" thing

Genuine question, can you please point me toward the legislation that states it's illegal to publicly discuss a jury trial in Ireland? Because all I can find in that regard relates to the jurors themselves, not you or I or Joe Public anywhere else.

Harvey Weinstein and P Diddy's cases are discussed

I think if you are using a case as an example to your point even if it is before the courts but not directly commenting on it, would that be allowed?

I don't fully understand why boards can sometimes take the attitude of closing discussion of cases before the courts in other jurisdictions, it does look to me to be an overreach and an overly cautious approach - but that's the thing: I don't fully understand.

I'm not a lawyer. Can I categorically say with total certainty that there's no risk to the site of potential legal action? Not entirely. I'm assuming the risk is tiny, but I don't know that for sure either.

And, unless, I'm mistaken, none of the mods, aside from Hullabaloo, by the looks of it, are legally versed... So, they, as a result do what's probably the most cautious thing: close the discussion, because they don't truly know what the actual level of risk is. Which I think, if we were being honest, very few of us do either.

Because, if you're wrong about it one way - the outcome is the discussion ends and people are frustrated. But you could potentially be wrong the other way and the site is faced with potential legal action - maybe that's unlikely, but, like I've said: how many of us know that's actually impossible?

One thing I would be fairly confident of is that boards couldn't afford to fight anything or have a day out in court. The risk might be tiny, but it'd be the end of the place I suspect, if anyone decided to make a case of it.

Comparing it to twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc isn't comparing like with like: these are huge companies with plenty of lawyers. Aside from the owner, boards has one employee, who's part time.

It would be good to know what the true status of things is but I suspect once you get into the weeds the nuts and bolts of it all are more complicated than it might appear at first.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you say, but I wouldn't disregard the importance of the "just in case" in all of that.

It is probably an overly cautious and prescriptive approach. But this place, unfortunately, due to resources and size, doesn't have the luxury to find out for sure if it's right or wrong, and so is compelled, to an extent, IMO, to be cautious first and foremost. That may not be the reality - just my theory about this.

But, yes, having said all that, it can seem arbitrary at times how threads closures about court cases abroad are used.

At the end of the day, neither of us can answer this definitively, I too would like clarity about this, there should be an attempt to provide some.

Is it just a case of "before the courts" equals not having to deal with the back and forth crap that would arise from discussing the Graham Linehan situation for the mods?

Anything outside of this country should be open for discussion.