• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Future of the Forum

rdaneel said:
Exactly, just because the rule "came down from above" doesn't necessarily mean it was wrong. Yes we should discuss the what moderation is needed, but I'm assuming that we want the forum to continue to be seen as an educational resource that people take seriously, and that means we should be concerned about what shows up attached to it's name in Google searches.
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If anything, from my perspective, the JREF rules have always seemed a bit too vague, and occasionally seemingly arbitrary in their enforcement. And there seems to be a constant push pack from a substantive portion of the posting community to test, minimize and where possible eliminate the rules that existed. This is one of the reasons I really don't hold much hope for a follow-on of this board. More boards die from weak and inconsistent moderation than thrive from a lack of good moderation,...in my experience.
 
Darat said:
Perhaps a little bit more research is called for before making such aspersions? The change of a hotlinked image to a porn or otherwise unsuitable image has always been one of the stated reasons for the no hotlinking rule. Indeed the forum has actually had incidents in which an innocuous image was changed to a hard core porn image.
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I think a little commonsense needs to be used. Hotlinking images to the sites of organisation like NASA , Discovery, NatGeo, Scientific American, Nature etc won't result in hard core porn substitution.

Banning hotlinking because of the million to one chance that a linked image might one day be replaced displays a level of paranoia worthy of a twoofer.

I hotlink images all the time on this and other forums, but only to my own Dropbox public folder. This means I have total control over what is displayed in any forum I post images on.
 
I hope rules on swearing, smut and insults aren't relaxed at all.

This is one of the few places where a discussion can be had without it.

I would certainly reconsider posting here if it was allowed to become the free for all seen everywhere else.
 
If the rules are changed significantly, I, and I'm sure many others, will be out of here. They've been good enough for my 7 years here, despite the yellow cards I've received.

In addition, I would not support "priors" being deleted.
 
remirol said:
[*]Rule 2 can be rolled back to "please don't hotlink hardcore right in the middle of the the ****** thread, eh".
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What Rule 2 are you talking about?

2. You will not post anything that is pornographic, obscene, or contains excessive reference to violence and/or explicit sexual acts. This includes representational artwork as well as photographic or video media and includes linking directly to such content from the Forum.
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You seriously want that rolled back to "please don't hotlink"??


remirol said:
[*]Rules 5, 9, and 10 can be discarded.
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First of all, since you say 5 here, I'm even more confused why you said Rule 2 above. Perhaps you meant Rule 4 when you said Rule 2?

OK, I maybe understand why you say 5 and 10. But 9?? Why would one ever want to post about "sexual or excretory organs or activities in an offensive manner"? What good would that do ever? There has already been an exception for that in legitimate specific topic science threads (prostate surgery related issues and the like)... What other possible reason would there be for that?
 
truethat said:
This is amusing to me. I do have to wonder why there have been so many incidents of mods and people on the site saying something "can't be done" when it's done by us in a few minutes.

I think that people will eventually find their way around to each other again. What's up with the Australian Skeptics Site? Aren't they up and running already?
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Where has that been said?
 
luchog said:
I, for one, would not want to see the current rules of engagement change to any significant degree. The state of moderation of this forum is one of the primary reasons I'm here, instead of one of the other skeptical fora. Especially rules 10, 11, and 12. I strongly appreciate how the moderators work to keep threads on topic, and reign in threads that have devolved into personal attacks and bad noise. With most other fora I've looked at, once a thread gets over about 3-5 pages, any useful discussion has long since evaporated. Here, while there tends to be a lot of repetition after that point, there is still a lot of useful commentary as well.

I think that the rules as they stand have stood the test of time very well, and to change them too much would be to change the forum into something considerably less useful, less entertaining, and less like the ray of sanity that I've come to depends on.
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I agree. The MA is what makes this forum what it is. I do admit that I am a bit of a prude though...


jhunter1163 said:
I agree that we should not make major changes to the MA, but it will certainly be reviewed and possibly tweaked (I would not oppose relaxing the rules further in the Community section, assuming there is still a Community section).
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That sounds perfectly reasonable.
 
smartcooky said:
I think a little commonsense needs to be used. Hotlinking images to the sites of organisation like NASA , Discovery, NatGeo, Scientific American, Nature etc won't result in hard core porn substitution.

Banning hotlinking because of the million to one chance that a linked image might one day be replaced displays a level of paranoia worthy of a twoofer.

I hotlink images all the time on this and other forums, but only to my own Dropbox public folder. This means I have total control over what is displayed in any forum I post images on.
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First highlight: Hotlinking is not banned.
Second highlight: On this forum images hotlinked to sites have been replaced with hardcore porn images, images of an ..er... excited dog, images of phrases of "don't steal my bandwidth" but in rather more colourful language.
 
r-j said:
Actually, linking to an image you are hosting would make it quite easy to switch the image later, unlike a link to a news or science web page, which would probably never switch out a scientific image for a porn one.

If the intent is to avoid somebody slipping in a goatse image now and then, it would be illegal to link to any image outside the site, with exceptions made for trusted scientific and news organizations.
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Allowing hotlinking would allow someone to edit their post days, or even years, into the future. You could make doing that a separate offense, but it would be almost impossible to prove that they were the ones who did it.

(Most free image hosting sites prevent this by not allowing you to use the same URL twice. But that would be pretty easy to get around by using your own site, or by merely using a redirect link in the post originally and then changing what it directs to later.... (Do the
 
Chaos said:
The rules here and the way they are enforced have stopped neither insults nor personal attacks.
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I strongly disagree with that. The rules here and the way they are enforced have stopped both insults and personal attacks to an incredible degree. Darat has even been very strict about cases of sophistry. Is the only subforum you visit Forum Community or something??
 
Hotlinking is a really bad idea, even if it's to a member's own personal server. Imagine what a disgruntled bannee could do with years of hotlinked posts in just a few minutes. It's not just paranoia either; I saw a Tom Cruise forum completely destroyed by Anonymous in a matter of minutes using this method.

That being said, it's probably premature to discuss rules changes at this juncture. If it were up to me (which it ain't) I would save that discussion for one of the first threads on the new forum. If the JREF is going to sponsor us for a limited amount of time after the move, we'll probably be obliged to stick to the current rules until that connection is completely and finally severed.
 
Apology said:
Hotlinking is a really bad idea, even if it's to a member's own personal server. Imagine what a disgruntled bannee could do with years of hotlinked posts in just a few minutes. It's not just paranoia either; I saw a Tom Cruise forum completely destroyed by Anonymous in a matter of minutes using this method.
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But we've all had that ability for the last decade. To be honest, the same thought has occurred to me, since most of the pictures I post are hosted in my own webspace. But it hasn't led to any sort of apocalypse so far.
 
Anyone know how much data we are talking about if entire threads could be made available for download? I imagine you'd still have to have a basic bb format viewer to read the data, but all the problems aside what actual volume are we talking about for some of the medium size and long threads?

(Next forum I will keep a running and updated references page!)
 
Trakar said:
Anyone know how much data we are talking about if entire threads could be made available for download? I imagine you'd still have to have a basic bb format viewer to read the data, but all the problems aside what actual volume are we talking about for some of the medium size and long threads?

(Next forum I will keep a running and updated references page!)
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backup of this forum's database is 18GB
 
Chaos said:
The rules here and the way they are enforced have stopped neither insults nor personal attacks.
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Are both you and r-j unable to understand my meaning ?

Removing rules 0 and 12 would result in pretty much no reason for anyone to visit this forum as opposed to, say, go to any forum where all they do is flame away all day. Yes, there is vitriol (mostly by Darat, of course) and insults, here, but nowhere near the level where discussion is impossible across the board.
 
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