What should the character of this board be?

[The Gorn]

I unilaterally decided (more or less) that postings that appear to be "hate" related, such as specific ethnic slurs and derogatory commentary about ethnic, national and occupational groups, should be actively discouraged.

Now I am not sure that this is a good idea.

If I exercise this policy completely consistently, it also means that we can't (for instance) say something perjorative about Iranian or Palestinian culture, or even Al-Qaeda operatives, because it can appear to be ethnically based hate.

The side of the line I've basically been on is to treat any landed or offshore worker who is affiliated with US based business as another racial minority. Just as you're not going to post common stereotypes about blacks or asians, I do not want to see postings about "curry eaters" becoming a subject matter in itself.

Also, I am saying that anything OUTSIDE these boundaries is fair game for stereotyping and perjoratives, including slamming countries and their citizens for specific policies.

The basic criteria I apply is: could a LEGITIMATE "alien" who went through proper immigration channels read the stuff here and be personally offended without being targeted themselves? If so, then the posting does not belong here. Golden Rule stuff.

But that's admittedly my opinion and my preference for the nature of this board.

My own vote is #3, and specific actions depend upon the ugliness that is happening. Ugly, now that's another debate...

If the choice comes in at #1, I will probably hand moderation over to someone else, because it's basically "Lord of the Flies" time.  If #5 wins, then... heh... you feel lucky, punk?

[TRexx]

I voted  "no one should be offended..." even though it's a poor choice of words.  You can't stop people from being offended. What is perfectly reasonable for you might be terribly offensive to me.    

I have a simple approach when I encounter offensive material on a public forum. I ignore it, and try to remember who presented it. Then when I encounter additional information from that individual I can better evaluate it.

[The Original Dinosaur]

Everyone has their stereotypes.  Can't stop that.  Some may see certain remarks as generic slurs on certain groups and take offense, you can't stop their taking offense, and I for one, give my permission and blessing to any and all who choose to take offense at my remarks.  I haven't lost a flame war yet!  

Let's be clear that it takes two to tango: give offense, take offense.

What you can and should police is ad hominem attacks on individual members of the forum.

[Mr80211a]

The other day I pointed out the clear racism in the posts from MWS.  

Is this an "ad hominem" attack?

Racism is sickening and you would hope the professionals here would boycott such things.  Makes you wonder just how many "professionals" really stop by here.

[The Gorn]

To answer your question: MWSH brought it on himself. I think he's been around here enough to know what the response would be. Saying there's a lot of bullsh*t in the H1B program and the various players are in on the scam is fair game, but he added a lot of other stuff that was begging to be torn apart.

In reference to your remarks about the calibre of the people here -

Some of us do discuss business, job and career strategies here - the portions that we can directly control.

I like to help others when I can. I found a developer for my client last spring here. I've posted requests for technical assistance, and I've responded to quite a few.

Professionalism is an attribute of how you act publicly.

Now, if you're just coming by to critique regulars as losers, then maybe this is not the place for you, either.

[The Original Dinosaur]

Please be careful with that "racism" label.  It is often used to justify criminal behavior.

For example, if I protest having my pocket picked by a person of another race, that's not racism, that's objecting to being robbed.

And if the robber says he has a right to pick my pocket because I am a stupid, lazy American, now that's racism.

You are correct - racism is sickening.  So is stealing.

[StoneCold BlueBeard]

"What you can and should police is ad hominem attacks on individual members of the forum. "

like this one?

[unixwindmill]

Lately, I've begun to doubt how professional some of the regulars on this board are really like.  Racism is bad for business.   Fitting in with H1Bs is a requirement of surviving in this field nowadays.

[JTGalt]

I can see your point about keeping this board on a higher level of discourse however one problem with nuking entire threads is that it just encourages more personal attacks.

For example if someone posts an expose about a new scam that borks are engaged in and some bork does not want that information to circulate when he realizes that all he has to do to make that entire thread disappear is simply launch some vicious personal attacks he will not hesitate to do it.

One alternate is just to create a new section at the very bottom with a name like "The Dump" or "The Dumping Grounds" or something similar along with very specific warnings not to go there if you are easily offended. That way you can keep the rest of the sections at the level of quality that you prefer with anything that goes under the line automatically being moved to the dump.

Also it would be good to work with other boards with referals.
For instance if someone is dumping too much negative stuff here you could refer them to somewhere like...

Unemployed IT
p103.ezboard.com/funemployeditfrm2

Where they eat that up.

Also invite people there who have a tendency to post too much positive stuff there to drop by here with that once in a while.

[JBB]

I voted number 3 but I think it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to implement evenly.  Racial and ethnic stereotyping can be so subtle to one group of people while simultaneously being obvious to another.  I would suggest that the reality of it is that if you're going to actively moderate, maybe we should decide just what it is we're here on this board to do, thereby identifying what it is we should be talking about.  

I think some of the forums we have detract away from what I thought the purpose of this board was, what it started out to be in the first lace, which was a place for contract and consulting professionals to come and discuss issues around the business.  We've moved away from that.  I've protested some of the changes as I have seen this coming.

I would suggest that consider some or all of the following.

1.  Eliminate the Politics, Religion, and Society forum from the board.  It completely detracts away from the point of this board.  Those topics breed discord and debate of a sort that this board doesn't need.  Go elsewhere to debate and discuss religion.  Go elsewhere to debate and discuss Society.  Any discussion of Politics should be narrowly focused on issues relating to I.T. in some way, shape, or form.
2.  Eliminate the Investment and the Economy forum.  Go onto your investment banker's website forum and talk about it there.  I don't care how your stocks are performing and how much you gained or lost.
3.  Do not create new forums on the board without soliciting input from the members of the board first and getting a majority decision about it.  Spell out what those forums are and what they are to be used for.
4.  Post a permanent message at the top of each forum that describes the kind of discourse that is allowed within each forum and police anything that strays too far outside the lines.  Move it to another forum or remove it.
5.  Require that members use professional decorum when having discussions.  This discourse about "curry-eaters" should have been removed when it began.

If I think of more, I'll post any additional ideas.  That's all I have thought about so far.  Just my thoughts.

[The Gorn]

I hear you. I always thought of this as a place where one could have a reasonable and informal discussion with peers. Of course, absolutely nobody seems to agree on the scope of reasonability, and that's the entire problem we have today.

By clamping down so much and being so particular, as you recommend, the board will become less freewheeling.

Who knows, just maybe the freewheeling nature kills off professional discussions.

You've given me good ideas in your post, JBB. To be honest I am uncomfortable with the degree of clampdown you're proposing. I need to think about it.

But I may graft some of your concepts onto the present structure. Maybe what we should try is restricting the divisive discussions to one section, and mandate that any discussion type in a short list goes there only.

[Debs]

I'll admit to being a bit offended by some of the more pointed references to those of other nationalities that appear on the board.  Mostly I ignore it, considering the expressed personality of the poster.  Occasionally, I have asked a poster to reconsider his language, but only when I have considered that individual to have gotten carried away and open to considering the feelings of other readers.  In other words, while I think the board should have a policy of discouraging certain types of negative racial stereotyping, some people are just not open to considering the feelings of others and will label that freedom of speech.  

I don't think entire threads should be nuked, or even entire posts, but I think a list of terms should be forbidden, and if they are used dashed out within the post (like: (-----)).  This allows readers to understand the point of the poster without being offended by the words - just the sentiment.  And that helps identify it for what it is, differentiating between anger, frustration and hatred (which I don't see a lot of on this board).  That way posters can express themselves without being offensive to any of the wide variety of readers on the board, and still preserve the issue of free speech...

Debbie

[Webmaster Extraordinaire]

I voted #3.  The problem with racial comments is that, at least here in California, everytime anything comes up related to immigration the lobbies cry racism.  It doesn't do us any good to have MWSH prove them to be right.

JT's posting, however, was spot on.  Don't like a thread, post something racist, bye-bye thread.

[Poster Rabid]

Before you decide to moderate more heavily, notice how many people get drawn out of the woodwork on controversiol issues. Even some who have never been heard from before. So far these discussions have gone over the edge a little bit, but they seem to return to a civil discourse.

Sometimes you need to stir things up a bit to attract attention. Some of these new people may continue to participate more frequently, and that's a good thing for this board. .. the wascally wabid

[Poster Rabid]

When I first started monitoring Real Rates 5 years ago, the level of discussion was focussed on globally important issues like "Who should make the coffee? The consultant or the Employees". I watched the splitup and frankly, this forum has always been far better. At that time, I was a consultant, but times got hard and I went FTE with one of my customers and never regretted it. I still enjoy the discourse although I don't participate much, I still learn a lot about what's going on.

As Debs said, at this point the board seems to be self regulating and some will admonish the others which seems to straighten things out (for a while  ).

... Still Rabid after all these years . P.R.