Originally Posted by hlee1169

Best response in this long thread. Agree 100%, wish others could be as level-headed as the OP.

Originally Posted by Edgy01

Unfortunately, most of you (save the moderators) have no idea what really happened herein.

Originally Posted by Edgy01

If the moderators would have taken the time from the start of this and exercised appropriate damage control this thread would never have come to being.

Originally Posted by Edgy01

The allegations against Ben will ultimately be shown to be false.

Originally Posted by Edgy01

But the damage has already been done.

Originally Posted by Edgy01

I wouldn't blame him to ask the List to extract all of his postings, since the List moderators have granted that to the other side.

Originally Posted by simsgw

You're also badly informed about the reality of running any operation, physical or virtual, that would be seen by a court as inviting public speech. I understand, but that doesn't make it better, just understandable.

To be less arcane, J.C.Penney does not fall into this category. If you climb on a counter and starting spouting nonsense -- or wisdom -- in a J.C.Penney department store, you are clearly violating the invitation to shop there. And you will be removed. Without discussion and without J.C. Penney incurring any legal liability for what you've said.

A forum or a physical site that invites people to speak their mind has a different problem. Let's talk about that. Three points really, that people are seriously confusing in this thread. But before I continue, let me not add to the confusion. I am not a moderator on this forum or associated with Rennlist in any way. Here, I'm just a visitor. Elsewhere... Well, anyway:

First. Many forms of speech are censured (Note the spelling. Not censored, but censured. You can look up the difference. I won't bother here.) under our common law and by specific legislation as well. When we open a forum that invites public speech we must make reasonable efforts to ensure we do not encourage speech that violates those boundaries. If I were to libel someone in this post, Rennlist is not responsible so long as they are making reasonable efforts to spot such behavior and then censure me. Thus arises the legal need for moderation, even if it were not necessary to maintain civility, to maintain a pleasant atmosphere for others.

If I persist in uttering legally unacceptable statements, then the forum managers must stop my using their forum for such behavior. This is their responsibility, both by social expectation of their civil members and under the law. They can never be seen as encouraging libel or several other forms of speech that the law bans in general and permits only in exceptional cases that are seen as essential to a free press. I mean that comments that might be libel between private persons are tolerated between politicians or in press commentary about a politician. So are most statements about people who invite public scrutiny of their life. Not so when the speech is directed toward private persons. That type of speech is an interesting train wreck, but none of our concern, if it happens on a street corner or on a counter in J.C. Penney. But when we open a forum, we share responsiblity for what is said. We accept a duty to perform moderation whenever we open a forum for public speech.

The point? Kwitcherbellyakin. The moderators are performing a duty under the law, as well as to civility.

Second. If a person has been warned repeatedly and persists in such behavior, not only must they be blocked from using the facilities a forum provides, but it is worse. The legal liability of the forum extends to any future 'utterance' that is made with those facilities. The archive of a forum is a facility, a feature that allows what someone says to be read by future visitors and re-read by those who read it the first time. When someone is blocked from making future contributions, they must also be blocked from "speaking to the future" through the archive. We are re-publishing their speech if we permit that.

That does not mean the forum is obligated to erase all past statements. It does mean they are liable for the content of those statements and if they don't erase them, they must review each one to ensure it was not a statement similar in nature to those that required the individual be blocked from current and future statements.

In other words, if someone makes a statement, a libel or threat or otherwise, that requires they be blocked, a court will consider that the forum is endorsing any past statements of that person if they are not also removed from the archive. Not that all the statements in the past will be ones that put the forum in legal jeopardy, but if any of them do, then a court would consider the forum inherently negligent for letting them remain in the archive. If there had been a libel uttered three years ago, and if it can be called up tomorrow, the forum is just as libel tomorrow as if they had applauded the statement three years ago.

The forum managers may be willing to sort through all past statements of a current offender in order to let those return to the archive that are valuable or simply interesting to others, but the obligation to review and edit those past statements just rose to an entirely new level when the forum has recognized improper current behavior.

Must all the posts be erased? No. But if not, they must be reviewed however. And carefully. Usually by people who are volunteering their time and have a real life that demands occasional attention. Families are like that. If you're talking about a voluminous poster, that can take a long time. "We warned this guy last year. Did we spot all his posts that time? Or did he slip in a post we missed that could get us drug into court along with him? Now that he has been explicit about <some no-no>, we also have to check for sly remarks that look different now. Remarks a court would consider we should have caught. Hey, did he change user names two years ago? Did we catch all those earlier posts and read them? Aaaagh!" What? Sorry, boss. I was just taking some notes here. I was paying attention to everything you said. Honest.

I'm telling you what any good manager of a forum thinks, not trying to impute words to the managers of this forum necessarily. I do know that any person complaining that someone on the forum has put them in fear of their safety, what the law in most states calls "a reasonable concern", will get the immediate and earnest attention of a moderator. Any moderator not interested in seeing the forum closed by a court anyway. Insults are bad enough. "Reasonable fear" jumps to a whole new level. From civil liability, we move to felonious criminal activity. You simply can not let your forum be used as a vehicle for assault or libel or any of the other unacceptable behaviors in the eyes of the law.

Notice that so far I've said nothing at all about requiring members to behave in a civil manner so that others can enjoy the forum. Every forum wants that, but a whole lot of judgment goes into that category. Your opinion and mine is always relevant to the moderators in such cases. If someone is given to wild but entertaining statements, even distracting ones that go far off topic, that may well be permitted simply because other members are willing to tolerate it. Sometimes we enjoy watching a drunk stumble around. In matters of law, that is not the case. Your opinion and mine do not matter in the least to a well run forum. Only their obligation to the law. And if another person is concerned, than the law imposes obligations and duties to that person as well.

For example, we had a person who made comments to another poster that were not cordial, but not strictly beyond the pale if considered alone. The woman member wrote privately to say that the person being offensive to her sounded like an ex-boy friend who had been stalking her and had followed her through two addresses in different states before she lost him at last. She was very upset and seriously concerned that he had found her again. At least found her virtually. "Can he find my new home through the information on this forum? Can you even tell whether it is him? What do I do now to disguise myself?"

She was seriously upset, and we could not help but sympathize. Moreover, we had incurred a duty as soon as we learned the background. What sounds merely impolite between strangers can be a veiled threat between two people with a history. It was our legal obligation -- not to mention our duty if we wanted to hold our heads up -- to do something further. I won't say what we did, but we were as thorough as Deep Geeks know how to be without violating the law ourselves.

Now I'm not going to name her. Nor will I name the man she thought was her stalker. The reason I won't is:

THIRD. A big one that many of you are ignoring. The person who seems to have breeched the limits of permitted speech in a legal sense is also entitled to consideration. Legally entitled. No matter how offensive that person may have been to us moderators, as well as simple members of the forum. We as moderators are not a court. We don't get to decide "that was a threat" or "that was libel", even though it may be so in our private judgment. We cannot say "Whosit committed a libel so we banned him." We cannot without being subject to penalty ourselves anyway. We are legally required to exercise judgment, but we cannot proclaim judgment. Think about it. The difference isn't all that subtle, really.

We cannot even quote what was said to let others judge for themselves. If we do, we are again publishing a statement that we suspected was libelous or whatever in the first place. Our own liability just sky rocketed if we do that. If it shouldn't have been said in the first place, we obviously cannot repeat it. We cannot in any form or style conduct a public inquiry inviting comment or a vote on the correctness of removing someone. If you know a forum that does such things, they are not properly aware of their legal liability. This ain't a bloody TV island. This certainly isn't a public park, and the protections afforded the park don't apply to a private forum. So we can't even invite debate on the propriety of what was said. At least not by repeating the statements or seeming to invite the opinion of ordinary members. We can't stop gossip so long as it remains innocuous itself, but we can't encourage even that.

The forum bears a legal responsibility it cannot share, and the responsibility includes not talking about what they do.

The point? It's the law. If you can't see the reasons for it, become a lawyer or a legislator and write your own laws. This is how forums work.

So forums have the right to arbitrarily remove someone, but they are not in general permitted to say why. Except to say: "for saying things (or other behavior than speech if the forum features offer such possibilities) that are not acceptable under our terms of membership." To say more, a forum risks commiting libel themselves. Or, since truth is one of several defenses to a charge of libel, they can simply end up obligated to spend a lot of money letting a court second guess their judgment.

Smart people don't invite that situation. They just say "He broke the rules one time too many." I wouldn't expect the moderators of a forum as active as Rennlist to be anything but smart.

All that legal stuff notwithstanding, civil people do not gossip about something unpleasant they had to do, however nosy others may be. The reasons for dismissing someone are private. Period. The law wants it that way, and courtesy demands it of the moderators in any case.

And if all that doesn't sway you, let me add a personal opinion. I came here to talk about Porsches, not to hear one member insulting another. You're boring the hell out of me.

Gary, with more background in all this than
should be wished on one person not paid
to sit on hard wooden chairs all day long

Originally Posted by brendorenn

i, too, would like some explanation but it's not going to kill me not to have it. i just read thru the day's posts and i don't make the connection between OCBen, MDrums and the grassy knoll.

in the one PM i ever sent to the mods, in defense of some ****head who made fun of the fact that mdrums was missing a leg, the response i got was very level headed, grounded and i have no idea if they took any action.

i have absolutely no reason to believe the mods behaved with 1/2 the anger ocben sometimes displayed. if they felt like banning him was appropriate, then there you have it. i think he added value sometimes, but apparently overstepped the bounds.

lastly, i don't get the hyperbole. it's not censorship. it's not like china and google. it's not like some poor bastard getting gunned down in Tiananmen Square for chrissakes. it's like some guy you see at the bar all the time got drunk again and got kicked out for the last time. some of the color is gone, for sure, but at some point, enough is enough.

Originally Posted by simsgw

Thus arises the [ed.] need for moderation, [ed.] to maintain civility, to maintain a pleasant atmosphere for others.

Originally Posted by Mike in CA

I think it is silly to get all fired up about something based on rumor and hearsay. If that's what we're looking for, maybe we could all have a grand debate about death panels or Obama's lack of legitimate citizenship instead.

Originally Posted by RonCT

I've been silent on this subject because, quite honestly, I've been busy with "real life" and I tend to avoid OT / Politics because there are other mods that enjoy debate

Yes, all of us moderators and Admin Bob are volunteers. For one reason or another it is all of us forum members that have consciously or subconsciously selected the moderators. When I was asked, it was suggested that I have a level, unbiased history with RennList and that my help would be apprecaited.

All we can do is enforce the rules and encourage civility to the best of our ability. But once in Blue Moon (we had one recently) there's an issue that is a new and unique combination that requires a non-traditional response. What nobody is considering is that the response that was taken could be as it was because of privacy / legal implications that cannot be openly discussed. As has been clarified numerous times, no posts were deleted, rather everything was put on temporary hold pending further review, which obviously is now complete because posts were turned back on.

Everyone is entitled to their fantasy of conspiracy theory, but in this case, and in every other one I've experienced here at the forum, there simply isn't one. This is a good group of moderators and admin trying to enforce the terms of use and respect everyone's position and rights and take a measured response to every given situation that arises.

I don't know many of you in real life, but there are my fellow PCA members / Instructors that do know me. I think I've proven over the many years of contribution here at the forum that I'm a reasonable and rational person, always looking for balance. And then when I was asked to volunteer to help moderate I accepted knowing there may be difficult decisions to be made in the future. This was clearly a difficult and complicated situation and hopefully we can return our energies and enthusiasm to what this site was created for - discussion about our passion for Porsche cars.

Originally Posted by Dr. No

No doubt it is difficult dealing with conflicts involving judgmental know-it-alls.

Thank you and all the mods for your service to Rennlist.

Originally Posted by uzj100

Would you like to do that in this thread?

Originally Posted by simsgw

Gary, with more background in all this than
should be wished on one person not paid
to sit on hard wooden chairs all day long