Historic grievances/specific cases [split]

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vijayjohn
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Historic grievances/specific cases [split]

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-19, 17:26

dEhiN wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I am willing to post the full text of what I wrote in my e-mails to the admins and global mods at the time to prove it.

As long as it is only text written by you, I don't see why not.

It is only text written by me, with a bit of context just so that everyone can get a basic idea of how the conversation went. Below, I have replaced all names other than my own with [name] and all quotes in those e-mails I wrote with [text].

When I was banned, I wanted to appeal my ban but had trouble figuring out how I was supposed to contact the mods in the first place. The forum policy currently says to use unilang@unilang.org, but there is also a "contact us" form, which apparently leads to a different e-mail address (and I don't remember whether I could see the forum policy at that time or not since I was banned, or even whether the forum policy had that e-mail address in it at the time). So IIRC I used the form and wrote:
► Show Spoiler

I received a reply from a different address (if I'm not mistaken, this happened within about ten hours, and it is not possible for the mods to reply using the e-mail address that I had written to), then asked:
Can I be banned again as a result of trying to appeal my ban, if you or any of the other admins or global mods decide for example that I am disrespecting one or all of you in the process?

No response in two days.

So I wrote again:
► Show Spoiler

Finally, I got a reply that said little more than "yes." So I said:
► Show Spoiler

Then I got two replies, one promising me that my appeal would be listened to and another making excuses for the long delay in my second e-mail, to which I wrote a long reply and included a warning up front about its length:
► Show Spoiler

I received a long reply that was much shorter than mine, but I had more questions as a result, so I wrote another e-mail that was somewhat long though also shorter than my previous one:
► Show Spoiler

Then I received a reply asking me to summarize my previous e-mail, so I wrote:
► Show Spoiler

After this e-mail, I received an e-mail from one of the admins/global mods telling me that they had decided to reject my appeal, so I didn't say anything else. After my ban ended, I received a PM from one of them saying that I was on probation for an entire year following that PM.

The only thing I can see that might have been objectionable in this entire exchange, especially compared to the exchange I'm having currently on the forum, is that I said I was considering leaving and encouraging others to do the same. Later, I came to realize I didn't need to do that because the admins and global mods were already scaring everyone away.
Aurinĭa wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:This means, among other things, that the link that banned users are provided in case they want to contact them should be valid and lead to an operational e-mail address. This was not the case when I tried to appeal my own ban, and I find no reason to believe that it has changed since then.

It does work, and it did then too. You got a reply a few hours later.

Okay, I guess I was wrong, but there was a lot of confusion amongst the mods because some of them were receiving all e-mails that were part of the conversation I had with them and others were not.
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2018-02-19, 18:05, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-02-19, 17:42

vijayjohn wrote:No response in two days.

It was 24 hours. In fact, I was just writing a reply to you when I got your next e-mail. The reason why you didn't get any reply after my initial response was because you replied to my personal e-mail address instead of to the @unilang.org one. I happened to be out for the evening of the first day and most of the next day, so I didn't see your reply until 24 hours later.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-19, 17:46

Aurinĭa wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:No response in two days.

It was 24 hours.

No, I recall it being more than 24 hours. In any case, I maintain that 24 hours is still an absurdly long time to take to say "yes."
The reason why you didn't get any reply after my initial response was because you replied to my personal e-mail address

Which was also the one you replied from. :roll:
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2018-02-19, 17:51, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-02-19, 17:50

vijayjohn wrote:
Aurinĭa wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:No response in two days.

It was 24 hours.

I recall it being more than 24 hours. In any case, I maintain that 24 hours is still an absurdly long time to take to say "yes."

You're right, sorry, it was just over 27 hours. The e-mail sent to me personally was sent at 17:56 CET and then you sent another one the next day at 20:56 CET to the general e-mail address, which I replied to at 21:11 CET.

As it was, I was out without internet access, asleep, out without internet access for those 27 hours. Had you e-mailed the general @unilang address, you would have got a "yes" sooner.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-19, 17:54

Aurinĭa wrote:As it was, I was out without internet access, asleep, out without internet access for those 27 hours. Had you e-mailed the general @unilang address, you would have got a "yes" sooner.

All of which I was supposed to know how exactly?

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-02-19, 17:55

vijayjohn wrote:
The reason why you didn't get any reply after my initial response was because you replied to my personal e-mail address

Which was also the one you replied from. :roll:

Well, yes. The way it works is that e-mails sent to the @unilang.org address get redirected to our personal addresses, so we can't reply straight from it. We have to use our personal address to reply.

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Forum policy review 2018

Postby Johanna » 2018-02-20, 4:14

vijayjohn wrote:No, but UniLang isn't a business, and I daresay no business is run like UniLang.

No, but it's what it comes closest to.

By the way. Do you think that a 20+ something male in Texas should be able to tell a pornographic tale (even in text only) to a minor anywhere in the US without risking prison time if someone else caught on?
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-20, 4:18

Johanna wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:No, but UniLang isn't a business, and I daresay no business is run like UniLang.

No, but it's what it comes closest to.

No it's not. It comes closest to a forum because that's what it is. You're just making a bunch of false equivalences. I'll let you guess whether that's a great way to rebuild trust among your users.

Like linguoboy said, we're reasonable adults being given ridiculous excuses, and you're only exacerbating that problem right now.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Johanna » 2018-02-20, 4:24

What about the second part of my post? Can you please answer that as well?

Yes, this is an internet forum. Such forums are no democracies since they're privately owned.
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-20, 4:26

No.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Johanna » 2018-02-20, 4:31

vijayjohn wrote:No.

Huh?

"Do you think that a 20+ something male in Texas should be able to tell a pornographic tale (even in text only) to a minor anywhere in the US without risking prison time if someone else caught on?"

So, it should be perfectly OK on Unilang but not in the United States?
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-20, 4:34

That "no" was a response to "Can you please answer that as well?" They're false equivalences and not worth my time.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Johanna » 2018-02-20, 4:37

No it's a different thing, and I really want your input on that.

We've discussed similar issues before and I thought of it.
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-20, 4:38

And I'm really not interested in giving it to you.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Johanna » 2018-02-20, 4:42

Why? We are reasonable adults after all. And this isn't a very hard question.
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-20, 4:43

Because it's irrelevant to the topic this thread is for, I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps more to the point, I never cited any law. Also because you just managed to undermine even what little trust I had left in the moderation team.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-20, 4:54

Johanna wrote:Just a question: if you're an employee or a customer of a certain business, do you feel entitled to know what has transpired between HR and individual employees?

Do you think that you should be privy to any and all discussions among management?

It's interesting that you've chosen to take this tack, since the things I'm advocating for here are the same things I'm advocating for at my place of work. (For instance I complained that they fired someone and kept it so secret that even colleagues collaborating on projects weren't told. As a result, they agreed to start announcing all personel changes on an intranet website quite similar to what's been proposed here to keep track of bannings and which you're resisting on "privacy" grounds.)

We had a similar level of distrust between management and non-management, so we hired an outside consultant to help us restructure the organisation in a less hierarchical, more transparent way. Obviously we couldn't afford to do that here, but I can certainly point you to the resources we're using. They're pretty well documented, because this is the direction most progressive companies are moving.

It's not enough to compare Unilang to a "business" without asking what sort of business we're in. After all, you wouldn't run a hotdog stand the same way you would a social media empire and a small design firm has different needs than a nonprofit hospice.

So what business do you think we most resemble and why? What is our "product" and who are our "customers"? And what implications does all this have for how we should be run?
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby Johanna » 2018-02-20, 5:09

linguoboy wrote:
Johanna wrote:Just a question: if you're an employee or a customer of a certain business, do you feel entitled to know what has transpired between HR and individual employees?

Do you think that you should be privy to any and all discussions among management?

It's interesting that you've chosen to take this tack, since the things I'm advocating for here are the same things I'm advocating for at my place of work. (For instance I complained that they fired someone and kept it so secret that even colleagues collaborating on projects weren't told. As a result, they agreed to start announcing all personel changes on an intranet website quite similar to what's been proposed here to keep track of bannings and which you're resisting on "privacy" grounds.)

We had a similar level of distrust between management and non-management, so we hired an outside consultant to help us restructure the organisation in a less hierarchical, more transparent way. Obviously we couldn't afford to do that here, but I can certainly point you to the resources we're using. They're pretty well documented, because this is the direction most progressive companies are moving.

It's not enough to compare Unilang to a "business" without asking what sort of business we're in. After all, you wouldn't run a hotdog stand the same way you would a social media empire and a small design firm has different needs than a nonprofit hospice.

So what business do you think we most resemble and why? And what implications does this have for how we should be run?

There is a lot of food for thought here...

I honestly don't know what kind of business, especially since it differs between countries, just that it's more of one than a democratic country.

A very important aspect, however, is that a forum is subject to actual laws. You understand this, but not everyone does, apparently.
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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-20, 5:31

I get that it's subject to laws. I also get that Texas law has nothing to do with this forum.

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Re: Forum policy review 2018

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-20, 5:36

Johanna wrote:I honestly don't know what kind of business, especially since it differs between countries, just that it's more of one than a democratic country.

Democracy isn't just for countries, you know.

(Personally, I would say we're not much a country or a company. This is basically a social group. We just meet in a virtual online space rather than a rented hall.)

Johanna wrote:A very important aspect, however, is that a forum is subject to actual laws. You understand this, but not everyone does, apparently.

You know full well that's untrue. At one time, I would even have said a remark like that was unworthy of you.
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