Author Topic: Official Announcement: I Am no longer part of WinMXWorld (Read 4039 times)

KM · « **on:** November 18, 2006, 04:06:17 am »

I hereby officially announce that I will no longer partake in any winmxworld related activities

Since its creation WinMXWorld has been basically run by the 3 senior admins (me, me_here, and ghostship/quicks/dazzle/fuck loads of other alises), with additional admins/mods/whatever that have varied over the years, the various admins have changed but all along the 3 main people running the site stayed the same.

That is no longer the case, I have now resigned from all participation in anything winmxworld related. Moderators will not need an explanation as to why - the thread in the mod section regarding the censorship policy that they are attempting to impose should be clear enough as to my reasons. Anyone else - well, there is a thread in the mod section regarding those 2 wanting to censor posts on the forum, with my views making it quite clear that I will have nothing to do with such actions.

I have always wanted a great help site for winmx and worked with them to get winmxworld in to that help site, I have worked hard to get winmxworld in to a great help site along with the others involved, however there are certain things I will not ever allow myself to be involved in, censorship is one of those things. As this site now has an official censorship policy I feel i can no longer have any involvement in it - I can not support any site that practices censorship no matter who it is.

I also recently announced I would not be going to the winmxworld chat rooms due to their allowing a known troublemaker full admin access (full * access), a policy which completely undermines the entire room, and I did not wish to be involved in it. This has now been followed by implementing a policy of censorship on the website, therefore I can not allow myself to have any involvement with any winmxworld activities.

If they wish to have winmxworld run like that then they can do so, I will never compromise myself by allowing myself to have any involvement in such activities and that is why I will not have any further involvement with winmxworld.

btw, i strongly advise against imposing your censorship policy on this post, as it will result in the original post being placed on several home pages which are extremely visible to users.

ghosts last post regarding the fact that guest posts can't be edited (a bug in the mod being used for code verification, something that can not be sorted as the mod is not being updated and the solution to it is either disable the mod and have a lot of spamming, or upgrading the forum to a beta version, which is rather buggy):

Quote from: GhostShip

Here's the final word on this subject, either fix the mod or watch the posts disappear KM, I don't require lessons in dealing with idiots and where are you coming from with insulting me_here with accusations of censorship that I and her agree should take place, is that really justified ?

Free speech comes with a price tag of respecting the rules of the site you post on, its been policy from day one to try to calm down verbal attacks and editing posts to remove the worst of the sting of inflammatory remarks is a sensible policy, put another way, we are not bound by your moral dilemma's as you are not bound by ours, either fix the mod or we shall just have to take drastic action as on this matter you are outvoted.

Why simple matters should come to this sort of level is beyond me :roll:

it's a good job that guest post editing is broken and any edits have to be done by me in the database rather than through the forum, otherwise how many posts would have been censored already without them even bothering to tell anyone about it?

~~Josh~~ · « **Reply #1 on:** November 18, 2006, 05:17:24 am »

Oh Boy.

SamSeeSam · « **Reply #2 on:** November 18, 2006, 06:50:15 am »

But that censorship was for only unnecessary swearing (eg : converting ass into a**) and posting Ip's.
Nothing else.....

Cheers

chuck · « **Reply #3 on:** November 18, 2006, 06:53:36 am »

Hmm ok so next week they will change the sites name to vladd44? Its not being used at this tiime i hear.

This is a sad day for mx .

GhostShip · « **Reply #4 on:** November 18, 2006, 08:31:28 am »

As Sam has mentioned folks what KM has failed to tell you is that the so called "censorship" is the turning of words into F**k or c**t rather than the original swear words as has been done many times over the last year with no complaint from anyone, in fact its been a problem for me personally as many posts by Ice/Bug contained swearing and I have had folks like Nobby believing I allowed the swearing on purpose, the real reason was due to the forum having the Bug he mentions, I was and am still, unable to edit those posts.

Why has this come to a head this week ?

In one of the threads was a post by Iron Monkey containing an overlarge quantity of swearing, me here wished to convert most of the swearing to the format I described above, in this I support her.

May I suggest KM you rethink your terminology, no one has been silenced, all posts always still accurately reflect the intent of the original poster as has always been the case, and making decision like the one above after a night out drinking is rash and foolhardy.

I will be speaking to you regarding the sites future.

Bearded Blunder · « **Reply #5 on:** November 18, 2006, 08:52:19 am »

* Bearded Blunder hasn't seen anything he thought *needed* editing to even notice it was broken....

hmmmmmmmmmm

chuck · « **Reply #6 on:** November 18, 2006, 08:53:00 am »

If that is all you intend to censor then i have to retract what i said and i agree with you 100%.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but i think you can see how it happened.

reef · « **Reply #7 on:** November 18, 2006, 09:38:51 am »

Not Good News...don't know ya personally KM,but i've been followin
this forum for sometime now and read this forum several times a day.
A lot of people will miss your informative posts including myself.I
sure hope this gets resolved soon... This place won't be the same if
it doesnt. :shock:

KM · « **Reply #8 on:** November 18, 2006, 01:07:33 pm »

If you think that is the first instance of post editing, find my previous announcement about how everything is going down hill which "didn't look good for the site"... you can't find it? i wonder why...

also find out the reason for snippys last ban from the site, normally i'm the first to want to ban him (well, it's true... lol) however in that case he posted something in the lyte section which was quite appropriate but which ghostship said didn't reflect positively on me - it was clearly a joke post, and was deleted by him and restored by me several times before he gave up trying to censor it and just banned him instead

and the reason why did not agree with editing the post was because it was not just changing a few words, what was actually requested was that i completely change the entire meaning of the post - every post has something it is trying to convey, and changing that is not merely a small edit, it makes the posters original message worthless and effectively puts words in their mouth

GhostShip · « **Reply #9 on:** November 18, 2006, 01:31:16 pm »

KM can I remind you of something, your own words in fact, we are the site operators and you are our friend and tech support, all decisions here are democratic, just because you dont agree with one and believed your rights superceed evryone elses that does not make it true.

Lets be honest you had no right to restore any posts let alone 6 times.

You will of course remember I let you ban Nobby after a vote in wich I was outvloted, perhaps you should do the decent thing and take losing a vote like a gentleman instead of complaining.

I would rather the site was closed than allow you to undo all the good work done here, stop acting like a prima donna and accept anything that is done here is done in good faith, something I,m not seeing from your posts.

KM · « **Reply #10 on:** November 18, 2006, 01:45:07 pm »

Thank you for doing a very good job of summarising why I do not wish to have any further involvement in your site and no longer wish to be your tech support...

perhaps a lot of time would have been saved if you had made your position clear from the start instead of pretending that we were meant to be working together to make a decent winmx help site

GhostShip · « **Reply #11 on:** November 18, 2006, 01:59:14 pm »

Your own words are all I have used, there is no summary as you claim and therefore not explanation nor apology to make.

It seems your looking for a reason to cease your support here because we did not agree with your views, if thats the case then can I ask you to be honest instead of wasting time in useless rhetoric ?

We have always been proud to call you our friend and you have done great things for this site and the community, as your friends we ask you to accept our decision to rework the spelling on swearing in posts, thats all nothing more or less.

I wont be posting here again KM the last word is yours on this matter, I do ask you to remember why we came here and what our goals where, nothing has changed in my view and the free speech aspect is a mere side issue to helping folks with winmx, if you wont accept that then I will re-evaluate our dealings.

The site is not about you or me, its the users site and they are best served by a quick resolution to internal squabbles.

KM · « **Reply #12 on:** November 18, 2006, 02:05:09 pm »

perhaps you should remind everyone (yourself included) what the original goals of the site were meant to be and why i got involved in the first place...?

nylly444 · « **Reply #13 on:** November 18, 2006, 03:56:10 pm »

OK, let me put in my 2 Cents worth:

First let me say I'm clearly against censoring posts - even censoring foul speech.

I've seen it in my room, you start with censoring some foul language and you end up not being able to see where to draw the line on this.
I'd much rather see some unwanted expressions on here than just one post being altered too much.
I know we got young people coming here, but hey, you really think they haven't seen worse if they're surfing the net?

I've been very carefully editing posts in the past when a) the poster himself requested it or b) it was a double post.
In both cases I always put in a note what was done and signed with my name so it was clear what happened and why.

I think we should find a policy to deal with people putting foul language, but altering posts is not the way to go IMO, it's too darn dangerous.

Anyone reading it can report that post to a moderator (that's what the button is for after all) and then one of us can talk to that person.
I suggest maybe a policy of asking someone to refrain from using that kind of language in future posts per personal message and IF does not stop to do so repeatedly then I would consider banning him/her for a few days or completely if necessary.

Personally I don't like seeing certain expressions - but I'm an adult and can decide not to read the post - or not to read posts from this person ever again.

To KM: I know you're frustrated about this and I agree with you up to a certain point - but shouldn't we find a way to deal with this rather than you resigning?
You got to decide if this is about you or WMW.
If it's about you you resign and stop having a say in this - therefor everything will stay as it is.
If this is about WMW you fight for your opnion and maybe things will change a bit to your liking.
You will never have complete control over things that are run by several persons, but I think we need diversity here.
But lets discuss this and find a solution together, and I mean all moderators not just you main three.

Take a break if you need one and think about things - but ultimately I think you care too much about this site to refrain from meddling anyway

And last but not least: Who the heck would I blame for everything that goes wrong then? :shock:

Scyre · « **Reply #14 on:** November 18, 2006, 03:59:12 pm »

If it matters to anyone, I would like to throw my opinion in:

I strongly object to censoring of posts, as this is the whole reason many new members came here. v44 decided to censor, and it began slowly enough at first, until it became an all out marketing machine.

The best way to not go down that same road, is to never put your foot on it to begin with. I believe that intentions are honorable, but what will happen is the callous effect.

The first few (very few) posts will be horrible, and everyone will see no problem in THOSE posts being altered... I mean, after all, they are vile and disgusting. They don't even belong in that thread!

But soon the bar will be lowered. In the name of protecting the members, ofcourse. But what is actually happening at that point is desensitizing to censorship... No one means for it to be anything other than a noble gesture, but it will be, nontheless.

If you buy a pair of shoes that are too tight, they make a blister. It's your body's natural way of saying, 'Hey! there's a problem'
But if you ignore it, and keep wearing them, the area will eventually callous, and you don't feel it anymore. The problem didn't go away, you just got desensitized to it. The shoes are still wrong.

If we start permitting that sort of action on this site, then we will be no better than v44, and everyone who saw problems with that site, will see them here too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this site will ever have a paypal button, but I also value this as being a place of free speech, no matter if I agree with the author or not. I often don't agree with Knobby, but I respect his right to have an opinion, and I respect the fact he will go against the flow to state it. Even though some say, "he shouldn't be allowed to post here", I think he should just to show that we are not afraid of differing views, and in order to show more than just one side to everything.

After all, isn't that why we detested the way v44 was operated? Any differing opinions would not be tolerated.

Sorry, if this raises a few hairs, but I think the surest way to not get caught into that mess, is to never start.

Best Regards, and Be Good!
Scyre

SamSeeSam · « **Reply #15 on:** November 18, 2006, 04:32:39 pm »

It is the question of not being able to edit those few sycre, that's all.
Let me say again:
Only a few word edits of a few posts.
Due a problem, an error is generated whenevr a mod tries to edit a guest post.
So we are not able to edit them. That's the only question.
A few posts of a few users.
I believe that only 5-6 posts of all the posts made thus far will fall under that categroy.
5-6 out of the 21400+ posts made thus far here...
That's all.

Of all the issues that have come up.... vladd, pie patch, paypal, nobby.
Of all these issues, why did soemthing so relatively trivial cause such problems... cannot be understood by me.
Hopefully things will turn out to be fine.
I don't want this to become a split and become a goodbye gift to vladd.

Scyre · « **Reply #16 on:** November 18, 2006, 05:11:26 pm »

I agree with you as for not wanting this to be a split or seeing vladd getting a happy send off.

I do understand it is only 5 or 6 out of the thousands, but in time I think most people will worry about that catagory growing to include more...

And I do see how some people may view this as trivial, but some of us cannot see censoring on any level as being trivial. It's just too dangerous.

After all, if this is creating so much tension so quickly, then maybe it is better left alone. We certainly haven't suffered any from the few posts that are in question. Might as well not change it, seeing as we are doing fine. Or as they say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" lol

I do still believe that it is good intentions that raised the issue. It's just too questionable for all to be settled with, and it will certainly cause a major rift. It is much easier to just overlook the few posts, and keep peace.

nylly is right, we can simply decide to not pay attention to those posts.

If you think about it, those posts have value too. They decribe a little more about the people who post them, and even if it something we don't like, at least it gives us more to consider when regarding that individual. It 'paints a more exact picture' so to speak, and allows us to determine how much weight to give to that person's words. So, in a sense, they have a purpose.

Censoring is just too serious of an issue to be taken lightly, and it has the ability to ruin a lot of what was worked for. Take the US for example. I live in a country that was founded on the principle of having freedom. Slowly that has been driven out to the point that we are one of the most restrictive nations for some things. Simply because it seemed like a good idea at the time. "Pass the patriot act, because we got bombed, and we want to prevent it from happening again..." But what happened is now it has been misused and people have lost a lot of rights they never even considered would be involved.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think QS or MH would ever be like the worst case scenarios, but what happens the next time they are off line for a while? What if there is someone at the wheel who isn't as respectable to people?

What if the line keeps getting moved back until a lot of people are ok with censorship to the point it becomes expected?

A lot of people would say "that would never happen here" , but reality says it could. In fact, there have already been a few posts in this thread that discussed posts that had been deleted. Not just changing a few dirty words to something less offensive, but actually deleted.

That shows that this site is vulnerable to the same freedom tinkering that ran v44 into chaos and lost it's value. There are many of us that have spent a lot of hours trying to get people to see that this site is different. That the wmg patch is different. That we are people of integrity. If that becomes a question, instead of a fact, then we all lose.

I hope you are right and things DO turn out to be fine.

Best Regards, and Be Good!
Scyre

Me Here · « **Reply #17 on:** November 18, 2006, 05:37:32 pm »

Well lets see.. I wasn't going to reply to this thread as I wanted to keep this problem more private as far as the bickering type of posts however, after reading the subsequent posts I will remark on a few things and ignore some others on purpose.

As far as replacing bad language.. there are mods that could be used to do this, word replace. I have chosen not to look into that because I don't think 'every' bad word needs to be removed. Frankly when your a close friend of mine and talking to me some days I may well sound just like Irons post discussing things, so personally I was not offended by the language but others may well be. But!.. that is not posts on this site. When every other word is a** and F**k I cant not see how concealing some letters changes the context. Maybe that's just me. And regardless of how innocent posting of people's IPs seem to some, others feel its a violation of privacy. I frankly cant see the need to post IPs of individuals in the context it was posted except to attempt to cause problems for them. Whether it does or not I will not debate. It has always been our policy to allow privacy of IPs and they have never been allowed to be posted this way that I am aware of. And oddly enough if they were, they were the posts were edited by the admins and somehow that was not a problem..

There have been several discussions on this site about editing posts, censorship of posts, and subject matter that is or is not appropriate for this site.
It has always been our position that this site 'never claimed you could come here and say anything you like' Or nobby would not be banned, we would have a Cesspool for gay bashing and love, and there would be ares sections, limewire, and other general crap that doesn't belong on the site.
What I am saying is this, let me clarify something..

Editing of posts or removal of posts has always gone on. So to suggest that its going to turn out like Vladds site is utterly ridiculous to me. The Admins on site have always acted with complete responsibilities and the Moderators here are hand picked because of the ability to do the same. Its never been like Vladds site, and its been fine up until now because KM didn't like it and if it hadn't been a Guest post there then no one would be here now talking about it. I wont make apologies for keeping this site clean, fairly family oriented and non offensive to folks that come for help and news, and I certainly wont make apologies for not being just like Vladd.

So I guess my point is you can turn this around the other way too and say how far will ppl go with No Censorship being the rule, not just the other way around.

Let me close by saying I respect the positions posted here including those of KM (without the sarcasm bits) but it hasn't changed my mind about my stand on moderating versus censorship and I would rather see the site close then turn out to be 'like Vladds'.

Let me also add that its been policy to talk to ppl that this is a problem with in the past, however we are talking about a guest post and there is no way to send them a message to ask them to tone it down.
Just so we are all aware of the content in questions here is the before and after (never done)

Scyre · « **Reply #18 on:** November 18, 2006, 06:50:01 pm »

MH, you have shined a little more light on the subject and I hope you understand that it isn't that I think you or QS either one are like Vladd, or I would not be here at all.

As for the removal of IPs, I agree completely, however, I think the message should remain, showing what a jerk the person was that posted it. maybe mask the IP as 0.0.0.0 or something....But that will at least show others that the posting person can't be trusted.

I also have no objections whatsoever about editing the words to a** sh*t, etc, as that still preserves the message and intent of the person.

The only thing that offers any worry is post deletion or altering the actual message, which goes against what everyone perceives as this site's biggest asset. It's freedom of differing opinions.

I wouldn't care, if Vladd himself posted about what a crappy bunch of idiots he thinks we all are. He still wouldn't be able to do any damage to the members here. A few lines of truth and some direct questions would show him as the person he is, and some would get a laugh out of it.

As long as you're saying that the actual messages are still gonna be there, I don't think anyone would care about the * in a cuss word, or the masking of an IP. I sure don't mind that. Like you said, the IP privacy has always been policy here.

Sadly, however, Bug's posts will look like this:

*****.....****......*********.......

lol Just Kiddin Bug

It is also nice to read your statement of having the site close rather than be another v44.com, and I have always known you and QS to be respectful of everyone. It just scares me to think that anything would ever change...

Best Regards, and Be Good!
Scyre

nylly444 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 18, 2006, 07:07:32 pm »

I can agree with Me_here on altering private information about other users.

All in all maybe we mods should get together and discuss what should be allowed to alter and what wouldn't.
I can see absolutely no point in altering swear words though - everybody knows what is meant anyway, so why alter it?

And I agree, of course we shouldn't allow everything to be posted on here - still I'd prefer putting up a notice about stuff such as posts about limewire or anything, simply saying: sorry, wrong forum and then lock that thread though.

As to clearly advertising, i.e. posting to advertise only, that shouldn't be allowed either of course.

I'm pretty sure we could agree on most things and develop a policy for them.

Still, I'd rather not alter posts simply because I think the language is offending.

What happens then is people are unsure IF stuff has been altered, so I'd also strongly suggest whenever something is altered we MUST post a note as to who did it and why.
There's nothing worse then posts just being altered or deleted or whatever.

We can NOT afford to even let people think we do that.

I'm just a little sensitive on this subject because I once thought I had an ok policy about things like this in my room - only to find things had gotten out of hand there, that was one of the worst things I ever had happening and I don't wanna see anything like that ever again.

It seems most people here can come to an agreement about almost anything, as far as I can see there are only minor differences at this point now.

I trust we will find a solution for this - with or without KM.

I'd still rather have him around though - we need people with different opinions, wouldn't it be terrible if we all agreed all the time, lol?