The Personal Information Rule

I think the "tribunal" is Lanzman, isn't it?

He would be the "head" of the jury of peers, yes.

I don't think there are enough of us to have that kind of bureaucracy. Either you trust the owner and the people he chooses to help him, or you don't, and whether you trust them or not will guide your actions.

Yikes! Tribunals? Juries? Just how far is this going to go?

I've never seen a BBS with juries, tribunals, and such things survive very long.

There will we common sense used. This is not a site where anyone should be overly worried...when a wrong call is made no one hesitates to speak up about it. If the membership thinks we are being harsh, they will say so and calls will be re-examined.

An addendum: I did not notice till just now that there is an "Introduce Yourself" forum. I would imagine that people should be able to post personal information in such a forum without fear that people will use it to troll them. Particularly since hypothetically many of the people who will be posting there will be new posters, I would imagine that they may not fairly anticipate WF ways.

In short, the "Introduce Yourself" forum posts should get the same level of protection as stuff in the Blue Room IMO.

I don't know.

What kind of expectation of privacy would someone have posting in an introduce yourself thread and forum?

That is still way too long. No one is going to read, and I'm certainly not going to read it yet again.

What Elwood said is true:

All we need IMO is a slight fine tuning of the existing rule, because it has more or less served us fairly well.

I think EFCL had something like that (in addition to the Senate forum).

If they are introducing themselves, they wouldn't be aware of the levels to which some trolls stoop in abusing personal information.

Make it so.


Then ban the sumbitch.

No, because that's difficult to prove and we shouldn't be in the business of punishing members for actions outside of Wordforge.

Honestly, the existing rule works fine. The problem is that the person enforcing the rules does so fairly arbitrarily and with great bias.

If someone doesn't read it and then runs afoul of it, it's their own fault.

Yes.

KISS.

Personally I like Packards definition, but would be fine with an even further distillation: Don't be a fucko lest you risk your dick being trod upon.

Prove? To whom?

Seriously, play fast and loose, be a fucko for fucko's sake and you risk getting warned or banned. Not sure where the line is? Then best stay the fuck away.

Are we scared of limiting the trolling by not clearly defining exactly how far the trolls can go? Is that something we are worried about now?

Leave the minefield unfucking marked. Enter at own risk.

I'm curious as to the definition expressed here.

Let's say, hypothetically, someone ticked me off and I managed to acquire information such as their name, residence, phone number, where they work, where the used to work, where they went to school, their sister's name, their parents name, where their parents work, what kind of relationship they have with other relatives who are heavily involved in illegal activities, where those relatives live, those people's less than savory acquaintances contact information, etc etc.

I understand I can't post any of the details of that information on Wordforge.

Can I post it at non-related websites? Trekbbs? Troll Kingdom? Storm Front or 4chan?

Can I contact any members of their family? Or people that know their family?

I know contacting their work and letting them know of various trolling activities on Wordforge would be right out. That is simply unscrupulous.

What if I like and or agree with political positions of people they dislike which I only know because of this information? Is it OK to be friends with them IRL even though I only know about them because of activities on Wordforge?

Clearly there's lots of facets to this question that need to be analyzed.

Are you that big of a flaming douche you don't understand where the line between acceptable ribbing and too fucking far is?

Well if so, I suggest you just avoid even light trolling then to be safe. Heck to be honest, if you are the kind of person who can't tell where the line is, I would you prefer you not post here, so if the ambiguity scares you, win-win.

I would not necessarily expect that something that I posted in a space that was supposed to make me feel welcome could then be used to troll me and management would say essentially, "Sorry, you volunteered that information."

Well I would think that trying to troll people's kids is too far, even if it is a pretty lame ass attempt.

But clearly I'm alone in that, so I need to see some better guidelines expressed. For example, would an expression that you seem to know things of a personal nature of another poster to the point that said user might become uncomfortable about the level of knowledge displayed be sufficient cause to be warned or banned? What about the implicit threat that something might happen with that knowledge?

Sometimes there's a fine line and judgement calls by definition are subjective.

But if you don't like the fact I am here, you can always be proactive about it . Feel free to let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Really, you need clear cut guidelines on how to behave like a decent human being? On how not to be a fucko?

Sorry, that's not something I can provide ya, either ya got it or ya don't, if ya don't and ya go too far then ya gone. Bye bye, so sad.

How is that complicated? You can keep trying to what if the fuck out it, but ultimately it all comes down to board and staff opinion on acceptable behavior. Lawyering the fuck out of won't change that, it will only give the trolls cover.

I say give them no cover. They want to play with fire, let them get burned.

And yet that happens, repeatedly.

To the staff. I can't just expect the staff to trust me without proof if I claim that so-and-so is calling my work. Maybe I'm just trying to get so-and-so banned?

The Wordforge staff should have no authority over someone's behavior outside of Wordforge, whether on the internet or in real life. Ultimately, it is up to the owner to determine who he doesn't want here, though. But we should not be making rules that go beyond Wordforge.

Dude...we can't punish someone for a Ghostbusters Av just because you've decided it's trolling you. Especially when it isn't even all that similar to what you described.

Even more puzzling is that you seem to think it's some kind of threat.

Absolutely.

We can not and should not be responsible for what happens outside the board.

Ok. That's something I wouldn't have any problem with, but if others do, you're right: My phrasing doesn't cover it.

Sounds great to me. Clear and effective.

Personally, I'd like a rule against RL trolling via WF in addition to that. For instance, if Paladin ever does disclose his real name in WF, I'd still not want other posters to create a campaign that calls his RL name a pedophile over and over again on WF just in order to get that idea into a google search.

This, to me, is still a problem. The previous rules have never been applied consistently; leaving this to staff's discretion means unpopular posters will continue to lack protection.

Yep.

Hey look everyone......

The current rule still makes the most fucking sense!!

Ha!

Not a bad way to go either.