Anyone Wanting to Moderate this Board Should Consider This

While the ESOP Committee may not have jurisdiction over the activities of non-members and their ethical behavior, you should know that a significant number of complaints that come to the committee are filed against members by non-members.

Some are clients, some are realtors, some are seller…and some may begin to originate from the message board.

I’ll explain…

If you, a member, delete or change the post of someone posting to the board for libel, slander or personal attack (the three criteria listed by Chris) the burden of proof is on you. Libel and slander can only exist if the statements were untrue AND were made with malicious intent. Untrue statements, by themselves, are NOT libelous or slanderous. TRUE statements that are damaging…are neither libelous or slanderous.

From this one post, you must be able to prove the malicious intent of the author and you must prove that the information is false.

If you are wrong and you have publicly officially represented his post as such, he may wish to file an ethics complaint against you for bias, malicious interference, or slander against him.

These complaints will fall under the jurisdiction of the ESOP Committee and will be reviewed and acted upon.

I will venture to say this this is one job that no one in his right mind will want…and those who aren’t, will only have for a little while.:wink:

You have described a potential problem well.

What do you see as a solution?

The way I understand it is that the moderation will not be in the form of deletion.

The moderation will take the form of “not approved” and the subject posts will not see the mesage board at all.

The complaint will be written by the non-member and he will describe his action as having written a post that was not allowed on the board…deletion, disapproval, etc.

The burden of proof for libel, slander or personal attack will rest upon the person who “disapproves” it by whatever means he is given to moderate.

Think about this before you act against the man who is about to become your enemy.

Can you prove it was false AND written with malicious intent? The “personal attack” claim is so subjective it is impossible to believe that anyone would set themselves up to moderate someone else’s arguement.

Let the guy “attacked” make his complaint to Chris and let Chris make the call. With a complaint, there is proof. Without a complaint, a “personal attack” is totally subjective and destined to get someone in trouble for “disapproving” it.

I must underscore a very important point. For any reason they want, NACHI leadership can ban a non-member and answer to no one for it. This is fine. And all attempts made by banned people can be discarded.

Those who have done nothing worthy of banishment…many of whom are regular and valuable contributors to the technical threads…should have quick, unfettered access.

All posts by banned members should be disapproved.

All other non-member posts should be posted and, when a complaint is filed regarding it by a member, a moderator or Chris can act on the complaint using the complaint as their source of proof for personal attack and asking the complainer for his proof of libel/slander. Then, act accordingly.

Why are you showing up as a member again? Did you re up?

No. I paid off a moderator.:wink:

Nothing more needs to be stated about this inane policy. Except, the more difficult we make it for professionals to post, the more they will take their time to post helpful information elsewhere.

Worth repeating.

Greenie for you (retroactive to the old system, of course). :wink: :mrgreen:

Shhhhh. Not so loud;-)

Ken, it’s amazing how these clowns just can’t stay away. I guess we are all they have.

I’ve also been reinstated to the ESOP Committee.

Take a break, Frank.:wink:

I think Chris has more important things to do James, so IMO lets keep his time free of in-house disputes.

Once a dispute rises, it should be IMO bounced to a private chat room for those involved along with monitors and away from everyone else. For this to be affective it has to be done within a very short time. Kinda like a fender bender- just pull your cars off the side of the road so others can pass without delay.

Unbelievable

I am going to start a blog and report you on AR! :wink:

Seeing as how I did the same, I have to agree with you. BTW, you can just call me BOZO. :wink:

I would not call you any names Ken. :slight_smile:

Let me know when you do and I will comment.

This rule will definitely reduce or eliminate many potential good quality posters from desiring to take part in valuable discussions.

Ed

The rest is a copy/paste from the Non-Members can still post on this board thread:

What I don’t get about the new rule, is what does it prevent?

If someone were to post Spam or Inflammatory Remarks, then other members would hit the Report Post Icon to report it to the moderators immediately. Thats when a post should deserve moderation.

I see this as increasing the moderating tasks more than assisting in the duties to diminish their work load.

I know first hand, because I moderate on www.ContractorTalk.com which has over 40,000 members and www.DIYchatroom.com which has over 45,000 members and several Roofing related sites. If I had to add Moving Approved Posts to the duties, I wouldn’t have time to keep up.

I just try to offer practical real world experience commentary to assist those that run into typical situations, but have not actually done the roofing or ventilation tasks before themselves.

I don’t know how long it took to get posted. The one answer to another thread and this question both were not available for me to see, so I left the forum last night to wait for the response to this question.

It sucks the wind out of the continuity of a discussion, like one thread which requested questions to be considered for a roofing guide book. I never would have posted more than one situation, had I not gotten instant response and feedback.

I am sure you put some thought into this action, but it probably had more to do with inflammatory posters, which I do not consider myself to be.

See if you guys in charge can reconsider that rule please. As diplomatically as this statement can be said, this rule Sucks, in my own humble opinion.

Or, the very least, have an option for a gratis affiliate membership for posters considered worthwhile to have on board, since I do not plan on opening up a Home Inspection business to compete with you guys. Maybe some sort of probationary status for an unknown personality new to posting on this site could be considered.

Does that seem reasonable to you?

Ed