can you review a jailed post please ?

[glabouni]

One of my posts got jailed (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2093362) with the following:


Reason: Inappropriate post
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Your post was in poor taste and made inappropriate suggestions. In the future, try to deliver your opinion in a manner that is not graphic or lewd.
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Obviously I don't find it offensive or else I wouldn't have posted in the first place. The method i describe in my post is something I've been succesfully doing in real life, and I have had no complaints about my speech for being offensive or inappropriate in real life.
IMHO this is throwing water and baby away.

I understand an Internet forum doesn't work the same as real life, but still disagree with the "poor taste and inappropriate suggestions" comment which btw is not really helpful in pointing out what part is causing the jailing nor helping me improving my post so it fits with the strict policy enforced here.

did you receive any complaint about it ?
if so I would be happy to hear them so I can learn from my mistake.

In the meantime, I've edited my post to replace/rephrase any content I found that could have been perceived as offensive. would you mind reviewing it and unjail it if you're ok with it ?

if you still find anything too graphic, too lewd, too offensive or too inappropriate can you point it to me so I can try to fix it ?

thanks

[matthew]

I read your post before you edited it. You began with an attempt to make a humorous connection between the topic of "linux being hard for women" and the physical status of a certain part of the male anatomy. It wasn't funny, and it added nothing to the original thread. Furthermore, it was insulting toward women reading the thread and it minimized members of their gender to the status of sexual objects instead of intelligent human beings. Yes, we received complaints.

The post was jailed for the right reasons.

The rest of the post contained some useful thoughts and opinions and you are free to go to the original thread and make a new post containing those positive things. That would be a better use of the staff's time and your time. It is certainly better than trying to cut all the "I can't believe they made me edit this" bits out of the original and then moving it back.

[glabouni]

You seem to have been mistaken by your way-of-thinking, actually if you try to a bit more out-of-the-box, this has nothing to do with male anatomy.

When I've use this pun in addressing towards women about computers women IRL I can assure you they're not all thinking of male anatomy as several of em are lesbians or bisexual and I think it's my role to educate people about the fact that women too have an organ that can become hard with sexual arousal and that can be rub to get the juice out of it. That exactly why my speech works, it's because it's about sexual ambiguity.

You seem to be more focusing of my own example than on the real matter I discuss in my post:
If I'm not mistaken the question in this thread is "What advice would you give to women who think Linux is "hard"?" (emphasis added), this is something I have been using IRL with good results. First I tell what I would say then I expose the underlying method.
I've chosen sex as the analogy because I know the audience I'm talking to and this is a relevant choice to this specific audience, but that's not the part that really matters, what really matters is the underlying method, but I also in my original post that you have to adapt to your audience specificity.

Actually what you perceive as "I can't believe they made me edit this" is again a misconception. I wasn't made into editing, I've chosen to do it on my own initiative, but as I said earlier, I haven't been pointed the offensive/inappropriate part, so I had to guess by myself, which gives a so-so result, but that's about the best I can do guessing on my own.

If it was a "I can't believe they made me edit this" I would have put back into the thread directly and gone public about it. Instead I've edited the jailed post and submitted it for review to try to conform to your strict and IMHO close minded view.

I'm happy that you do recognize that apart from the one single sentence in the beginning there is content in my post. So may I, if you please point you to "Section III - Forum Staff Policies and Expectations" of forum guidelines (http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy) about staff duties:


3.Editing of posts:
When a post breaks guidelines and requires editing in order to bring it back under compliance with the rules, the moderator shall first copy the un-edited post to the jail and then edit the original post, thus preserving the original content should an issue become larger. The moderator should also PM the author and specify which guideline(s) the post did not follow.


5. Jailing of posts/thread:
If a post/thread would require over half to be edited in order to bring it under compliance, or if editing the violations would result in a nearly blank post/thread, the post/thread should be moved to the jail instead.

I think we can agree that less than half of post has ot edited as I guess the only "could-be-perceived-as-offensive" part is the one sentence about rubbing, which means that point 3 about editing posts to preserve content should have been applied and was not. I find it hard that after I've made proof (or at least tried to) of my good intents and edit my post downplaying any part that "could-be-perceived-as-offensive", all I receive instead of guidances is a "you waste staff time by trying to do the job they should have done but didn't".

To me if I'm wasting my time it's more a matter of the moderating team not really following this:


11.Keeping an open mind:
Sometimes you will be faced with a thread you might not agree with it's imperative you keep an open mind towards all inclusive people, and keep a neutral focus when replying. It is our duty to steer the conversations back into a positive nature without engaging in negative behavior.

I don't know if you guys are developers, but if you are, you certainly know about "headaches": that level of frustration you get to when an error message is not explicit enough, when something is jut not helpful, when something mysterious goes on,
when you just get frustrated, you wanna rip your hair out and tear down the compiler/applications,etc. Well headaches are what drove me out of programming.

When I read a message such as "Your post was in poor taste and made inappropriate suggestions. In the future, try to deliver your opinion in a manner that is not graphic or lewd." I feel like exactly that way, to me it is a non-explicit error message which is just not helpful and that bears a strong potential of driving me (and others users) out of here.

I could mention that this is highly offensing to me, hurting the credibility of the moderating team (to me) as if it really were inappropriate why is it that it actually works ?,
but tahnks to general semantics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics) [1] (http://www.time-binding.org/) I'm tolerant about others having different opinions and views, and I live perfectly well and happy with this. And I would like to have a ubuntu community that way, but till now I feel the friendliness and openmindness reputation are over hyped.

I'm not gonna fight over this jailed post, there's no point in doing so. But I'd like you to notice and keep in mind that this is not encouraging me in involving myself, sharing any knowedge/experience I might have that I believe could be useful,etc.

[matthew]

I think you got bogged down in the specifics and missed my main point. Whether you were referring to a specifically male or female part of the anatomy, you were referring to an intimate part of the anatomy and attempting to make a humorous analogy.

These forums are perused regularly by people at work and at school. If a boss or teacher were reading over someone's shoulder we want our content to improve, not diminish, their opinion of Ubuntu and these forums.

I don't sit in the break room at work and make jokes about these things. Whether it is permissible at the cafe or the bar is another story...and emphasizes that everything has a time and a place. Sorry, your post didn't fit these forums.

[glabouni]

That was I thought in the first place (hence my attempt at rephrasing) but your first reply wasn't really bearing that meaning, so I went and using your reply as a basis for mine.

well anyway, now that we are out of the specifics and back to the real matter at hands.

Actually no, I'm not reffering to any sexual organ at all you misinterpreted my reply to yours.
I'm indeed refering to a succesful practice/way to get into linux or any other thing one might misbelieve as being too hard.
The reader may interprets it another way according to is/her own view. That's exactly what makes this pun succesful IRL: the underlying sexual ambiguity.

I've understood that you found it too easily misinterpretable, and by you I mean the people who sent complaints, and those who made the decision to jail it. This I can undertand, this is something I do understand and is the motivation behind my attempt at a rephrasing. At first I thought of using the common rot13 method, but I'm not sure this is somathing allowed in here.

I consider the original phrasing safe for work and the sexual misinterpretation will only work with adult mind, a child simply can't interpret it in a sexual way. IMHO my reply fitted perfectly in the discussion at stakes. You have a different opinion on this. no need to go back over this again.

But still, as I said earlier and you seem to agree with it, apart from this sentence, there's real and useful content in this post. wouldn't it be better to have applied the "Forum Staff Poicies and Expectations" and simply remove the infringing sentence instead of jailing the whole, content-wise it would have been a win-win instead of jailing the whole post and leaving me in the blue about what I could do to improve my post to conform with what's expected.

You're the ones in charge here and as a simple user my role is not to argue about any difference of opinions between us, but to work together with you towards finding something that does it for everybody.
Till now I have the annoying feeling that I've been working alone towards turning the problematic content into something that would fit these forums.

Let me summarize my position here to make it clear:
I disagree with you about the inappropriate part, but I understand it and I don't have to agree with you as you are the ones in charge. Without anything helpful coming this way, I made the first step towards turning the problematic content into something appropriate, and I'd like to at least have feedback or guidelines to help me working towards this.

so far all feedbacks haven't really been helpful and could even be qualified as going the wrong way around. I'd qualify the way I've adressed as authoritarian with the known consequences:


Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by — and, given the way authoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers.
(...)
Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they distrust voluntary cooperation and information-sharing — they only like ‘cooperation’ that they control. So to behave like a hacker, you have to develop an instinctive hostility to censorship, secrecy, and the use of force or deception to compel responsible adults. And you have to be willing to act on that belief.

IMHO this case involves witholding information, absence of voluntary cooperation, and display of a will to have strict control . not applying the forum guidelines can be interpreted as censorhip instead of moderation, jailing instead of editing and not disclosing anything about what were the complaints as secrecy, and jailing + punishment without any prior communication to find a responsible way to fix the problem at hands as use of force.
well nothing more than daily forum life as usual, but beware not to cross the threshold of nazi moderating (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Moderating+Nazi) and acting upon groupthink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) which is what drove out of being part of various forum amdin/moderators team.

[matthew]

I'm not sure what else you would like me to say. It seems we simply have a difference of opinion as to what should be appropriate in these forums. Sorry.

If another admin has a different opinion than that which I have already expressed on this issue I would welcome correction. Otherwise, I think we have reached an impasse and would prefer that we simply move on.

I don't expect my mind will be changed with the current line of argument.

[glabouni]

First a little transparency wouldn't hurt, as in currently telling what were those complaints, and why the forum guidelines haven't been followed, or why I haven't been messaged about the problem and asked to fix it along with given advices.

I simply would like to have collaboration between me and those who find it inappropriate to turn the jailed post into something that would fit in the forums according to you without removing the content as in "not throwing the baby along with water" or if you don't want to collaborate with me, to have the post edited by a moderator/admin as it should have been done in the first place according to forum guidelines (http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy).

not sure which one I'd prefer as I sense this might turn into Fox news asking Steve Wilson & Jane Akre to rephrase their Monsanto's Posilac investigation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZYA2zFsCK8) (video excerpt from the corporation (http://www.thecorporation.com/)), meaning that I'm starting to believe that whatever amount of effort I put into it, and whatever I length I go, this would never be sufficient enough to suit your taste.

[matthew]

I'm starting to believe that whatever amount of effort I put into it, and whatever I length I go, this would never be sufficient enough to suit your taste.I feel the same way, only in reverse. I think I have explained my point of view clearly and succinctly. I have no further argument to advance.