Why was the Pirate Bay thread closed?

[ricardisimo]

"Piratbyrån - What are their arguements" was closed just now by cariboo907, a member of the UbuntuForums staff. His reasoning:

This thread is really interesting, but politics is starting to raise it's ugly head. I'm going to close the thread for 24 hours to let things cool of a bit.

The timing seems odd, to say the least. Several of us agreed that we were getting off-topic, and then several posts came up bringing us back on-topic.

A) Is it true, and B) does it matter that politics was "rearing its ugly head." The Community Cafe's intro states quite clearly:

Discussions on religion and politics are not allowed, except for politics directly related to free and open source issues.

I'd like to think that we largely stuck to those guidelines, and self-policed quite nicely when we started to stray.

I couldn't disagree more with cariboo907's decision, especially considering that the heavy-handedness of the forum staff was already a hot topic before this happened. Not the savviest move, my friend.

Partly out of curiosity, and partly to try to figure out how polls are run in this forum, I'm asking everyone if they think the forum staff have behaved themselves professionally and in a neutral manner within the Pirate Bay thread.

[KiwiNZ]

As stated by a Staff member , the closure is temporary

[KiwiNZ]

The staff member who took moderating action had participated in the thread.

[Closed_Port]

Hi ricardisimo,
as I already stated in the thread in question, I think some forum staff have behaved in an unacceptable manner.

However, I think one should point out that not all forum staff have. For example, I really enjoyed discussion the topic with aysiu. We were able to politely disagree with each other while at the same time finding out that we probably agreed on more as we had previously thought.

About the closing of the thread: I might be unfortunate in the light of the misbehavior of some forum staff, but I think cariboo907 has a good point. The discussion was getting more political and off-topic and in my experience discussions about things like socialism, anarchism, etc. do tend to get out of control.

So to close the thread temporarily was a justifiable idea imho.

[karellen]

imho, it was a good idea closing the aforementioned thread as it was going nowhere

[KiwiNZ]

Hi ricardisimo,
as I already stated in the thread in question, I think some forum staff have behaved in an unacceptable manner.

However, I think one should point out that not all forum staff have. For example, I really enjoyed discussion the topic with aysiu. We were able to politely disagree with each other while at the same time finding out that we probably agreed on more as we had previously thought.

About the closing of the thread: I might be unfortunate in the light of the misbehavior of some forum staff, but I think cariboo907 has a good point. The discussion was getting more political and off-topic and in my experience discussions about things like socialism, anarchism, etc. do tend to get out of control.

So to close the thread temporarily was a justifiable idea imho.

Staff stated their views , something we are allowed to do . It does not mean we have behaved in an unacceptable manner if our views differ to those in the thread. Staff are free to have their opinions.

[Azuu]

If they did (or did not) is not an issue, I question the logic of where open source comes into play on pirating propriety software but that should be saved for the thread in question.

[starcannon]

With no link back to the thread (yeah I could search it etc..) there is no way for me to make a judgement value.

Generally I have witnessed nothing but the most professional responses from forum staff; and, on the few occasions that I have witnessed actions I did not agree with, I checked myself by asking if I were being truly objective with regard to the rules and regs. It is possible, probable even that the forum staff will make mistakes; everyone of us is after all, human. That all said, considering this is a temporary ban, I would reckon that it was simply put in place for the reason already mentioned, that it was getting too political.
I will admit though, there are times when politics and software collide, and Pirate Bay would certainly be a bit of a premium example of that; and by the ubuntuforums.org policy it would seem that the admins may have to see a bit more politics in an open and legal discussion of pirate bay than they may see in various other threads; remember in their country of origin they actually have a Pirate Party that has a very good chance at powerful representation; this is very interesting news on the FOSS front, and Politically on the FOSS front; very interesting indeed.

[Closed_Port]

Staff stated their views , something we are allowed to do . It does not mean we have behaved in an unacceptable manner if our views differ to those in the thread. Staff are free to have their opinions.

KiwiNZ, you accused me and others of having our opinions only to justify our illegal behavior. You did not add anything to the discussion and did not engage any of the complex arguments made.

Instead you insulted members of this forum for having a different opinion and your posts frequently derailed the thread and stopped the ongoing discussions.

When challenged on this behavior or asked to clarify, you not once found it necessary to clarify the issue or diffuse the tensions that you had caused.

Instead you frequently complained that also forum staff were entitled to have an opinion, a classic straw man argument, as nobody had called this into question.

Sadly, you weren't the only forum staff to behave in this manner, as HymnToLife acted in a very similar was. However, when challenged he at least finally tried to clarify what he had meant, diffuse the tensions he had caused and actually started to engage in the discussion.

Finally, as I found this behavior unacceptable, I wrote a complained yesterday. As of now, I still haven't heard anything back from anyone.

[Closed_Port]

With no link back to the thread (yeah I could search it etc..) there is no way for me to make a judgement value.

Here's the thread in question:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1185250

Here are some example of the behavior many found questionable. To appreciate how disruptive these posts were, please read them in context:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...9&postcount=84
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=115