Albert's thread

[angros47]

If he gave bad medical advice - it cannot stand

That was not the reason why he was banned. That post was moderated and solved quickly. And no sane person would have followed that 'advice' anyway.

This leads to one of the points: true, that specific issue was solved quickly. I brought it on because it was one of the most serious ones, although there were plenty of minor other issues, including the fact of producing rubbish that made harder to find other pieces of code, as stated earlier:

Gems which are lost forever, too much rubbish to sift through. Actually most forums are 90% rubbish with a few gems from a few talented people.
Maybe Albert needed a section that would auto delete after a couple of weeks.

Basically, Albert's post required a lot of time from moderators: and moderators do that in their free time, and they are not paid. People like jj2007 and dodicat stated that they would like to still have Albert around, but they expect someone else to do all the extra moderation job that it would require. Of all the people complaining about his ban, has anyone offered to take the responsibility of moderating his posts? I don't think so.

That's why I suggested to make a discord server for him, and move any interaction with him there.

Anyway, this discussion raises another issue, that I think we should talk about: I guess we all agree that posting fake medical advice is something that cannot be tolerated, especially during a pandemic. Yet, technically, the terms of use do not forbid it: it is stated:

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any laws be it of your country, the country where “freebasic.net” is hosted or International Law

There is no mention about fake medical advice, or in general to any misleading information or fake news, although lately it has become a problem addressed by the law in several countries. Perhaps it was not a problem when the terms of use were written and no one thought to include it.

So, my question is: should the terms of use of this forum be updated, to include some rule against misleading information and/or fake news?

[Lost Zergling]

Good morning all.
This topic appeals to me, I make these thoughts in total frankness.
I would like to start with a point that seems important to me: Albert's ban from the forum is a scathing political defeat. Because from the point of view of a non-scientist, Albert has done no harm: I have never seen him insult anyone, I have never seen him defend hateful, malicious or hyppocritical positions. I understand that a person who says nonsense about doxa and even logic can be very upset. But a non-scientist (and I am) will not be shocked by his posts, because he will not understand them, will not be disturbed by the sometimes inane words.
It is not easy to be a dissenter, science, logic, reason, people in the know or those who think they know. And you can be wrong for a lifetime, never admit it. Those who have the knowledge will never really admit you among them (which is understandable).
A "maverick"
Like Jim Kirk in Star Treck, the important thing is the fight.
Once again, I do not place myself at the technical level, but at a more political level which is that, not of morality or of good conscience (which I abominate), but rather that of ethics, at a level of requirement which should be, perhaps, from my point of view, the minimum of the scientist.
For Albert, it seems to me that all the ethical requirements which should normally have been ours, have not been met.
Once again, I'm giving you a layman's point of view, someone whom Albert's posts don't bother at all.
There would, of course, be other aspects, other explanations to give, but this would concern, hypothetically, especially Albert and his country, and not directly Albert and the forum.
This is a problem which clearly does not concern me.
What bothers me the most: the harm we cause ourselves by excluding him seems to me much worse than the one it could hypothetically cause via Internet searches: you are a maverick, you are a dissident, you do a little politics in a very, very constrained framework? outside !
We have set a precedent, we have weakened.
Because keeping Albert was not a weakness, it was on the contrary to our honor.
Just a point of view, pardon me..

[marcov]

Good morning all.
This topic appeals to me, I make these thoughts in total frankness.
I would like to start with a point that seems important to me: Albert's ban from the forum is a scathing political defeat. Because from the point of view of a non-scientist, Albert has done no harm: I have never seen him insult anyone,

He got repeated instructions to stop from a moderator. He chose not to. That is not non-scientist or another philosophy, that is simply ignoring moderation from people appointed by the owner of the forum.

[Lost Zergling]

Duly noted.

[angros47]

Good morning all.
I have never seen him insult anyone, I have never seen him defend hateful, malicious or hyppocritical positions.

Insulting someone, or defending hateful positions, are not the only possible ways one can cause harm.

The main harm Albert has caused was asking questions (naive, but perfectly legit), receiving detailed answers, ignoring those answers and asking the same questions again. This is disrespectful toward the people who invested their time to answer him. This behavior could be forgiven once or twice, but it continued for years. A moderator invited him to stop, he refused, and he received more, and more severe measures (warning, deletion of posts, temporary ban for few days, temporary ban for weeks, temporary ban for months. and in the end, permanent ban)

Less severe measures have been attempted. They didn't work

[paul doe]

...
So, my question is: should the terms of use of this forum be updated, to include some rule against misleading information and/or fake news?

We think so, yes. BasicCoder2 opened a specific topic about that, and we're evaluating how to implement it, based on the proposals stated there.

[adeyblue]

we're evaluating how to implement it

It's adding a sentence to the rules. The fact that one out of seven of you can't do that in an hour let alone multiple days is entirely laughable