The moonbus red thumbs poll

@moonbus said
If you think it is stupid to ask people whether taking down the thumbs feature is a good idea, who's trying to stifle discussion then?

Do you think the unlimited alerts facility was a pro-free speech feature or an anti-free speech feature?

@fmf said
Do you think the unlimited alerts facility was a pro-free speech feature or an anti-free speech feature?

Pro.

I would not be in favour of limiting the number of thumbs a user could give either.

@moonbus said
If some poster, for example, tries to use the site to sell fake passports and posts twenty adverts for his illegitimate business at 3 a.m. and some other user spots them at 3:10, why shouldn't he alert them all at once? I have on occasion alerted exactly such posts, advertising illegitimate businesses here.

But people were alerting countless posts that were not breaking the TOS. The abuse had reached a kind of peak.

@moonbus said
Pro.

Trying to get posts deleted is pro-free speech behaviour to your way of thinking?

@fmf said
Well, there are people saying Russ's decisions about the alerts mechanism was bad.

Not at all, what the person said was in their opinion they saw nothing wrong in the number of alerts as the Moderators make the last decision which was correct. I think the Moderators were overwhelmed with alerts about you and the gooster, mostly the gooster. So the best way to limit the overload would be to restrict alerts to 3 per poster. I like to call it the the "Gooster Rule"!!! 🙂

-VR

@very-rusty said
Not at all, what the person said was there opinion they saw nothing wrong in the number of alerts as the Moderators makes the last decision which was correct.

When you say "not at all", do you mean you think there have NOT been people saying Russ's decision about the alerts mechanism was bad?

@fmf said
When you say "not at all", do you mean you think there have NOT been people saying Russ's decision about the alerts mechanism was bad?

Show me the quote where it was said fmf!

-VR

@very-rusty said
Show me the quote where it was said fmf!

It's right here in this conversation, the last couple of posts we have exchanged. Do you really think people like Suzianne and moonbus DON'T think Russ's decision to limit the number of thumbs per day was a bad decision?

@fmf said
But people were alerting countless posts that were not breaking the TOS. The abuse had reached a kind of peak.

I do not dispute that the alert-feature could be subject to abuse. I was not a party to that particular episode and do not have a strong opinion on what led to it (no doubt it had its causes and reasons). I do not see a cogent argument for limiting the number of alerts a poster can send, a few abusers notwithstanding. Similarly, chatter and silly posts are just the price we all pay for having an open forum, not censored by the state. I do not see a cogent argument for limiting the number of posts a user can send in any given time period -- unless of course it becomes such a deluge as to adversely affect the servers (which would constitute a DOS attack and prohibitable for that reason alone).

-Removed-

My interest was fleeting.

@moonbus said
I do not dispute that the alert-feature could be subject to abuse.

Do you dispute that everyone having an unlimited number of anonymous attempts every day to curtail each other's speech by getting each other's posts deleted ~ and by extension, whole threads deleted ~ cannot be described as a pro-free speech facility?