Relevancy

Irish Flute
1

Has anyone noticed how moving my flute economics posting over to the political forum effectively killed it? This is rather discouraging to this maker who would like to see such active discussion on flutes and economics. And politics, since political decisions affect the economy and eventually the buying and selling of flutes, and whether or not us flute makers will have an income in the next few months as the economy implodes.

Apparently the owners of this board fear such discussion here thinking they can contain it elsewhere, citing the potential for flaming wars as their justification. It amounts to censorship, quite frankly. This is too bad. Chiff and Fipple has dropped a few notches in relevancy in this maker’s eyes.

2

I really can’t speak for the moderators because I am not good friends with them and I really don’t understand half the things they do and don’t do but I must say that I do not discern the APPARENCY you speak of.

I went to the pub and saw your topic there. It hasn’t really died. NO one is posting in it, thats all. It hasn’t been locked. I think that locking a topic could be construed as censorship. This hasn’t happened to you.

3

Hello Casey,
I went to the forum and I must agree that the topic in its original form, that is economics, died. As I said before, politics and economics are intertwined to the point that one cannot discuss one without the other and I feel moving it turned it into a purely political discussion rather than an economic discussion as it relates to instrument building with some political overtones.
In effect it was killed as a topic and became a circular argument about the transfer itself.
Kurt

4

My contention, then and now, is that moving a topic out of this forum is tantamount to killing it. I’m sure some folks look at C&F as a homogeneous whole, with each part being as relevant as the next. It simply isn’t so. Many users never venture out of their chosen forum.

Additionally, I find it interesting that a couple of complaints could get the topic in question effectively slain, while several complaints about the handling of the issue apparently fell on deaf ears. Not very even-handed, I’d say.

Rob

5

Kyllä

Basically, if I am not on this forum, then I am not here.

Kuulemiin

6

I’m sorry. This has grown silly. I created a thread in the flute forum with a title that unmistakably identified it with the original thread. A CLICK OF THE MOUSE will get you to the original thread, which now resides in the Politics forum. A click or two will get you back in the flute forum. You are not likely to contract any diseases by associating with the riff-raff in the other forums.

I’m not going to defend again the moving the thread. If it DID kill the thread, it’s not exactly the end of the world. Start another one and avoid political name-calling.

I have great respect for the principals in this dispute, including Casey Burns. But if the thread died it may have died a natural death for some reason other than being moved.

A reminder–AGAIN–that the moderation of this board is light and tolerant and I really do not appreciate this “we are oppressed” tone.

Start a flute board elsewhere. Maybe it’ll work out for you. You’re always welcome here. If the flute forum dries up on account of this nonsense, I’ll be just fine.

7

The thing I don’t understand is how it’s apparently okay to have a political comment as one’s signature line, meaning it appears under every post one makes. But if one makes the mistake of sticking a political comment, even as brief as a single line, in the midst of a post about some non-political topic, and then someone complains about it, the entire thread gets moved or locked. Makes no sense to me. We’re all adults here, presumably. Unless someone is being aggressively obnoxious or abusive in espousing some political view, the moderators ought to just ease up and let the vast majority of readers just ignore the comment, as they probably would anyway. If they can just benignly let entire threads of inane fluff about who is a cutie-pie slide by, they ought to be able to ignore the odd political aside in an otherwise erudite thread. Of course, as they say on the internet, that’s just IMHO. It’s not my board, after all.

8

Someone pointed out, perhaps correctly, that new and/or less frequent participants in this board might not have been around to know the history of the Politics forum. I’m happy to provide a little.

What started as a fairly homogenous board, has been broken up, over the years, into interest areas as it has expanded beyond just a tinwhistle forum. Early on, we split off off-topic threads into the “Pub” which has been a successful move with very little controversy. Later, it became clear to some that there were large numbers of people who hated seeing political and controversial threads in the pub, we decided to split the pub to separate out the political and controversial posts. This was not close to being a unanimous agreement among members, nor was there even a real consensus. But, it was my call to make, ultimately, and I created the Political forum. A lot of people chose to stay out of it and happily participated in other forums. Some people posted extensively in the Poli forum. I insisted, perhaps unwisely, on the maintenance of a civil tone in the Poli forum. From time to time, when it got uglier than I was comfortable with, I’d disable the Poli forum for cooling off. This aggravated a lot of people and I’ll never know if it was the right thing to do. I closed the Poli forum for awhile–not so much because it wasn’t serving its function, but because of my own issues with the tone of it. I reopened it very recently and it’s picked up at something approaching its old pace and, so far, without much rancor.

Once established, of course, judgment calls occasionally have to be made on what properly belongs in the Poli forum. Not that often, really, because self-policing in this regard has worked extremely well and only occasionally does a moderator call become necessary.

What was largely unique about this situation, is that the thread, in terms of GENERAL CONTENT, did indeed belong in the Flute forum. But, some political remarks–really just political name-calling–was introduced into the thread. So, a judgment was made, properly, to move it.

People are free to participate in the thread in the Poli forum. Those who choose not to go to the non-flute forums are free not to do so, of course.

You may feel that it’ll work out perfectly well to weave politics into the music forums but, respectfully, you’re just flat wrong about that.

9

Thanks. I am not inexperienced in these matters.

I don’t do much policing of sig lines. I do some. You’re likely right that there is some inconsistency there. But, I’m not going to pick up–or assign to others–the added duty of policing those. Complaints are uncommon.

10

…and it occurs to me that if you don’t visit any other forums, you wouldn’t have seen this, which is posted elsewhere.

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=38810&sid=5e33f28e5aefb17432b58344d4d6fa14

11

Likely to stay, I figure :

" I am greatly concerned about President Clinton’s proposed
flute tax. This is bound to decrease the business of
flutesmyths like myself. Either we up the price, lowering
sales, or we make so little on the flute that we go out
of business. Musical instruments are the last thing
to tax, IMO. This administration is making bad
economic decisions, I feel, and cottage industries
like mine are really taking it on the chin.

Off to California:

‘Well, Rapist Willy is at it again, folks.
Willy is now trying to bugger flutemakers too.’

as long as it’s really flute
related and stays that way,
and the political stuff in it isn’t an exercise
in venting spleen, you may be able to have your
discussion here.

12

If a person says something offensive to readers and moderators, I see no reason why the offending person couldn’t be given the chance to revise his post and to withdraw the offending portion.
Not be sent to another forum than the one in which he chooses to participate.
When my kids were growing up I did not make them leave the room for saying something offensive.
I pointed out why it was offensive and hoped that they understood why such language or attitude was inappropriate at the dinner table.
As adults I would hope we’d be treated with at least the same courtesy.
As somebody who espouses love and hope for mankind, I would hope that Dale views us all as imperfect but capable of change.
I certainly view him that way.

13

Actually, I don’t like people all that much.

14

Running a message board will do that to you. :laughing:

Dale, you do a good job, and these boards have grown into a community which has taken on a dynamic and a life of its own.

In case I’ve never said thanks before, I’m saying it now: thank you kindly for providing this for us.

–James

15

Dale said he could start the thread again, minus the name-calling. That would be an attractive option to me, were I Mr. Burns. I would not, however, have started three threads (or however many we’ve had, now) about how unfair my life is because someone on teh interwebs moved my flute thread.

I say again: Silly.

Silly silly silly.

Silly silly.

16

I don’t mean to offend, after all I am a happy customer of your flutes, but it seems to me these topics will do far more damage to your sales than the economy would.

17

In support of the moderators, I think that moderating a message board is exceptionally difficult. To be completely evenhanded, you have to digest all potentially offensive posts and repsond to them in a completely consistent fashion. The amount of information to process in order to do this is immense, and the attention required to do this can be a full time job in itself. I know that I could not possibly do so, even if I strove for a lightly moderated forum.

Generally, I think that it is unrealistic to expect that things be moderated evenhandedly without fault. A board that is generally convivial is a sign of success and a real service that the moderators are providing.

18

I sympathize with the moderators, but the bottom line is that a non-political thread with a few political comments was put in an area most of us don’t enter for many, many reasons - I have enough trouble with stress-free flute talk; I don’t need to argue politics with people I, for the most part, like. John is right - many put their political views as their signature, and this is allowed - it was the side-comments of these views (so infrequent that I missed them, initially) that made a flute/economic thread move over to a non-flute area. Economics and politics are linked, but then, my ability to buy a flute, or not, is a matter of economics.
BTW - I’d buy happily from someone with Casey’s views; I suppose I wouldn’t if, say, the GOP went into flute making..

19

I want my own message board where I can moderate the heck out of everybody. Not that I’m on a power trip or anything, but that would be soooo cool. Zap! delete!!! Zap! move!!!

20

You ought to get one! You’ll totally dig it!