the Policy of Banning Members

[Roger Odisio]

33 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

This is a private forum Roger. And the admin team decides the rules. By vote, I might add.

Post here if you want. Hope to get what you want. But don't be surprised if you don't get what you want. Or if you don't get a response. PM an admin member if you want a response.

 

I don't understand what you're saying. You're an admin, correct. Wild guess. It says that right under your picture.  And a mod. You banned me by PM. One of the things I take issue with is that the policy of banning is done in secret, without members even knowing what you're doing in their name. No announcement.  No reason given to them for the ban.  

 

You have read my post.  Are you saying that in order for you to respond to it I need to send a PM to you? And you'll respond by PM?   You won't respond in this thread?   If so, why don't you want others to see your response?

 

Straightforward question. Do you think the right to make the rules carries with it the responsibility to discuss those rules and their implementation with members in whose name you act, when asked to do so by those members?  

[Benjamin Cole]

The question remains:

Given the overt partisan nature of our times, and overt tribalism, should not the EF-JFKA moderators be two members of one political party, and two members of the opposite political party?

Having all three mods in the same political party...does that indicate a balance has been sought or achieved?  

Isn't that what every administrative body tries to do when seeking balance---bring diversity to the table? 

[Roger Odisio]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

As a former moderator, who moderated the forum when it was much more argumentative than it is today, I can say that the moderators never asked nor knew each other's politics. There are certain kinds of behavior that are accepted and certain kinds that are not. Period. It has nothing to do with politics. People who yell and/or whine about others, who are madly in love with their opinions on this or that--whether it be Jews, the Deep State, this or that hoax, or this or that conspiracy, end up on the corner.

It's pretty much like kindergarten. 

You're right, Pat.  A moderator should not be talking about his politics, nor should he be asked about them.

To get back to the subject of this thread, my problem with the moderators has nothing to do with their politics. It's about their claim to make important decisions for the group, like cutting off a member's right to post, in secret with no accountability to anyone.  And to answer questions about what they are doing only if they want to.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 7/9/2023 at 9:17 AM, Roger Odisio said:

[During the penalty period,]Besides no posting, no contact with other members is permitted using info on EF.  If a member contacts you, you cannot reply to his message.

 

Sorry about that. The software doesn't give us the option of allowing a member to PM during the penalty period.

 

On 7/9/2023 at 9:17 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Changes are needed, starting with, at a minimum:

 

* A warning should be given to the person for whom a [penalty] is being considered....

 

Warnings are always given. If the violation is minor, all you get are some warning points that expire in ten days. If the violation is bad enough, the warning is a one-day suspension from posting. Worse violations get a two-day suspension.

 

On 7/9/2023 at 9:17 AM, Roger Odisio said:

* A warning should be given to the person for whom a [penalty] is being considered, to allow that person to give his side of the story before the ban is imposed.  Once a ban is imposed and announced to the group, it becomes a matter for group discussion, if members are so inclined.

 

We don't have time for investigations and trials. If we make a mistake, you'll get an unfair warning and possibly an unfair one-day suspension from posting. Take it like a man/woman.

 

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The question remains:

Given the overt partisan nature of our times, and overt tribalism, should not the EF-JFKA moderators be two members of one political party, and two members of the opposite political party?

Having all three mods in the same political party...does that indicate a balance has been sought or achieved?  

Isn't that what every administrative body tries to do when seeking balance---bring diversity to the table? 

Absolutely not. It would be like telling the NBA they need two Republican referees and two Democratic referees at every game. They are supposed to keep politics out of their decisions. If they make bad decisions then they are bad moderators, not bad Democrats or bad Republicans. 

 

[Ron Bulman]

4 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The question remains:

Given the overt partisan nature of our times, and overt tribalism, should not the EF-JFKA moderators be two members of one political party, and two members of the opposite political party?

Having all three mods in the same political party...does that indicate a balance has been sought or achieved?  

Isn't that what every administrative body tries to do when seeking balance---bring diversity to the table? 

No.  This is about the debate of a president's murder possibly facilitated by his opponents.  A hopefully objective body is needed.

[Benjamin Cole]

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Absolutely not. It would be like telling the NBA they need two Republican referees and two Democratic referees at every game. They are supposed to keep politics out of their decisions. If they make bad decisions then they are bad moderators, not bad Democrats or bad Republicans. 

 

Not sure that is an analogy. 

Congressional hearings always have members from both parties present, with time allotted and so on. 

Trials have advocates for prosecution and defense. 50/50 so to speak, and the purpose of a trial to get at the truth of often-complicated situations. 

Those are more-relevant analogies than an NBA game.

The JFKA was (many of us believe) an overtly political act, and the suppression of evidence surrounding the JFKA continues to this day--under the D-Party Biden Administration. It is overtly political suppression. 

There is also the media treatment of the JFKA and JFK Records Act that continues to the present, and is highly political. 

The discussion of the D-Party's suppression of the JFK Records Act, and media complicity in that suppression, is seen in some quarters as "MAGA talk."

The discussion of the RFK Jr. candidacy---about the only hope to open up the JFK Records---is similarly seen as a "MAGA meme," with many media outlets, and participants here, overtly characterizing the RFK Jr. candidacy as being guided or assisted by sinister forces. 

So politics infuses the JFKA topic, unlike an NBA game.

Would it hurt to have a political balance among moderators? How? 

Two of the three moderators have expressed contempt for MAGA supporters, and one moderator suggested to me that MAGA supporters were unwanted as EF-JFKA participants. 

This could obviously color how the moderators choose, in an evolving news environment, to regard some posts as "spam," and who to ban for making comments. 

But something like 46% of voters voted for Trump in the last election. 

Having such a lopsided moderating board, out of step with nearly one-half of the voting public, seem like poor governance. 

You have also expressed contempt for MAGA supporters.

That is fine, everyone is entitled to their opinions---but does that color your view on having a balanced moderating board? 

How would feel about an all-MAGA board of moderators? 

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[Sandy Larsen]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

It appears to be unbalanced to have three strong adherents of the D-Party as moderators.

 

I didn't know that Kathy and Mark are Democrats, let alone strong adherents to the party.

I wouldn't call myself a strong adherent. While it is true I am a member of the party, that is because many of their causes are consistent with my beliefs. Not all of them are.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

7 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I don't understand what you're saying. You're an admin, correct. Wild guess. It says that right under your picture.  And a mod. You banned me by PM. One of the things I take issue with is that the policy of banning is done in secret, without members even knowing what you're doing in their name. No announcement.  No reason given to them for the ban.

 

As you know, I gave you a reason for your two-day penalty.

It is forum policy that we keep the matter of warnings and penalties private between the admin team and the member. The member can reveal it to others if they choose to do so.

 

7 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

You have read my post.  Are you saying that in order for you to respond to it I need to send a PM to you? And you'll respond by PM?   You won't respond in this thread?   If so, why don't you want others to see your response?

 

Some members keep asking the same questions over and over again. I personally refuse to keep replying after the first few times.

Some members say how they think the forum should be run. I may or may not respond to them.

Some members do nothing but complain. I may or may not respond to them.

In cases where I don't respond, it is much more likely that I will respond if they write directly to me by PM.

 

7 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

Straightforward question. Do you think the right to make the rules carries with it the responsibility to discuss those rules and their implementation with members in whose name you act, when asked to do so by those members?  

 

Yes, but just once.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

48 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Two of the three moderators have expressed contempt for MAGA supporters, and one moderator suggested to me that MAGA supporters were unwanted as EF-JFKA participants.

 

Ben,

Please tell me by PM where a moderator suggested to you that MAGA supporter are unwanted at EF-JFKA.

Not too long ago we had such a MAGA supporter ask to have his membership removed. Rather than doing so right away, we gave the member time to cool off. He did cool off, changed his mind about leaving, and resumed posting.

Does that sound like the admin team has an anti-MAGA membership agenda?

 

[Benjamin Cole]

15 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Ben,

Please tell me by PM where a moderator suggested to you that MAGA supporter are unwanted at EF-JFKA.

Not too long ago we had such a MAGA supporter ask to have his membership removed. Rather than doing so right away, we gave the member time to cool off. He did cool off, changed his mind about leaving, and resumed posting.

Does that sound like the admin team has an anti-MAGA membership agenda?

 

LS-

As it was in a DM, I cannot disclose the negative comment regarding how to make the EF-JFKA more appealing to the full political spectrum. 

Obviously, there is a great deal of antipathy towards the MAGA crowd expressed in this forum. In fact "MAGA" is considered an insult here, a condition that renders one's powers of observation deficient. But 46% of voters pulled the lever for Trump. 

Not only that, the right-wing media is the only media giving a hearing to the JFKA, and even to the JFK Records Act, at this time. 

As a long-time leftie, I am ashamed of this, but there you have it. 

(Yes, I said "leftie." I believe in national health care, a smaller military, non-interventionism, a reduction in intel budgets, color-blind policies and wide-scale habitat rehabilitation, less air pollution (I grew up in L.A.), a minimum of censorship, and many other planks---well, they used to be left-wing planks. 

What has happened to the D-Party....

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 7/9/2023 at 11:17 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Yesterday, by way of explaining the delay in my response to Jeremy's post, I mentioned that I had been banned from posting on Thursday for 2 days. The ban was by personal note to me from Sandy.  No announcement was made to the group (more on the problem with that below).

 

Later in the day, Sandy brought it up himself, without mentioning my name: 

"I gave one guy a two-day suspension the other day for what I think most people consider quite offensive". His note to me was headlined "outrageous statements". What, the reader might ask,  did Odisio say that was so offensive and outrageous?

 

Here is Sandy's statement accompanying the ban notice: "for stating numerous times that the moderators have not explained the reason for moving threads, when in fact we have explained numerous times."  IOW, It's a fact that they have explained the reasons numerous times. The implication is undeniable:  I was lying when I claimed otherwise and therefore deserved a ban.

 

I had questioned the policy of moving threads and asked for an explanation.  Since all posts relevant to an understanding of the JFKA should be allowed (a statement that seems obvious to me), I had asserted that a threshold determination of *irrelevance* should be made before removing a thread from the forum, regardless of what other topic a thread also included (like politics).

 

Neither Sandy nor Mark argued against that assertion. There was no discussion. Instead Sandy said he had already explained the reasons threads were moved, but "Roger has refused to listen". I quickly responded that I had read everything that was said, but nothing offered was an adequate explanation, considering that information people here should be seeing was being removed from the forum.  IOW, my question was about the *adequacy of explanations offered, not about whether any had been offered.

 

That drew only a repeat that I simply refused to listen to the mods when they reasserted *the fact* that they had offered explanations for the moves.  The real question about adequacy was left unexamined.

 

It seems to me that Mark also indicated that the politics forum in EF was being shortchanged if the threads that discussed some political aspect were not moved there. I suggested, twice, that to the extent that was a problem, it could be solved by leaving the thread in JFKA, and copying it to the politics forum.  Again, no response. 

 

The stage was set for when the next time I mentioned the inadequacy of the policy of removing threads, the hammer of a ban could be lowered.  

 

They had turned a disagreement about the adequacy of their policy, that they had consistently declined to discuss, into an outrageous and an offensive "refusal to listen" to their claim of having explained the reasonableness of their policy. 

 

Needless to say, I find the claim in support of the ban to be without merit, absent further discussion by the mods.

 

Perhaps all of this could be cleared up if Sandy and Mark would explain why each thread they moved was irrelevant to an understanding of the JFKA. Or why relevance doesn't matter, at least to the extent I claim. 

 

In addition, while they're at it and in view of Sandy's remarks about what he said I did, I would like my name back.

 

Now a word about how the ban policy works, in case one of you runs afoul of the mods.  I was astonished at how it works.

 

No warning of a possible ban is given.  The note from Sandy said: Warning, you may not post again on EF for the 2 days. There was no warning that a ban is being considered to give the person I chance to respond. The ban is imposed without warning, despite what the note says. 

 

No response to the ban is permitted.  You must simply acknowledge receipt.  You will not be permitted to post again, your suspension will be extended, until you do acknowledge it.

 

No announcement of the ban or the reasons for it is made to the group.

 

Everything is done in secret via a personal message from the mods.  They have to explain nothing.  They allow no response to their actions.  They have no accountability. Members don't even know what has been done in their name.

 

Besides no posting, no contact with other members is permitted using info on EF.  If a member contacts you, you cannot reply to his message.

 

Effectively you are placed in solitary confinement within EF for the length of the ban. 

 

This is way too much power for any mod to have, not just the current mods.

 

Changes are needed, starting with, at a minimum:

 

*All bans must be announced by the mods to the group, including the reasons for the ban. 

 

*This will allow a discussion of the ban's efficacy.  A ban should not be given lightly.   Censorship of speech of any kind is repugnant, even more so that which is done in darkness.

 

*The banned person must be allowed to use the EF contact facility to discuss with other members what they think of the ban or the possibility of a ban.

 

* A warning should be given to the person for whom a ban is being considered, to allow that person to give his side of the story before the ban is imposed.  Once a ban is imposed and announced to the group, it becomes a matter for group discussion, if members are so inclined.

 

Look, Sandy and I strongly disagree on some issues, but I must say that I have found Sandy to be fair and tolerant in how he moderates the board. The problem is that you seem incapable of taking No for an answer. You repeatedly seem to intent on trying to push the envelope. If you don't like how the board is run, go post on other JFK-related boards.

[Roger Odisio]

12 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Sorry about that. The software doesn't give us the option of allowing a member to PM during the penalty period.

 

 

Warnings are always given. If the violation is minor, all you get are some warning points that expire in ten days. If the violation is bad enough, the warning is a one-day suspension from posting. Worse violations get a two-day suspension.

 

 

We don't have time for investigations and trials. If we make a mistake, you'll get an unfair warning and possibly an unfair one-day suspension from posting. Take it like a man/woman.

 

 

Sandy, in responding, you have a habit of choosing what you want to talk about and ignoring the rest.  In this case you have again ignored my central point, which I will now say more bluntly in the hope it gets through.  You and the other mods should not be removing a thread from this forum that is relevant to understanding the JFKA, regardless of whether it touches on a topic in another forum (like Politics). That defeats the very purpose of this forum which is to consider anything that might help us understand what really happened that day, and be able to explain it to others.  It follows that, as a threshold matter, a thread must be shown to be *irrelevant* before it can be moved.  The mods have not been doing that.

 

Agree or disagree?

 

What do you mean *if* you made a mistake?  We're well past the *if* stage.  I have said that you took my questions and comments about the inadequacy of your explanations for moving threads and turned them into a claim that I said you hadn't offered *any* explanations.  You then turned that into your claim--made only in a PM to me--that I was lying in saying you never offered a reason for the moves. A claim that makes no sense since everybody can see you did offer explanations, however inadequate.  I can't help but think that had you offered your justification for the ban in public, rather than secretly to me, people who followed the discussion would have understood it was false.  

 

In a later post you said,  "It is forum policy that we keep the matter of warnings and penalties private between the admin team and the member. The member can reveal it to others if they choose to do so." That begs the question.  Why is secrecy a forum policy?  If the member doesn't reveal the penalty--maybe he's too embarrassed--no one else finds out.  More importantly, you can go on banning people without ever having to give a reason to the group.  That is a prescription for abuse.  Are you familiar with JFK's famous speech about the insidious dangers of secrecy?  

 

Here is a taste: "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it."  https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-newspaper-publishers-association-19610427

 

"The software doesn't give us the option of allowing a member to PM during the penalty period"' You can't change the software to allow a member to talk to others while under penalty?

 

"We don't have time for investigations and trials." You have time to discuss and take a vote among yourselves whether to punish somebody, but you don't have time to "investigate" the case. I.e., you don't have time to even hear that person's side of the story, for one example. This is untenable and certainly leads to mistakes that could have been avoided.  Like in my case.

 

Let's get on the same page about the meaning of the word "warning".  According to my dictionary's definition, the word means "a counsel to desist from a specified undesirable course of action".  Despite your claims, you don't give warnings. Nor do you allow a response before imposing the penalty, as you should. The warning can be done in a PM since the group doesn't need to know about it if you ultimately decide against a penalty That would surely reduce the number of mistakes you make that you so blithely dismiss with, accept them like a man.  Instead, you now merely issue a penalty and put "warning" in the title of the message. It's time to give actual warnings and allow a response before you lower the boom.

 

While you reserve for yourself the right to respond or ignore any message directed to you, I nevertheless hope you will give the above points some attention.  Perhaps even offer a response.

[Mark Knight]

16 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

As a former moderator, who moderated the forum when it was much more argumentative than it is today, I can say that the moderators never asked nor knew each other's politics. There are certain kinds of behavior that are accepted and certain kinds that are not. Period. It has nothing to do with politics. People who yell and/or whine about others, who are madly in love with their opinions on this or that--whether it be Jews, the Deep State, this or that hoax, or this or that conspiracy, end up on the corner.

It's pretty much like kindergarten. 

Well said, Pat.

[Mark Knight]

As an administrator, there is one point I would make. If a moderator/administrator does issue a disciplinary action to a forum member -- and we have instituted a point system, although we are still fine-tuning that system -- that disciplinary matter will remain between the mod/admin and the member being disciplined. Thus, if Vinnie Barbarino is assessed a five-point penalty, for example, Arnold Horshack has no right to know that.  This is adherence to the business management policy of "praise in public, reprimand in private." 

If you CHOOSE to make a reprimand public, that is your prerogative.

NOW...to correct a mistaken impression...forum member Robert Montenegro was NOT "banned" from posting on the forum. Another admin had placed him under a one-post-per-day limitation, but he was NOT "banned" from posting. Because of the value of the recent information that Robert sent via Paul Brancato, the administrators reviewed Robert's status, and removed the one-post-per-day restriction. With the new points-based system, we are attempting to work out a system under which points assessed to a member eventually expire, so that their reprimand doesn't fall through the cracks, as Robert's had. Bear with us, as we attempt to make this system as fair and equitable as possible.