Living in Interesting Times

[Orctrader]

Does that apply if you post under a pseudonym? Right to be forgotten is your actual name I believe.

If an EU resident can be identified—directly or indirectly—by a piece of data, every company that’s handling that data must be GDPR-compliant. This data includes names and ID numbers, along with location data, cookies, IP addresses and more. The GDPR also classifies genetic and biometric data, such as touch ID metrics, as personal data. As an indication of how the EU views personal information, the legal definition couches it as a human right...

Or, as I put it in my presentation for work: "in defining Personal Data the legislation gives the broadest interpretation possible..."

Anyway, I don't think LAF has anything to worry about, just going back to my original point, if a member requests that all of their posts be removed, the mods will do this, as has been demonstrated, but if they declined, then there might be some hassle.

[Macunaima]

Just putting in my two cents here.

I am bright, fluorescent red in my politics and have never been censored on LAF. In fact, the one time a certain sure ‘nough rightwing fanboi began stumping here with his “rah, rah, go team!” propaganda for his country’s armed forces and their wars, I complained and the mods swiftly backed me up.

My experience is that LAF — unlike a not-to-be-named miniatures site that is indeed to partial to rightwing fanbois, open white supremacists, and middle-aged guys who appreciatevsex with 15 year olds — REALLY means “no politics” and applies that rule with an even hand.

Three bans in twelve years? I don’t think any moderated site I know is that liberal. Tip ‘o the hat to the new owner and my fondest hopes things will continue, as promised, the way they always have. I know this particular commie snowflake will be screaming the loudest if they don’t. But nothing indicates that they won’t.

[Connectamabob]

My own experience with LAF over the years I've been here have been that it's an unusually civil forum. Unusual in the sense that heated arguments are very rare, and when they do happen, the people involved seem to keep much more balanced and emotionally stable. LAF's version of "nasty blow-up" is everyone else's version of "slightly annoyed".

And I like this. It's breath of fresh air, and a ray of hope against the pessimism that comes with age.

My only issue with the recent kerfuffle was how the mods responded to the reaction by getting personally offended, rather than thinking about how the situation might look from the perspective of people who had literally none of the info they were privvy to. I don't question the banning either way, as I didn't personally see any of the interactions that precipitated it. I don't question their reasons for removing said former member's post history, as once explained, they make sense.

But BEFORE it was explained, it legitimately looked weird in a bad way. It didn't turn out to be bad, but the appearance of such was an unintended but IMO not unpredictable byproduct of the terms of the situation. The only way this wouldn't have happened is if people just never noticed that the member in question and all his former posts were gone.

Instead of getting offended and trying to reframe peoples concerns as weird quasi-political extremist conspiracy theories, it would have been better to acknowledge that this was just a "between a rock and a hard place" decision and reassure people.

I'd strongly urge the mods to consider what happened from the POV of the ordinary members who had no idea what happened or why or who made what decisions, or even if the people who made those decisions were the familiar mods, or somebody new. All we saw was forum member get scrubbed as thoroughly as possible as quietly as possible. And when we voiced our concern, while we did get an explanation, we also got a line about how this was being considered an insult (with an implied comparison to the insults the former member made towards mods who tried to temper him, implying a warning to any involved in that thread).

In the first page of this thread , this was followed up by hyperbolic accusations of a "smear campaign" and posters having "agendas" about politics and capitalism and whatever, and the strange assertion that mod behavior is of "no justifiable concern" to the members of a board who are subject to it.

Whatever fights the offending member got in happened when I was offline, and by the time I came back had been redacted, so while I knew he didn't always get on with everyone, I thought it was just light occasional friction, and had no idea he'd been that big of a problem. So his banning appeared very "out of the blue". The mods may have been very aware of the problem, but by redacting his public scuffles when they happened, they unwittingly created the public illusion for any who weren't there at just the right moments that he was just a normal guy and not a problem at all. Stop here, and go up and reread the first paragraph of this post, and you'll see why this now makes things feel a bit weird in general.

So when he got banned, it looked extreme instead of reasonable. Because we didn't have all the facts, and that completely changed the shape of what we saw. And when his posts all got disappeared at the same time, it looked EXTRA extreme, again because we were completely in the dark about literally everything about the situation. On top of that, this happened right after the forum got bought out by another company, and while we've been assured that this wouldn't result in changes... that's kind of the standard party line whenever there's a buyout in any industry. It's nice, but it's often not accurate, so people naturally learn to take it with a "we'll see" attitude.

So secrecy + circumstances + bad timing made what was internally an ordinary and reasonable mod action look like something much more sketchy from the outside.

At the very least, you shouldn't be insulted because we didn't even know if this was you we were discussing. Everything was up in the air pending mod explanation, and since everything had been done conspicuously silently up to that point, it was not unreasonable to expect we wouldn't get one.

I stand by much of what I said in that thread, even though the situation has now been clarified, because I think it still applies. Redacting problems and deliberately acting silently makes it impossible for people to tell if the mods are acting fairly, which in turn makes "if you don't like it, leave" style arguments meaningless.

This isn't political of any "wing". If you hide everything, people have literally no other option but to draw their own conclusions from whatever little they have. You cannot get mad at people for drawing the wrong conclusion if you refuse to contribute towards any conclusion. You can hold it against them if they refuse to change their conclusions after you clarify, but to come out swinging at people you've actively denied any insight up to that point is intellectually dishonest.

This is not an attack, or an insult. It is a plea for understanding.
 

[Connectamabob]

The above is me "getting things off my chest" after taking a week off from the forum. I apologize if it's long winded, or of it retreads stuff that's been said by others too much.

TLDR:
I don't take issue with the decisions mods have made as far as banning, deleting etc. so far as I am aware of them. Only with the lack of communication, and with what appears to be an emotion-driven blindness regarding the predictable results of said lack of communication.

I've never run afoul of the mods myself, and have no evidence that they've used their power badly in the past. However the latter is not a reliable judgement if use of power is hidden/redacted, and the willingness to take preemptive offense and hyperbolically misrepresent interactions to retroactively justify said offence does establish a mechanism for bad decisions.

[Captain Blood]

Instead of getting offended and trying to reframe peoples concerns as weird quasi-political extremist conspiracy theories

What are you talking about?
You say repeatedly that the moderators shouldn't be personally offended, feel insulted, or try to make this incident into a political thing - like this is down to the moderators!
Did you actually read what the OP said?

commercial-oriented right-wing fanboys are a world phenomena in all areas of human activity nowadays...  Sad, but true...     So the "we're closed to all dialog for reason of the common good" are harsh words being said worldwide, not only here at our dear LAF. 

It was the OP who ridiculously brought politics into it. I'm not surprised that a couple of my fellow moderators took personal offence at that label seemingly being applied to them.

[Hammers]

The above is me "getting things off my chest" after taking a week off from the forum. I apologize if it's long winded, or of it retreads stuff that's been said by others too much.

TLDR:
I don't take issue with the decisions mods have made as far as banning, deleting etc. so far as I am aware of them. Only with the lack of communication, and with what appears to be an emotion-driven blindness regarding the predictable results of said lack of communication.

I've never run afoul of the mods myself, and have no evidence that they've used their power badly in the past. However the latter is not a reliable judgement if use of power is hidden/redacted, and the willingness to take preemptive offense and hyperbolically misrepresent interactions to retroactively justify said offence does establish a mechanism for bad decisions.

I condense from what you write that you want more transparency and communication from the owner/admin/moderator team. I am not going to reiterate what has already been said several times in the thread above (which to my eye already addresses most of your concerns). I will state that I would not stay on as a moderator if I had to embarrass a (former) member more than what is absolutely unavoidable. I suggest that your concern about transparency is perhaps subordinate to a that of concerned members wishes. Quite honestly, I do not think most members do give a hoot about this whole business. They should not have to because it is discussions which are peripheral to the wargaming hobby which leads to tedious things like this.

[Mason]

But please keep that to yourself.....

[Westfalia Chris]

We really don't want to go through all this again, given that all positions have been made abundantly clear and this cyclic discussion is not going to yield anything that hasn't already been said.

I think that under these circumstances, it will be better to consider this matter closed.