jan_az

Well I will probably get banned for this - but as a long time member and poster I have decided to speak my piece

I find the actions that have taken place this weekend ( and of course its on a weekend ) to be against the spirit of FT.

1. The deletion of fairly innocuous posts by the Talkboard President , with no warning or notification either before or after to the posters

2. The banning of an active candidate for Talkboard with one week to go to the elections. Whether I am in favor of this candidate or not is irrelevant to this discussion ( and for the record I will state that I did not vote for him). This board is still, to the best of my knowledge , hosted in the United States - can you imagine if Bush was able to shut up Kerry this week.

Moderators, who are not elected, seem to have been given way too much power to direct what the rest of Flyertalk is to see. The "rules", such as they may be, need to be posted for everyone to see - not left up to the interpretation of individuals.

Jan

RKG

Jan, you are not alone in your thinking. I find these actions disgusting and underhanded.

RKG

ozstamps

^

Agree 500%.

^

AJLondon

I agree with every word in your above post jan_az. ^
And if agreeing with you / saying this is going to get me banned as well then so be it.

Dovster

jan_az, I agree with every single word that you wrote. ^ ^ ^

SMessier

I hope you've sent a PM or email to Randy to note of your disagreement with his decision(s) then?

As for rules -- if you can figure out a way to remove the (human) element of interpreting a rule, any rule, I suggest filing the appropriate paperwork with the USTPO.

Dovster

Fortunately, it turns out that it is possible to vote for a banned candidate, although as WHarvey indicated in the thread about this which he locked, this was unknown when Attorney28 was banned.

That at least protects the right of those FlyerTalkers who want to vote for him to do so.

If Attorney28 had posted something which deserved a ban (which is debatable) the moderators should have waited until the election was over to put it into effect.

By refusing to do so, they made it impossible for him to speak about the issues in the election. Perhaps more importantly, they made it impossible for people who are voting to learn what his opinions are.

I know that FlyerTalk is not a democracy. It is a privately-owned business. However the elections are being presented as a democratic exercise by that business and therefore should be run according to the principles of democracy.

Instead, as jan_az pointed out, harmless posts by some candidates were removed almost immediately (without even the courtesy of notification) by the TalkBoard president. Others, made by a moderator who accused me of arranging a secret smear campaign (an utter lie) and calling Attorney28 a "weasel" remained up for several days -- despite having been reported.

I know that Attorney28 and I are competing for votes from the same constituency. Anything which damages his chances of being elected therefore automatically aid mine.

I would greatly prefer not to be elected than to benefit from this sad twisting of democracy.

missydarlin

no. There is still only one flyertalk.

How the rest of the message applies to the question asked, I'm not sure. If you have a question for the talkboard (as this is the Talkboard Topics forum, please clarify it, so it can be answered.

I find it interesting that while out of one side of their mouth everyone is complaining about the "lack of notification" before the deletions I made, only one of the posters in this thread bothered to email their concern to me directly before my "disgusting and underhanded" moderation choices went up for public lynching.

As has always been the case, please address your moderation concerns with Randy directly.