The first one is about comment deletion. Graham used to replace deleted the body comments with something along the lines of "[i deleted this because...]". As one stage he justified this with words along the lines of "the carcass serves to deter others from doing the same thing". I am not sure if worked like that. The biggest offenders seem to the animal rights people, and if anything leaving carcasses around seemed to whip them up into even a bigger frenzy. (While there is an element of truth to this I couldn't resist the pun - sorry.)

It may not of acted as a deterrent, but it was great way of making the OLO's moderation decisions open and transparent. In an forum where accusations of bias seem to crop up regularly, that seems important. It also meant if there were gaps in the thread you could see why, and it means you could see how much of an a...hole someone was by looking at their comment history. I would like to see it brought back.

The second request has to do with the "send me an email notification whenever someone posts a follow-up comment to this discussion". Does anybody intentionally not tick this thing? I would like to see it do default to checked, or even better move it to a global in your profile, or some other compromise that meant I didn't have to always click it.

Third, on Christmas 2005 Graham wrote an article on a poll of OLO's forum posters. It turned out to be quite the Christmas gift as it uniquely for OLO generated mostly (only?) feel good comments. Graham, would you consider doing it again? And if you do, could you add at least one more question, something along the lines of:

If OLO had a Christmas / New Year get together, I would prefer to:

(1) Hide in my miserable hole and ignore it.
(2) Attend a free byo everything bbq on Mt Coot-tha.
(3) Pay $xx to attend [address] at the [venue] for a [meal/bbq/...].
(4) ...

Yes, I'd like to know when offending comments are deleted, but maybe it's just a curiosity thing as much as anything. I agree it would help make sense of the thread, not that I've ever noticed a gap in a thread that led me to think a poster's comment might have been deleted, but then again I'm not usually alert to that sort of thing.

I did push a volatile poster a little too far once a few years back. The only way I knew I had was when I read the editorial insert following my post stating 'Deleted for flaming'. In one way I appreciated the protection but I also felt a little cheated! I do think it was good to have that deletion on the public record just the same.

CJ was censored recently, which I'm only aware of because he mentioned it on his way out. I think it involved BD but I'm only guessing. It's not my business I know, but knowing where the deletions occurred would be interesting I think. Are posters banned each time they have a comment censored, or just after a certain number? Guess it's all explained somewhere if I bothered to look.

Yes, I wouldn't mind a repeat along the lines of Graham's Christmas thread. He has since started a general discussion thread which also generated similar feel good responses. I think it was about a year ago but someone else might know.

Just made a quick revisit to the '05 thread and I see you've either changed your name or you didn't actually contribute. You're not Scout, SHONGA or sneekeepete reincarnated are you by any chance? It would be good to see a few of those old names return.

Gee, do some posts get deleted? Shows you how alert I am to gaps!

I say this, because I've at times wondered why a particular poster has been allowed to continue posting though not actually participating in the debate as such only ranting about feminists: like HRS.

Certainly I think it should be public when a comment has been deleted. It serves as a reminder that a modicum of courtesy remains required.

And what's this about a feel good Christmas thread? Sounds great.

rstuart, wouldn't a default to email notification be great. Can't tell you the number of times I've come up with some sharp insight, posted it and forgot to click the email notification button. It's horrible when remembering days later when the glory is all but faded!

Graham, please, when posting a comment automatic email notification. If not wanted this can easily be cancelled afterwards.

I agree rstuart that there should definitely be a note from the moderator in place of any deleted post, to let us know that a post has been deleted, why it was deleted and who wrote it.

Having email alerts as a default position sounds sensible.

The other thing that I would really like to see is a facility for pulling a post off the forum once you have posted it so that it can be modified, within a short timeframe of say 15 minutes after posting.

If I had a dollar for ever post that I’ve put up that has silly little grammatical errors, a missing conjunction (a, the, and), just one letter out of place that changes a word (or instead of of, is instead of it) or makes it look as though you don't know how to spell (week instead weak), I’d be a thousand or so dollars richer!

I strive as hard as I can to make posts word-perfect. Read, re-read, re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read. Then post and read again… and……… .aaaaaarrrgghhh…swear copiously, bang fist on table, threaten to throw ‘puter out window!

At least 50% of the time there just has to be some piffling but totally enraging little cock-up.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!

I don’t believe it. I DO NOT BELIEVE IT !! !! !!

Week instead OF weak!

| : > (

And yes, there is yet another chunderous little blunder, which I managed to read over, at least 30 times, with the specific intent each time of finding just this sort of wanky little typo.

"If I had a dollar for EVERY post...."

When I saw it I thought; oh here we go, Graham or Susan are playing silly-buggers! But sure enough, it is present in the word docco that I copy and paste my posts from!

Hwaaaaaaww

(now Ludwig, in light of your increasing brain decay and enormous stressload incurred over the most piddly little things, you need to very carefully read over the post, about 20 times. Then go and have a nice cup of tea and a good lie down and come back and read it another 20 times. Then get a couple of other people to proof-read it. And then cut and paste it into OLO....and preview the comment another 35 times! Then maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to post it without any errors.............maybe.............unlikely, but just maybe. Of course you could always just choose to not be bothered at all about it. Afterall, every other poster, bar none, suffers the same sort of thing. But yes... how nice it would be to be able to fix up these little blemishes after the post has been submitted. I'm sure you are not the only one by a long way who would appreciate that facility)

I'd like to see a contributors professional title i.e. Dr,Prof., Eng., Bc CBureaucrat), St (student), Ue (unemployed), Tp (Tradesperson) , Se (selfemployed), Ps (Public servant), Jo (Journo), Ns (Nurse) etc.
I think that this would give us all a clearer picture re our varying opinions. It could also be useful for a survey re the attitudes of revenue makers & revenue takers.

Bronwyn: "Just made a quick revisit to the '05 thread and I see you've either changed your name or you didn't actually contribute."

I wasn't here then. I found the site after doing one of Graham's polls and trying to see the results. Even then it took a while to cotton on the site wasn't about polls. In my defence it has a lot of dusty, unused pages and it took a while to find where the action was.

yvonne, the link to the 2005 Christmas poll article. You can't get to it via the articles index page because it crashes.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3901

Ludwig: "At least 50% of the time there just has to be some piffling but totally enraging little cock-up."

I can't put 200 coherent words either, as the phrase "As one stage" in my opening post illustrates. This often makes me cringe, but I rationalise it as truth in advertising. By now everyone here must know there is an addled mind behind these words. Still no one has ever ribbed me about it, and I say that proves OLO's inhabitants are all softies at heart.

individual: "I'd like to see a contributors professional title ..."

How useful would that be given they can lie about it? Still, I think I would like to be able to put a bio on my user page. If ScienceLaw had of done that it would of spared me the embarrassment of calling her a bloke. The trouble is the feature isn't is simple as it sounds. You would have to monitor them for SPAM, and defamatory statements and so on. It would create work for Graham and presumably he would have to pay someone to write the software.

The [deleted comment because] thingy also isn't as easy as it sounds. I suspect a lot of the deleted comments are SPAM, and leaving them there would detract from the site. So they would have to be moved to another page or something, which also involves more software. Still transparency is a hobby horse of mine, so I say he should spend the money.

Yes, yes Ludwig. It would be great if you could have some minutes to 'retrieve' your post.

Wouldn't we all look so smooth then. Still, even after half an hour when I'm passionate about something I probably still wouldn't see my mistakes.

I wouldn't be interested at all in titles. I've seen some professors babble away and seen supposedly 'ordinary' people put together a well thought out coherent argument.

Isn't it interesting when you mistake somebody for the other gender? Why would you think that person male or female?

Truth is I've toyed with the idea of having a blokey posters name. Just to see if I get different reactions. How does Bruce sound?

Thanks for the link rstuart.

Ludwig

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!

I don’t believe it. I DO NOT BELIEVE IT !! !! !!

Week instead OF weak!"

I received an email not long ago where you had to count the number of F's in a given sentence. I carefully counted them a couple of times to be sure, but to my annoyance I was still three short. Apparently my response was perfectly normal though, because nobody reads the word 'of' and there were three 'of's in the sentence.

So I hope I'm not adding to your angst, but you've just beaten yourself up over something that nobody would have noticed anyway!

If it really gets to you, you can always paste to Word and do a spell and grammar check first. That way too you have a back up copy in case the gremlins get to your post, as was happening a while back.

Individual

"I'd like to see a contributors professional title i.e. Dr,Prof., Eng., Bc CBureaucrat), St (student), Ue (unemployed), Tp (Tradesperson) , Se (selfemployed), Ps (Public servant), Jo (Journo), Ns (Nurse) etc."

No, no, no, and a thousand no's! Part of OLO's appeal for me is its egalitarian nature and this would destroy it completely. Besides which I think arguments should stand or fall on their own merit and not have to be propped up through people having letters after their names. Conversely, I don't think people should have to risk having their views downgraded because they don't have qualifications or whatever.

Yvonne

"Truth is I've toyed with the idea of having a blokey posters name. Just to see if I get different reactions."

Yes, I've sometimes wondered too if a blokey sounding pseudonym would invoke different responses, especially when I've been on the receiving end of some patronizing comments, as I have a few times. Then again, I think my writing style and many of my arguments have female written all over them, so it would probably be pretty pointless pretending. Besides which I would have a very hard time sounding masculine, or even neutral, on a gender related thread!

Bronwyn I always do spelling and grammar checks, even if the post is a brief one-liner. But a lot of crappy little errors just don’t get picked up.

Yair I shouldn’t worry about it. The message is nearly always perfectly clear to the reader anyway. And if I think it isn’t, all I need to do is stick up another post to clarify it.

But nonetheless, it is highly irksome to see kindergarten-level errors in a post that I have spent a lot of time researching, composing and revising. It would be great if we had the opportunity to fix them.

Bronywn, totally agree about the professional title thing. There are probably places out there where the professionals in a field can argue the point ignoring others. On this place for the most part it's about what someone says (and for many a perception of where they are coming from based on past post history).

I'd like to see a recognition of deleted comments but think explainations could be both an unnecessary workload and a potential minefield. I'd hate to see deletions become subject to never ending discussion from those who did not agree. Over a number of years on the site I've not seen any evidence of editorial tampering to change the flow of an on topic discussion but I have seen deletions which might be difficult to explain in a few words. Where it really has looked like an editorial judgement call.

I've used the recommend deletion button at times to draw attention to a post not necessarily thinking it should be deleted but where I think the site owner needs the opportunity to review.

I'll for the most part check back on threads that I've posted on. A follow up comment is not necessarily a response to my obviously worthty contributions so I don't want to get an email telling me that someone has posted to a thread.

If changes were to be made then it would be great to have settings against my profile. My default page of choice is the General comments, 5 discussions per category, created in the last quarter and sorted by last post (if I had a choice then I don't care when the discussion was started). I'd love to have the site know that unless I specified other criteria then that's how I wanted my page. Some of those settings just don't see to stick under my windows security settings or between PC's.

Part 1

R0bert

Part 2 of 2

Typing errors - I'm with the crowd who don't seem to be able to sucessfully proof read until a post has been submitted. If editing was allowed it would seem to need to be before any other responses were added but then the person who was drafting a witty response to my gaffe while I edited would look like they had lost the plot if I was allowed to correct my mistakes.

Another suggestion which might help is on the top of the comment preview page a notice letting you know that extra comments had been added while you were drafting your gem. A reminder to go check that what you have written is still relevant rather than yet another "metoo"ism. How many times have I taken some time to draft a piece, reviewed it and posted only to then notice that what I was writing had already been addressed.

R0bert

Other suggestions:

1. In the "New Article Comment" email sent out, could the link be to the particular comment instead of just the top of comments section? That might of been reasonable thing to do when the comments were always on one page, but now I find the first thing I do is click on "All", then go to the end of the page and scroll backwards until I find where I left off reading.

2. I often whinge about "dead corners" of the site and how hard it is to navigate. Fixing that would require wholesale changes. However here is a minor change that would help: replace iParliament in the top navigation bar with a link to this General Discussion area. The iParliament link is dead and is just an embarrassment.

3. If you did that you could also ditch the Forms link as well. Replace it with something useful - like the feedback link at the bottom.

With regard to being able to fix typing errors after posting, if new posts appeared in different colour print or on a different colour background or with a notice attached, for the first 15 minutes or half an hour, thus indicating that they are open to alteration, then any poster that is wanting to respond would know that they really should wait until the post becomes unchangeable, although they will still have the chance to add comments before that.

So, an opportunity to make alterations after posting really needs to be accompanied by a format change that indicates to all posters that the particular post is not yet confirmed.

Secondly, a notification of extra posts or a prominent notice on each thread to remind us to refresh the thread before posting would be most useful, in case new messages have been posted that affect your new post, which is very likely on new and popular threads.

We saw parallel threads on Bill Henson recently, both accepted at about the same time. Why? Why wasn’t the second one refused?

Graham has just started up a second thread on Dennis Ferguson, while the first one was still proceeding very well. Why didn’t he add his comments to that thread?

If the first thread had come to its natural conclusion, or close to it, then fine, but not while it was still well and truly active.

A couple of days ago I was about to submit a general thread on the nude children in art issue. But someone just beat me to it. So I posted my comments on that thread. If I had submitted a new thread, it apparently would have been accepted.

It seems as though just about anything gets accepted for general threads and that perhaps Graham just wants as many new threads as OLO can get, without worrying about the reduction in quality of OLO by presenting duplication ??

A steady rate of new discussions is good. Broad variety is fine. But I think that obvious duplication is unfortunate.

How about a change to the order in which general threads are listed? The trouble is that only five general threads appear in each category. So any thread that is below the first five doesn’t get seen on the main page, unless the reader expands the list to 20, 50, 100 or 200. How many readers think to do this? I’d reckon that a lot just don’t bother.

So if all general threads were just in one list as they are with the articles, then it would be easier to view, and find the popular and active ones.

Currently this very thread appears right at the bottom of the list. So it potentially gets missed. I recently let a friend know about one of my posts on this thread, and he couldn’t find it until he I told him exactly where it was. Then he went off in a head-spin, saying how silly it was to have an active thread right at the bottom of the list!

If there was just one list, based on the order by date of instigation of posts, then posts on elections and general support would get a better response.

Perhaps it would also be useful if older popular and active threads that slip right down the list could be brought up towards the top?

And another suggestion. When you have submitted a new comment, you get taken back to the comments section. That would be great, except it takes you to the first comment. Who wants to go there? Ideally you would like to go to the last comment displayed when you pressed submit, or perhaps to the comment you just submitted.

Oh, and an acknowledgement from someone on OLO that they are at least monitoring this thread would be nice. If nobody is then this is really a waste of time.

Bronwyn, After your recent post to the "Abortion: the silent majority" I wait with bated breath for you next post here.

I suggest something along the lines of "$%^&!@# 'Write new Post' Page. They very least they could bloody well do is put the name of the article you are posting to at the top."

rstuart

"Bronwyn, After your recent post to the "Abortion: the silent majority" I wait with bated breath for you next post here.

I suggest something along the lines of "$%^&!@# 'Write new Post' Page."

$%^&!@# $%^&!@# !! I don't believe it!!

Thank you for letting me know. I guess I would have realised eventually but I may never have figured out where it had actually gone. I'd never even read that thread; I only got onto it through following a link of RObert's. It's his fault; I'll blame him!

How horribly ironic! The very post in which I'm mouthing off about being careful to check posts first and about not posting on a wrong thread, and unbelievably what do I do but post it on a wrong thread! Hopefully the readers on that other thread don't read it closely enough to pick up on that glaring little stupidity!

"The very least they could bloody well do is put the name of the article you are posting to at the top."

Yes, I agree!! It's at the top when you're first writing a post (though obviously not in big enough writing for some!) but once you're at the preview stage it disappears.

By the way, I've been meaning to answer the survey question in your original post. My choice had been number three though after my above stupidity I think I should definitely "hide in my miserable hole and ignore it"! Seriously though, I would attend. While a Brisbane venue might suit some though, it probably wouldn't be much use to posters in other states.

Ludwig

I went to add the link to my misdirected post for your benefit as it was addressed to you. I copied the URL link onto my clipboard but couldn't figure out where to go from there I'm sorry! I'm sure it's simple but as you can see 'simple' does elude me at times!

“Oh, and an acknowledgement from someone on OLO that they are at least monitoring this thread would be nice. If nobody is then this is really a waste of time.”

Yes rstuart. I’m starting to feel a little bit peeved, having put a lot of thought into expressing problems and suggesting improvements, with no feedback.

^^^^

Thanks Bronwyn. Putting posts on the wrong thread is another very good reason for having a facility to easily get them removed/altered within a short time, without having to email Graham or Susan to request it.

I’ve never fallen into that trap…amazingly. But I have so often written a post and then not been able to post it, due to the number of posts in 24 hours rules. I don’t have a problem with these rules or the way they are presented. I’ve just about trained myself to check if I can post before I write anything. But I got caught out again this morning on the Corby thread. So I guess I’ll just have to live with that occasional frustration.

What about this idea:

A noticeboard that lists the top 100 posters by the number of posts they have submitted, and lists congratulations for every first-timer, every poster upon reaching 10 posts, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, etc.

This would be a nice touch. It would make us feel a bit more like valued members of the OLO family. It would alert posters to milestones achieved by others and prompt some congratulatory comments on the forum. I think it would improve goodwill all round.

This could be accessed via an icon at the top and bottom of each thread, along with the current icons; ‘new post’, ‘new discussion’, refresh this page’, etc. There is a nice little gap just made for it at the end of this row of icons.

Graham or Susan, do you think this would be a good idea, or a difficult one implement?

Old Loonywig has just clocked up 2000 posts on this forum. That’s one hell of a lot of hours put into OLO over the last two and a half years. It would have been lovely if just one other poster or the forum management team had noticed and put up some complementary message somewhere…..like he has done for others on several occasions (:>|

"A noticeboard that lists the top 100 posters by the number of posts they have submitted, and lists congratulations for every first-timer,"

Disagree on that. Knowing who everyone is, how long they've been around, how often they post and whether they're a newcomer is part of the OLO culture. Mostly newcomers are welcomed by other commenters, which strikes me as a more welcoming gesture than something automatically generated.

Over the years we've seen all sorts of things, from death notices to party invitations to stomping off in disgust. The majority of posters seem to only last so long before they just stop posting. Old hands get to be that way just by sticking around.

Something I always find interesting is sites with a meter showing how many visitors are lurking at a given time. It could just be me, but it's kind of nice to be acknowledged even if you're not a registered user but still one of a community of lurkers. And it always makes me feel I should leave a comment.

Chainsmoker, you disagree that there should be a mechanism whereby everyone can see who is new, who is one of the main contributors, etc, at a mouse-click, so that they may be congratulated if posters wish to do so. But you think that it is good for posters to know who everyone is and how long they’ve been around. That seems to be contradictory.

I don’t think newcomers are mostly welcomed by other posters. I see it very rarely. And I’m the only poster that has congratulated others on reaching milestone post numbers…as far as I know!

You prompt me to make another observation: The list of users currently online that appears on the main page of this forum doesn’t show all those online! I’ve known about this for a long time. Right at this moment, Ludwig’s online but his name dunna appear there!! Weird!

"I only got onto it through following a link of RObert's. It's his fault; I'll blame him!"

Bronywn now you have caused me a lot of wasted time. Wandering around trying to think of a witty comeback which fitted the topic. Alas I've failed miserably. Two themes to play with, the similarities to my ex in apportioning blame like that or the fact that you actually followed a link someone posted (but then I'd done worse and followed one of runners recently and what a gem that was).

On topic some ability to exchange private messages would be useful, some posters have wanted to exchange contact details with others without broadcasting them to the world.

I've never decided about the BBQ thing, some I'd love to meet but other posters have left me with the impression that they would have no qualms about extending online squables into the outside world. Not something I want in my life.

R0bert

I'd have to disagree with individual's suggestion about background information. When you put even a shred of personal information out there, it's used in personal attacks, I've had it happen here. I don't mind the rough and tumble of debate though I find it very distasteful when it reaches that point.

Besides, some people actually have careers and reasons to keep private, while others can just criticise from the sidelines. Those who have nothing to lose can punish those who do.

Same goes for the BBQ suggestion. There are some I'd enjoy having a conversation with, even some of those whom I tend to disagree with, though there are enough with extreme attitudes to put me off. It's a shame really.

Did someone mention CJ's packed up and headed off? Hmm, I've been away for a while. That's unfortunate.

TurnRightThenLeft: "Same goes for the BBQ suggestion."

I don't understand your reasoning here. If "same" refers to privacy, then the only extra bits of information you reveal when someone sees the real you is your approximate age and gender. That said, I doubt the fact that I am a male on the downhill slope of life will come as a surprise to anyone.

I said above that I thought it would be nice if OLO allowed you to put some biographical information on your user page. But I had forgotten they do allow you to put up a web link. It is not as good but doesn't suffer from the maintenance problems either. Possibly the only improvement would be to allow you to display that web page in a frame.

Ludwig, regarding the General Comments page. From what I can see it is the most sophisticated page on the site. You can sort, filter and customise it in a myriad of ways. Perhaps my only suggestion would be the ability to save your preferred settings as a cookie. My one whinge about the page isn't the page itself - its how many clicks you have to do to get there. One click from the top of main forum page should be all that is required.

chainsmoker: I like it. They probably keep the statistics anyway. Why not say "... and 20 not logged in" along with the names of those logger in.

I'd have to disagree rstuart. General age, yes, as well as appearance and enough to identify who the individual is.

In the vast majority of instances this would be fine, but there are a few individuals here who I simply wouldn't want to know who I am, because what little I've seen of their personality here gives me cause for concern.
I'm aware the anonymous nature of internet forums tends to exaggerate things, however I'm skeptical that it's worth the risk of encountering such a person.

TRTL: << Did someone mention CJ's packed up and headed off? Hmm, I've been away for a while. That's unfortunate. >>

Thanks mate - but I'm still around. Graham gave me a short holiday from OLO for an intemperate comment, shortly after which I gave myself a short holiday on the coast with the kids/grandkids :)

Since I got back I've been a tad busy doing other stuff, but thanks for noticing.

What's annoyed me lately, is the mispelling
of titles by Forum staff of new threads
put in by posters.

A poster puts in a suggestion for a new discussion,
only to find their title mispelled by one of the staff.
Sometimes, it doesn't matter.
Other times - its funny ("Popeulate or Perish").
Other times -
it diminishes the topic.
"Rape victim's rather seeks papal audience."
Should have read, "Rape victims' father seeks papal audience."

Everyone makes mistakes, but could Forum staff
take a bit more care?

Foxy, the first one is actually easy to fix. I am sure they, like the rest of us, manage the forum using a web browser. If they just used firefox and turned spell checking on, mistakes like "Popeulate" just would not happen. I actually had more faith in them, thought Popeulate was a real word and went looking for its definition.

The second one can only be fixed by proof reading. I imagine that ain't going to happen, as it would slow things down and be too costly. A cheaper solution is to just fix the problem when it has been pointed out. They don't seem to do that either.

Its possible they are simply not paying attention. I don't know how many full time employee's OLO has, but my guess would be 0. Have you tried to recommending you own post for deletion, ie clicking the X, and asking for it to be changed? Graham has said elsewhere that people often use the X as a means of communicating the with the OLO administrators.

The General Forum is far and away my favourite part of the site and from a social researcher's point of view, one of the most interesting discussion forums anywhere. The reasons why are pretty much the same reasons for not tinkering with it too much.

TRTL's comments show a typical regular's understanding of who's who, what's what and how everything works around here which is learned through experience. Nobody needed extra bells and whistles to make that happen. Participants themselves make it what it is, including to what extent we want to be identified and how seriously we take the whole thing.

The way I see it, we have been offered this space to do whatever we want, within reasonable limits, and in an easy format that a newbie can quickly learn. We largely develop our own rules about what's appropriate, socially-speaking, and our own relationships based on paying attention to what others are saying, rather than who they are in real life. Everything is negotiable, including how much you reveal about yourself.

Who you are is not as important around here as what you think, or what you know, or what you think you know. I wouldn't like to see any changes that in any way suggest it should be the other way around.

The only problem I can see with this is the advantage for sock puppets, but they are eventually exposed as well. PALE for example. And the specialists who descend on hot issues like abortion and climate change.

I'd rather see the users work these things out for themselves than have anything enforced by identity requirements. From that point of view my earlier comment was not contradictory at all. I think it’s better to have people work these things out for themselves rather than having to be told

So, chainsmoker, I am being studied like a rat in a cage. How am I doing?

Joking aside, I agree with all your comments so far. Which is interesting, as I am evidently looking at it from a totally different perspective than you.

As for TRTL's comments, yes its possible the people behind some of pseudonym's here could be even more irritating in the flesh. Then again, they might not - put the person in a different social setting and the behaviour usually changes. Still its no surprise that some like TRTL would rather not risking finding if some are the same in real life as they are here.

TRTL and I will have to disagree on how much of a risk that would be, as unless your a public figure the odds of meeting someone you know is very small. It becomes even smaller still if the rules of engagement at the gathering specifically say its a meeting of nym's, not true names, and it will be considered bad form to reveal anybodies real identity but your own.

As for me, I'm the sort rat who would get his nose repeatedly stuck in the latch in an effort to find out more about the world out there. I am just glad I am not a cat.

chainsmoker: "from a social researchers point of view, one of the most interesting discussion forums anywhere."

I have been trying think of reasons why a social researcher might find this General Discussion forum one of the most interesting. Lots of hypotheses sprang to mind, but none stand out. The clue "The reasons why are pretty much the same reasons for not tinkering with it too much" didn't really help.

Can you give me a hint?

Are errors in general thread titles mistakes made by forum staff Foxy? They are made by the contributors…aren’t they?

Whatever the case, they should most definitely be corrected by the staff.

It reflects poorly on the quality of the forum to have title threads like;

“ Bill Heson: artist or pornographer?” [should be Bill Henson]

‘Popeulate or Perish’? I notice the title thread is now ‘Populate or Perish’! So presumably someone out there in OLOland is monitoring this thread [Suggestions for OLO] afterall…and has made the correction!?

MMMmmm I dunno. We still have; ‘Rape victim's rather seeks papal audience’. (:>/

Foxy, can you confirm that this was an OLO staffer’s mistake and not yours? No criticism intended. Good on you for starting new threads like this. But I’d just like to be sure. Thanks.

"I notice the title thread is now ‘Populate or Perish’!"

Is it?

Sorry, Ludwig, I know you don't need anyone adding to the angst you already feel when it comes to spelling, but I couldn't resist!

That one’s gone over my head Bronwyn. I’m afraid I can’t work out what you mean.

^^^^

I notice that all the posts by Judy Spence have disappeared. Unfortunately, Judy it turned out to be a stooge, so I guess that it is reasonable that they be removed.

But Ludwig is now left with several posts on different threads that were written in response to now non-existent posts…which makes it look as though Luddles is an addled loony (:>o.

Notwithstanding the possibility that he might be, I think that whenever a post is deleted, there really does need to be a note inserted by the forum adjudicator, indicating that a post has been removed, who it was from and why it’s gone!

Meanwhile, the name Judy Spence still appears in the user index….with a link to her website…..and with no posts listed. Now that’s weird!

"That one’s gone over my head Bronwyn. I’m afraid I can’t work out what you mean."

Ah, Ludwig, it seems I'll have to spell it out for you!!

The title is appearing as 'populate oF perish', not 'populate oR perish', so actually it still hasn't been fully corrected.

Apparently no one reads the word 'of' though, so don't beat yourself up over it!

How extraordinary! Yep, you had to spell it out Bronwyn. I just wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
.

Surely if a direct request was made by email to Graham or staff, things like this would be fixed?! Wouldn't they??

I mean, errors in titles are just really ratty!

Are there people at OLO who manually enter the titles of new threads? Everything else seems automated, so I don't know why that wouldn't be.

About a month ago, I added a new thread titled: Some justice done in the “Iguana-gate” affair. Everything after "the" in the title was chopped off. So, I'm guessing the software spat the dummy when it read the first double-quote.

"I have been trying think of reasons why a social researcher might find this General Discussion forum one of the most interesting. Lots of hypotheses sprang to mind, but none stand out. The clue "The reasons why are pretty much the same reasons for not tinkering with it too much" didn't really help"

It's the only site I'm aware of that lets commenters decide for themselves what they think is worth discussing. Most blogosphere and news discussion sites are full of the emissions trading scheme this week because that's what the site owner/authors have decided is important. Generally speaking this forum tends to discuss more personal issues people get more emotionally involved in. It's less like mainstream media than other sites in that way and more like ordinary, day-to-day conversation, so it's a good indicator of what ordinary people think is important.

That's one reason for leaving it alone, but the main one is that because this is an ordinary people's forum, and we're pretty much left to our own devices, it works the way it does because we've developed shared understandings of how we think it should work. That's very different from having someone else set standards.

Most people probably don't even notice it, but this forum has its own culture that's grown in a grassroots way. You know what to expect when you come here. For example, a while back somebody tried to use it to discuss ideas in a book they'd written and commenters were peeved about that not being proper use of the forum. Yet authors do that all the time at the Journal and nobody bats an eye.

I don't know how successful I've been at explaining. The easiest thing is probably to say that it's developed as its own little community with its own norms and values, but 'community' is such an abused word I'm reluctant to use it.

Don't worry - you're not a performing rat. Although there are probably social researchers out there who are using this forum for research, I'm not one of them. Not at the moment anyway.

RobP, yes those truncated general title threads are another weird aspect of OLO.

The latest new thread is yet another one of these: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1992

chainsmoker: "It's the only site I'm aware of that lets commenters decide for themselves what they think is worth discussing."

digg does a similar thing, the differences being more a matter of scale. There are so many stories submitted to digg they have a voting system to decide on what stories appear on the front page.

Anyway thanks for the reply. Curiosity prompted the original query, but after posting I started wondering if you thought some of the things suggested might alter the tone of the forum. That wasn't my intention. So then of course I started to think about why OLO is the way it is, to get a feel if any of the changes might effect it.

This is the list I came up with:

- Size: its comparatively small, unlike just about every commercial US site. You can read every interesting article and every comment in a reasonable amount of time.

- Articles: the Journal, which is what I suspect everybody finds first, has 1K..2K word articles. Most sites content themselves with abstracts of a few hundred words at most, and most commentators appear to come from people who haven't read the full article. You have to read it here. This appeals to a very different sort of person - one who doesn't mind detail.

- Ditto for the comments. They aren't threaded, so again you have to read all of them.

- Many sites are user moderated in some automated fashion. The manual moderation here gives much better results. There are other sites with manual moderation, but the consistently light hand applied here is unique.

- The quality of the comments here are by far and away the best I seen on any general news site. I suspect this is because Graham and friends seem to have hit on some magic formula with their posting limits.

- In the Journal, there seems to be some real editorial skills at work in the choice of articles. The editors know what will make the site interesting.

Everyone: please add to this list. What have I missed?

RobP: "So, I'm guessing the software spat the dummy when it read the first double-quote."

By George, your right, RobP. The same thing happened in the case Ludwig pointed out. How good are we? We find OLO's problems, and diagnose their cause as well! We are almost doing Dewi's job for him. I just wonder if they are paying any attention at all?

Ludwig,

While some IT errors may at first appear weird, there is always a rule behind it. As a programmer for part of my job, I'm always on the lookout for funnies like that. What could have happened is that the double-quote is interpreted as a special control character in the string and not taken literally as it was meant to be.

On the subject of spelling errors, the editor of another website I used to write to said that he/she didn't fix spelling mistakes in the posts because it said something about the author. (It could also have had something to do with him/her not having the time to edit them all.) I guess the same applies to errors in titles.

rstuart,

Yes. Collectively, we are like diligent little bacteria - mopping all the messes up!

Interesting observations rstuart.

Size: Comparisons with the US are pointless for mine. We're a different people. Agree with you on the benefit of small.

Articles: I suspect most of them don't get read properly. Time constraints and comprehension is lower than for print. It's easy to skip straight to comments and gather what the article said from there. Then again, I'm more interested in comments than articles.

Comments: After a while you recognise writing styles and can easily skip comments that are predictable. I've developed the bad habit of only reading comments from people I find interesting, although they're not all people I agree with.

Moderation: Agreed. The 'recommend for deletion' button lets people decide for themselves how they want things to be. It's brilliant.

Quality: Depends what you call quality. OLO has an interesting mix, which is unusual because people usually congregate with others pretty much like themselves.

I like RobP's observation on spelling mistakes saying something about the author. I think that's true. I also think the fact that people here don't criticise others' spelling and punctuation says something.

RobP, regardless of the nature of the IT glitch that is causing truncated thread titles, they should simply be checked before being posted, or corrected ASAP after posting. That should be simple, surely.

In fact, it really is quite bizarre that these truncated titles should be put up, where the whole world can see that there is something fundamentally wrong with OLO…and stay up uncorrected forever. This phenomenon really is most weird!

I see spelling errors in titles and within posts as two quite different things. Titles should be accurate, as they reflect directly on the presentation and management of the forum. Spelling and grammatical errors within posts are the business of the relevant posters and reflect only on them. We should have the expectation that title errors will be corrected by OLO staff. But we could expect the staff to proof-read and correct every post!

However, as I have pleaded in earlier posts on this thread, a poster should be able to correct errors after they have been posted, as from personal experience it is just impossible to make all posts (or even 50% of the little mongrels |:>{ ) entirely word-perfect! And even the tiniest errors can be highly irksome for the writer. Some of us posters really hate errors appearing under their name (or pseudospewodonym)!

[There’s another grossly irritating impossible little error in one of my posts yesterday; “Judy it turned out to be a stooge…” should read ‘Judy turned out to be a stooge’. Rrrrrghh!]

"RobP, regardless of the nature of the IT glitch that is causing truncated thread titles, they should simply be checked before being posted, or corrected ASAP after posting. That should be simple, surely."

Ludwig, I agree that is best. I noticed that on one occasion, a couple of slightly inappropriate words I put in an opening post in the General forum were quietly excised - so someone is definitely reading them and editing the posts.

But, maybe the software is written in a way that doesn't allow the moderator to change the title. You would have to ask the OLO site administrator about that. It would also be a good thing to have exclusive privilege, as the author of a post, to change any errors in it, including the title. However, this may be a difficult feature to add in to the existing program - it all depends on how the computer code is written and structured. I imagine that if it was an easy fix, it would have been done by now.

I make my fair share of cut-and-paste errors too - reworking the construction of a sentence and leaving behind words that don't belong there any more. Wouldn't happen if it wasn't for computers...

Oh fwuaaaarrrk! No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop really sh!tty little errors inserting themselves into your posts….

“But we could expect the staff to proof-read and correct every post!” should read….

‘But we could NOT expect the staff to proof-read and correct every post’

Unfrigginbelievable! Pissbumpoocrapshitfuckcuntballs!! !!

How does this stuff happen…when I SO CAReFuLLY AnD THoROuGhLY read every post before posting !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

*The title is appearing as 'populate oF perish', not 'populate oR perish', so actually it still hasn't been fully corrected.*

Bronwyn, my actual title was "Populate or perish" - think again
George Pell.

Next it appeared as Popeulate of perish. It looked more like
Wendy's spelling to me lol, so I asked for it to be changed
to Populate or perish. At least they changed the popeulate.

I think that Graham must have just had a late night, or a bad
hair day that day :)

To me it just looks crappy, if the title is wrongly spelt.

The present OLO Articles index page, and the present OLO General Discussion index page are each presented in a sequential chronological listing in order of the time of first posting of the article, or opening post, respectively. How many articles or topics are displayed, and for how far back in time, is up to the OLO user. I find no fault with this indexing format.

There is an alternative way in which a topic listing can display.

That alternative is to display in order of recency of posting, with the most recent post being at the top of what may be only loosely called an index page. The article or topic title to which the post relates is shown, together with the userID of the poster. The time at which the post was made is typically expressed in terms of "x minutes (or hours, or days, or weeks) ago", although I don't see why the actual date and time of posting (as is present OLO practice) could not also be shown.

An example of forums that operate on this "recency of posting" display is the Ubuntu Linux Forums. See this link to the Ubuntu Community Cafe sub-forum for a demonstration of this method of indexing: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=11

I grant that the ability to locate a particular topic under a "recency of posting" display is made more difficult. You have to be familiar with the site search tools (and those tools have to work well, too) in order to find particular topics, especially ones that may not have had any recent posts made to them.

This difficulty could be overcome, and perhaps OLO could benefit in the process, by having BOTH indexing systems -sequential and "recency of post"- in operation, with the user being able to chose which display format best suits their current requirements. Perhaps such an option, software feasibility permitting, could be first trialled in the General Discussion area of OLO in order to see whether discussion is stimulated and/or facilitated.

Discoveribility of any such option would be important.

Forrest Gumpp: "That alternative is to display in order of recency of posting"

You can already do this. Just click on the heading "Last Post".

You can also display the discussions with most posts first by clicking on the "Posts" heading.

The "General Discussion Index" page is the most flexible here on OLO. I can only think of small improvements - like making its flexibility more obvious by saying changing the column heading buttons so you might be tempted to try then out. It would also be nice if it remembered your preferred layout.

rstuart,

Thanks for the tip re the different display orders fot the index page contents.

In all the time I have been viewing and posting on OLO I have never happened to mouse-over either of these two column headings on the General Discussions index page, and thus reveal them as clickable links or options.

I guess that makes all but the last sentence of my previous post a whole lot of egg-sucking rot, doesn't it? Ain't it always the way! If you want information or help as to how to use a site, just reveal your iggorance! Someone will set you right in double-quick time!

For some reason I always thought that the column heading 'posts' was, well, the number of posts; and there were the numbers of posts to each topic displayed in their respective little cells. Seemed fully descriptive enough to me. Too Easy!

Likewise, the column heading 'last post' fully described the display of the relative recency of the last post to that topic, with the added little self-evident bonus of the red script for posts having been made less than two hours before your loading of the index page. (But see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=967&page=0 for a discussion of apparent aberration from this standard. I do not know whether the reasons for these aberrations were ever revealed.) Overall, clear as a bell!

It seems we all need the Little Rodent more than some of us realise! Just to be pedantic, the column headings are clickable on the Articles index page too. Wow!

Viewers and users could benefit from OLO having a Page page: a button (like a help button) on every Forum page that would bring up a page in which all of the features and options available to a user on that particular page are described, with, perhaps, a brief explanation of the potential usefulness of the feature to a user.

The age of the dinosaurs still continues!

Remember the website design dictum: "if it ain't obvious, it ain't obvious!".

It's just occurred to me that I'd not been annoyed by David (Boazy) for some time. Checked his post history and the last post was

25/06/2008 12:19:35 PM Good morning Pericles and Spikey. On the one issue of the Pastor and Sweden.... lets re e.....

Is he on a long suspension?
Permanently excluded?
Got himself a life off OLO? (seems unlikely)
Suffered a dire fate which would have us chipping in to send a get well card and flowers?

It would be handy to be able to see a user status. If someone was suspended it would show, if going away and wanting to tell others then we could update it.

R0bert

Robert,

A certain polycarp started posting threads at 25/06/2008 6:01:17 AM.

Make that, "... posting TO threads at 25/06/2008 6:01:17 AM"

R0bert, the suggestion is good.

But regarding BD, the general consensus is he uses the name Polycarp now, although as far as I am aware he has never admitted to that. The cross over date in the comment history is consistant with that theory:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=51726&show=history

And for this afternoons trivia question: how long did it take to spot the transformation from BD to Polycarp, and who got the prize for spotting it first?

RobP and rstuart, thanks for the heads up on that. I'd not paid much attention to polycarp but the similarities are striking and when combined with the timing of the initial post it looks like that might be the case.

Now I'll have to think about the pro's and con's of having an identity linkage so other users can follow a full posting history. Personally I think it's bad manners to change an alias and not fess up. Then if I'd made some of the posts David has made over the years I'd not want a proven linkage back to them.

R0bert

I think OLO really does have to abandon of the multiple page setup for articles and for the posts written in response to both article and general threads.

I can’t see any reason why a whole article couldn’t appear straight away, instead of just the first page. Does any reader NOT just go straight to the ‘All’ button so that they can read the whole article?

Similarly with the posted responses.

If the list of posts exceeds four or five pages, then yeah maybe there would be some merit in getting a reduced version first-up. But if that be the case, we should get the latest pages, not the pages at the start of the discussion.

Ludwig,

It used to be like that - everything on one page. But people on dialup modems complained it was taking too log to load the pages, so it was changed. (No I don't have inside information - Graham/Susan said this in a post somewhere.) I can't imagine Graham thinking it was a bad idea as it means we get to see more ads.

But yes, the first thing I do is the the entire rss feed into separate tabs on my browser, then I run though the tabs and click on "All", then I start reading. Similarly, reading comments is two clicks, the second one being "All".

It would of been nice if they had of made the option settable in your account. But just putting a link to the post in question when they send their emails would be a great start, and it would be so easy to do.

Yes rstuart. I was on dial-up in those old OLO days. But it doesn’t make sense, because even dial-up customers have to read all of an article, which usually runs to a second or third page, and have to go to the end of a thread of comments in order to catch up with the latest discussion and to be able to post.

So why not just have it all presented at the first click? Or the last four or five pages of longer threads of comments?

Ah but, if the current setup means more ads and hence more income for OLO and hence a better forum, well then maybe it is ok (:>)

We need messages on threads where posts have been deleted or where parts of a post have been removed if they have been responded to.

For example, posts by Judy Spence, who turned out to be an impostor, were deleted which left some people wondering what was going on (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1970#41711).

And part of a post was deleted which made comments written in response look incongruous to readers that missed the original comments (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7679#119843).

I reckon that more photos or other illustrations within articles would add greatly to the appeal and quality of the forum. For example; http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7692

I suspect that is up to the submitters. I certainly don't want to see stuff added by OLO editors that wasn't submitted just to make the site look prettier.

I would be happy if the editors just managed to do their job. They rarely modify the articles after the have been posted, even to fix up mistakes. Replacing the occasional [insert graphic here] you see in the articles with the graphic would be a good start. On a number of occasions I have seen an author say "I am working with the editors to get the links I mentioned added", but then nothing happens.

Actually, its the links that really irritate me. We get a lot of articles on OLO claiming dubious things. If the authors have references to back up their claims, I would like to see them.

Probably the programmers could make the editors job easier by allowing the authors to submit their articles the same way we grunts do: on line. They could then edit and preview the article page to get it looking exactly how they want it to look.

Ludwig: "We need messages on threads where posts have been deleted ..."

Obviously, I agree. But they can detract with the flow of the posts. When Wayne Smith carpet bombed the place a week or two ago (he was probably the Judy Spence impersonator as well), someone (Dewi?) replaced his posts with big red notices. It looked ick.

I would like to see it done, but it has to be unobtrusive as possible. A one line note perhaps, like this in a neutral colour (not Red!):

Post by xxxx, Monday, 7 July 2008 4:33:09 PM, deleted - defamatory.

It would be nice to have links to xxxx's page and to a longer explanation of why the post was deleted embedded in there, possibly with a copy of the message sent to the xxxx telling him he has been a naughty boy.

For audibility's sake it would be good to show every deleted post that way, but if there is a lot of SPAM then again it would detract from the look of the place. It won't be easy to get the balance right. Out of all the things I suggested, this one will definitely take the most work to implement. I see it an the most important, but probably the least likely to happen.

There seem to be quite a few professional programmers here, and I am sure if OLO asked they would be happy to do the work for free. But nothing ever comes for free of course. Technically doing this is easy - programmers have organised themselves to work collaboratively for free over large time and space distances for years via the Open Source movement and have changed the face of the software world as a consequence. Whats more they have done it on a massive scale, well beyond what OLO needs here. But I suspect changing to that model it would be a bit of a cultural shock to programmers at OLO, and they are the ones who would have to make it work.

“I suspect that is up to the submitters. I certainly don't want to see stuff added by OLO editors that wasn't submitted just to make the site look prettier.”

Totally up to the article authors I presume. I wouldn’t want anything inserted into any article I wrote without knowing about it and approving of it before publication. But OLO could easily encourage writers to add a photo or two, that’s all.

“Post by xxxx, Monday, 7 July 2008 4:33:09 PM, deleted - defamatory.”

Yes. This is all that’s needed to indicate that post has been deleted. A similar message should be added at the bottom of posts that get partly deleted.

A couple more things. Both have been mentioned on this thread but let’s say it again anyway…..

I’m finding it very unfortunate indeed that there is no response from Graham or Susan here, on this thread which the administrators are surely monitoring and which is now three and a half weeks old.

A whole host of good ideas and some gently constructive criticism has been presented here by people who really support OLO and want to see it become steadily more effective and well patronised. But there is no support coming back.

Secondly, I think that article writers should be required or at least strongly requested by our administrator to monitor comments to their own articles and respond, particularly when a response is directly requested by a poster. Some do but many don't.

I am very disappointed that Professor Peter Curson hasn’t responded to my direct request here; http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7671#119494. There have been many other occasions on which I have tried to communicate directly with authors on OLO, without success.

Nice as it would be to have authors respond, OLO can't force the issue. Handing out their email addresses would just drive some authors away. I would of liked to see Peter Curson response to your question as well, but I suspect in some ways you got it - he doesn't know, or at least doesn't feel comfortable in putting a precise figure on it.

On a different issue, the times on the General Article discussions are wrong. My most recent one is timestamped at around 04:30 PM. Bit it was submitted at around 7:00 PM, and OK'ed at 10:30 PM. Not that is matters - I am just curious as to how it happens.

“I would of liked to see Peter Curson response to your question as well, but I suspect in some ways you got it - he doesn't know, or at least doesn't feel comfortable in putting a precise figure on it.”

I think it is much more likely that he just hasn’t seen my questions, because he hasn’t bothered to read any of the responses to his article. But we just don’t know.

I find it quite extraordinary that an author wouldn’t come into the discussion that results from their article if they are specifically requested to do so or if there are well-considered views that need to be refuted or supported.

The lack of response from people like Professor Curson gives the strong impression that they consider the discussion to be below them or that they have much more important things to do or that OLO is really just a tiny part of their enormously important lives and that they are only contributing articles to win brownie points or add to their list of publications, or all of the above. It gives this impression but of course we have no idea if it is at all true.

I think it also knocks the stuffing out of the veracity of their arguments, if they can’t see fit to come back and defend their viewpoints or develop the theme. Any author can throw an article together pretty quickly if there is no pressure on them to ever defend it or show that they really do have a bit of in-depth knowledge of the subject.

Non-responses from article writers really don’t go down well at all. They drag the quality of this forum down.

After reading some of the more recent comments on this thread it seems to me some of you guys are placing way to much importance on this website. It's really just an "opinion" website, that most people don't know about and don't care about. I say that merely to put the website in perspective, not as a put down.

Australia has over 20 million people, yet if you look at the forum you'll see most topics get a mere handful of replies (5 to 20 or so), usually made by people making many, many repeat postings. Therefore, there's only a very tiny number of "active" users. Whether the people here like it or not, the truth is the site is but a mere needle in a huge internet haystack.

And like all "opinion" sites, it attracts the usual collection of freaks, nut cases, extremists, wheelbarrow pushers and others who simply have too much time on their hands and who live their lives through internet chat/opinion rooms.

Let's get things in perspective, and understand the true relevance of this website. That doesn't mean, "don't do it", it means just understand it for what it is.

Nah, samsung, we don't view it as important to Australia, at least not right now it isn't. But it is important to us, or at least me. I use it most days, and I would like the rough edges knocked off.

And in the long term who knows, one day it might be important to Australia and read by millions. I hope so - it would be nice to see OLO become a big success. If it did it would fulfil what I think is Graham's vision for it and become a real part of Australia's democracy.

If and when that does happen they won't be listening to the likes of us. The time to put our 2c worth in is now. Mind you, we may already be too late, as they don't seem to be paying any attention anyway.

And by the by, I am amazed at how often OLO does come up at the top of google searches when I do searches on topical Australian keywords. Its a bit irritating actually. You go looking for background information on something mentioned here - and get referred right back to where you started. That means google thinks some of the articles published here are the best source of information on a particular subject. Its not a bad effort.

"Opinions" drive freedom. Everybody should be allowed to express an opinion, whether or not that opinion is right or wrong, crazy or sane, approved of or not approved of; and everybody should have to right to express an opinion on any opinion.

Unfortunately, some people can't express opinions without name calling. That's life.

Samsung, I have been for some time thinking about starting a general thread on the significance or relevance of OLO. You've prompted me to do it!

I’m constantly trying to weigh up the significance of OLO, both in my life and in the shaping of our collective future in Australia. It is certainly a large pert of my life, but I don’t know if it is time well spent or whether I’ll come to regret spending so many hours a week on it over a period of several years.

.
OLO does appear quite prominently in google searches, which is surely a good sign. It has a good range of highly qualified article-writers, which is surely another good indication. There are plenty of knowledgeable posters too, among a wide range of contributors.

But still, what is it really worth? [Please don't respond here. I've asked the same question on the new thread]

Hypothetically speaking Ludwig, Mr Curson might have a good reason not to respond.
I know if I published an article I would refrain from responding to the comments, as we're only allowed one alias and commenting would identify who I am. But that's just one reason. I do respect that some authors might wish to take an arms length approach and allow others to debate the merits of their piece without getting involved, to better see the honest discussion of their piece without interference.

TurnRightThenLeft: "we're only allowed one alias"

My guess is they don't care how many aliases you have. The issue isn't aliases. Its sock puppets and astroturfing, and possibly breaking the posts per day limit. Ensure you various aliases don't meet each other on the same thread, don't exceed the 5 posts per day limit and you will be fine.

You would have to be careful though. It only took 14 days to figure out who Polycarp was.

As for posting to your own articles - its a personal choice, and mine would differ depending on the article. If its a deliberately inflammatory article like the sort Tankard Reist writes I would probably avoid it. But on a technical article, like Peter Curson's, I would respond. I have never been able to write about a complex topic so that everyone that understands what I am on about. I would feel obliged to answer questions - particularly like the one Ludwig asked.

But in Curson's case I suspect its either not hear what he has to say, or just accept he doesn't answer questions. I know what my choice is.

Good point TRTL. I’ve often thought about writing articles and the problem that it would create when I wanted to respond as the author while still upholding anonymity as a poster on the broader forum.

There’s only one way to do it and that’s to have two aliases [or an alias and your real name]. As you are only legally allowed to have one, I wouldn’t want to have a second one surreptitiously. So there would have to be a special facility for article authors to have a second one if they requested it.

I can’t see why Graham wouldn’t allow this.

But I doubt that it is something that has prevented many authors from responding on threads generated by their articles.

As for authors wishing to remain at arms length, I think that they still need to respond to let posters know that comments addressed to the author have been read, or to just thank posters for their input.

If an author is asked specific questions, I reckon they definitely need to respond, if only to say that they wish not to engage in discussion… which would be an unfortunate response, but better than nothing.

The following has been stated on this thread. But I’ll re-emphasise it….

Email alerts should be automatic. Doesn’t everyone who posts on a thread automatically want to know when there are further comments on that thread? If they don’t, they can just turn off the alert.

I still find that after nearly four years of being on this forum almost every day, I forget to turn on the email alert facility sometimes. And it bugs me greatly!

chainsmoker, you might enjoy this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&ei=5058&partner=IWON&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

I've just put a suggestion for a "Developing Authors" tab on the relevance of OLO thread http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2024#42013

It seemed to fit there but was also relevant here so I've linked it here.

R0bert

I wish that there was a bit more colour, different fonts, different text size, italics and bold options…and the potential to use a wide variety of emoticons and even illustrations!

All of this sort of stuff would really add to the attractiveness and entertainment value with out detracting from the professional presentation of the forum....wouldn’t it?

Yesterday it appeared as though this thread had been removed. Even when I hit the ‘show 50 discussions per category’ option, it still wasn’t there.

I didn’t even think of hitting the ‘one quarter back’ option, as I have never needed to do that before for a current thread.

This thread had dropped off the default list as it is now over a month old. But it is still current. So I’d suggest it surely had to stay on the default list.

I find myself nodding in agreement Ludwig. Occasionally I notice all the action is happening on some topic that has long since vanished off the General Index. Its not obvious how to solve it though. The current system keeps the topics "fresh" by ensuring new ones displace the older ones. Anything you do will weaken that.

If I was going to change it, I would dispense with the current categorisation, and replace it with three lists. The first two would be "Top 10" lists, which work like the "top 5 lists" on the Journal main page. List 1 would be ordered by date of submission, the second would be ordered by posting rate or something like it. It could be top 5 or whatever, the exact number tunable as it is now. As I said before, it would be nice if it remembered what you set it to.

The third list would be "Technical Support", as it is now. These should threads be prominent longer than the others for the obvious reason that technical issues don't go away simply because everyone has given up whinging about it.

I was fully aware of what was going to happen when I posted this article, and was perfectly happy to game the system by putting this discussion into the "Technical Support" category where I knew it would remain visible for a long while. That said, it has had a reasonable go. Anybody who wanted to contribute has done so. Its time for it to vanish. I am hoping when OLO gets the energy to redo the site layout again they will look at it. That is the best outcome I could possibly hope for - anything else is unreasonable.

That said, I wish they would fix the article index bug. I don't know whether its just because I know its there or what, but now I find myself thinking "if only I could look up all articles" over and over again. Maybe I should start another "Technical Support" discussion about it, just so GrahamY has to look at it for a month.

I don’t see any reason why general threads that can no longer be posted on should stay on the default page, or within the same list as active ones. If 21 days pass without a comment and the thread gets closed, it should drop to a lower list.

This would give all the room in the world for all current threads to be presented on the default page.

The default page doesn’t have to fit on one screen-sized page. It could be several page-lengths long. It is easy to scroll down, much easier than choosing other options in order to view posts not on the front page.

The default setting should not be 5 threads per category, it should be set to include all active threads and exclude closed ones.

It would be a good thing for authors to be able to distinguish certain words by emphasing them - ie via the bold, italics and underline functions that word processors use.

Then if you want to emphasise a word or sentence, you can do so appropriately by, for example, using italics or bold rather than capitals.

I strongly agree Rob. In fact I find it very strange that these fascilities would be completely removed so that we only have upper and lower case of one font type and size to work with!

‘fascilities’. Ahh furballs!! |:<(

Nah Ludwig, you don't get out of it that easily. That was a freudian slip, mate. Only respect for Godwin's Law prevents me from elaborating. But you know what I mean. And don't offer any aryan fairy explanations in attempt to minimize this gross breach of your cover!

While I'm here, I'll just mention the desirability of a 'hard' post number being displayed on each post in a thread. V-Bulletin software, and probably other as well, provides this facility, so I assume it's not that difficult to do, from a software point of view.

It can make internal referencing unequivocal, on those occasions where such referencing is helpful. Like what would be good right here in this here intra-thread flame! 'Hard' numbering also provides a witness to post removal.

Forrest Gumpp: "I'll just mention the desirability of a 'hard' post number"

Yes, I agree. I saw it in action the other day and liked it a lot.

Just so others understand, what Forrest is referring prominently numbering each comment posted to an article, so the first comment posted for an article is numbered 1, the second 2, and so on. As soon as you do that people start using them, saying something along the lines of "in comment #4 xyz said". And as Forrest says, gaps in the numbers make deleted posts obvious.

Comments are numbered now, but you can't see the numbers easily and its a global number to this will be comment 42600 or so, not comment 90 (this being the 90'th post to this thread).

A hard post number is also useful in that you can remember the number of posts the last time you looked at a particular thread and can skim down to that point the next time you get on.

In fact, maybe one day the software will be smart enough to remember how long it was when you last looked (say 90 posts) and have an option to put you straight to post 91, say.

“Nah Ludwig, you don't get out of it that easily. That was a freudian slip, mate. Only respect for Godwin's Law prevents me from elaborating. But you know what I mean. And don't offer any aryan fairy explanations in attempt to minimize this gross breach of your cover!”

Waa waa whaaat the….?? (:>0

Maybe I’m extrraorrdinarily dumb but you’ve got me totally phlummoxed Gumpppy. Phlummoxed as a dumb ox!

.
Yes, numbered posts sounds like a good idearr.

'Hard'-numbered posts that is.

"idearr"!

Unt zere you go again, Herr Ludvig!

Mistake after mistake after mistake!

Vot you sink? Ve are all stupidt or sumpzink!

Vell you are aboudt to find oudt ve are vinnisht viss takink all zis rubbish vrom u!

u vill now haff your vingernails pullt oudt vun by vun until you kan zink unt tell us vot iss der qvestion ve vont der anzvver to!

Butt ish vill giff u ein klue, u misserabl botanistische buschtukkerluffer. In vakt ish vill giff u 6 kluehs.

"fascilities"

fascii

Fascisti

Mussolini

Axistii

Nazi

Godwinista

Ven u goink to get kontrol ov yohr spellink? Huh?

I tell u, der Postfuhrer hass hadd ein guttfull of alle ov your exkuses.

Stahrt gettink it right, virst time unt alle der time.

Vot in himmel ist der problem mitt u kieboord? Czech itt oudt, schnell.

Vot ist der problemm? Iss it leich hardt, or sumpzink?

Gett ze akt togezer, Herr Ludvig, or u vill find ve are not kalled der Geheime Postpolizei for nussink!

Oh der stoß! Ludwig ist gazumpped gewesen!! Sein faul roter underbelly ist ausgestellt worden!!

Dieser verstohlene und sehr grumpische Geheime Postpolizei Gumpp hat die scharade durchbrochen.

Ich fühle mich, als ob ich gegen eine wand gebracht und mit einer salve von maschinen pistole 43 geschossen worden bin. Ooh das scham das scham…..oww!!

Int uther verds;

Oh the shock! Ludwig has been Gazumpped!! His red underbelly has been exposed!!

That sneaky and very grumpy Geheime Postpolizei Gumpp has broken through the charade.

I feel as though I have been put against a wall and shot with a volley of Maschinen Pistole 43's. Oh the shame the shame!

Danke, Herr Ludwig.
Dies geflammen krieg ist tot!
Thanks, Ludwig (for the translation).
This flame-war is dead (I think that is what I said).

Having now revealed the full extent of my 'deutsch', and my ignorance, I suppose I should try and get back on topic.

This little diversion does illuminate the extent of the profound irritation arising out of the inability to make edits to a post. One of my own from another thread: "Well, Peter Stanley, you're the historian. I given you my take on it. ...". Where is the "'ve"? I'm sure I put it there. But it ain't! Grrrrr.

I know of course that edits (exclusive to the poster) can be done, complete with a footnote stating when, accompanied if necessary with a brief explanation - "grammar", "spelling", etc.

I can understand OLO not wanting any alterations post posting, especially in an opinion forum. Too many "you said ...", "I did not ...", "did", "did'nt", and so on and so forth otherwise. But could we perhaps have a strike-through retention of the original, with edits in a different coloured text? That way, if edits were more than the adding of punctuation, the extent of the alteration would be completely transparent to all.

I don't know how you would reconcile edits of text with the word limit, though. (Especially with some, nay, nearly all of my posts, for example, being right up against the stops.)

Don't feel obliged to answer this Ludwig, but might you have an ancestor named Ferdinand?

Yes, piddling little errors in your posts can be extremely irritating, as I have made patently clear in early posts on this thread. Even a single letter out of place can be enraging!

Being able to make edits by crossing out the error and inserting a change in red, within a short time after posting, would be wonderful.

.

Ahh, I presume you are referring to meinen gveat gveat großen uncle Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, botaniker extrraorrdinaire!....who has many many Australian plants named after him?

BTW thanks Forrest for that little diversion off topic. It was very interesting and fun.

You Godwinista!!

.
One of the fundamental forum rules is to stay on topic. But it is so poorly adhered to…. and probably for the better!! It is good to have the expression of stuff that is entirely unrelated to the topic of the thread….to a limited extent, isn’t it?

It certainly seems to have been the case on this thread and on the ‘Why did you choose your pseudonym’ thread http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2044

So then, if this rule is not going to be adhered to and not going to be policed, it surely has to be reassessed.

One of my major themes on this forum is the rule of law, and the offence that I take at the extent to which the law as written is not observed or policed. This creates the awful dilemma of both wanting to uphold the principle of law but to also role with the flow and not be put at a disadvantage by observing rules that most others don’t observe...and don't get punished for.

Ludwig,

Genusflecting ever so slightly to the Forum rules, I specifically confirm that it was to the late great Baron Ferdinand von Mueller that I was alluding in my last post. (Dayyum, ayun eyxtra eyuss iyun the veyry firyust wor-yud!) So pleased to know you are related. For some reason the name Ripley springs to mind.

Now, at the risk of a little cross-pollination of threads, I just can't restrain myself from observing with respect to the pseudonymia group that "by gum, he hasn't spotted it" yet in my last post there, although perhaps you have just run out of posts. I'll wait with baited breath. Nothing is so uncertain, after all, as death and taxa.

I'll conclude by wishing rstuart "Happy Hundredth Post" to his thread. Just so it stays on topic, and as cross-threading is contemporarily topical with respect to recent posts, I will observe with respect to the Ubuntu fora that sometimes posts are moved by forum administrators to what are considered more appropriate threads, or indeed other sub-fora. When this happens a "moved to" marker is inserted in the thread where the post was originally, even though perhaps inappropriately, posted. I don't know whether such a system would have any relevance for OLO, it may well not, but I just thought I would throw the idea in for, as I have already admitted, the sake of having something to say (for the hundredth time).

So far as I can see back in the Technical Support category (451 days ago), it's the first thread to crack the ton.

GrahamY and/or SusanP should have some interesting times if they read it.

“… but to also role with the flow…”…… “role”?.......ROLE??!!??!!

I did NOT write that!!

Eeeaaaarrrgh.

Pisse-hintern poo scheiße bumst bälle!! Christus alles bloomin mächtiges!

I noticed in a general thread just started at

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2063

that double quotes have at last made it into the title.

Has that problem now been fixed?

RobP, on the basis of that I got all excited and went and checked if we could now select "All Articles" in the article index. It is another outstanding bug. But no, when you do that it still returns "Server Error Incident number: 240-4715 The fault has been reported to staff" unconditionally. The message is either a lie, or the fault report is ignored. Or, more likely, they don't have a clue what causes it.

rStuart said

The biggest offenders seem to the animal rights people, and if anything leaving carcasses around seemed to whip them up into even a bigger frenzy.

Pale says
I think 'all requests' to take off a comment should also be posted on OLO.

Also a response= Yes I will take this off because I agree with you regarding
A, B , C or= No I wont take it down = Because=
Also I think other posters should have a say in it not just one person.

Its very easy for one person to not like a Harry or Bob Or Daisey....

As Rstuart has pointed out he does not like people in general posting about animal welfare etc.

I think it would be unfair to tag everybody with good intentions towards fellow creatures..

Most of these people who post about animal welfare are seeing unbelibable cruelty that is not allowed by law to be shown on TV because it might upset some people.

I know the RSPCA are frustrated by this.

Posting can be fun but it does upset some that others just live their lives blind deaf and dumb to the suffering of Animals.

Its so sad that people want to stop good people from informing the public as to the plight of our fellow creatures.

People Against Live Exports & Intensive Farming: "As Rstuart has pointed out he does not like people in general posting about animal welfare etc."

No, I didn't say that, nor did I say anything that could be remotely construed to imply that. Its unlikely I would since I am a soft touch when it comes to animals.

If you really want to know what trigger my comments you need a a bit of background. I have found its useful trick responding to someone is to go through their comment history. It helps in understanding their point of view on a particular subject. If I can get an accurate feel for what they are thinking I can reply in a way they can understand. But no, before you get paranoid - I didn't go through PALE's comment history. I went through GrahamY's.

A fair portion of his posts are made with his moderator hat on, trying to damp down threads going off the rails. If you look over posts it becomes obvious a lot of those posts are made on animal cruelty threads. Vindictive and obnoxious things are said by both sides of course, but the supporters for animals rights win my Guernsey for the worst behaviour because of the incident described here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2024&page=0#42075

If the animal rights people attacked the issues and not the person there would be no basis for complaint. But they all too often reduce themselves to seeking verbally eviscerate those who argue against them, denigrating both themselves and the issue they stand for in the process. That's bad enough, but in the instance I quoted they uniquely went one step further attacked the forum itself.

rstuart, before you go further down the track of those old issues you might want to look at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1502#28989

R0bert

Some advanced search facilities would be a great addition to the site.

I was just looking at the interchange between Steel and Veronika regarding the use of the word misogynist http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7645#121253 (and a couple of posts further down) and wishing I could serch for all uses of the word (and narrow the search down to exclude instances where HRS used it).

I'd like to be able to relocate the post where Boazy compared the deception in his posts to the deception in fighting without trolling back through all his posts in the last few months of that alias.

R0bert

rstuart
I apogise for jumping to conclusions. Glad to hear your a soft touch for animals and yes I suppose I get a little over defensive.

The truth is that people who do get involved in working to help animals get reports that haunt them.

Because these reports are not allowed to be shown on Tv and mostly go unreported people do become bitter and angry .

That doesnt help when we are 'supposed' to be reaching out to the public and informiing them of what is really going on.

I think your comments hold a lot of water and Roberts posted some sensible ideas too.
What I would like to see is the red buttom comments going up on OLO
Also as I said earlier perhaps ask the other posters in that thread if they think its a fair cop to take off those particlar comments as well.
Posters always have a better knowledge of the thread they are interested in.
Does anybody recall when GY asked if we would like to be able to post under our real names verses pretend names?
Whatever happend to that?
Does anybody know. I understand there are all sorts of reasons people do not wish to say who they are but i kind of think if its worth saying we should be prepaired to own our comments,, so to speak.

It is very easy for people with an agenda to use olo to defame others causing damage.

Really I think the other posters have a right to know what was posted and why it was taken off and why a poster was banned and for how long.

I think make everything public to all readers.

I have listed the principal suggestions I could see in the thread 'Suggestions for OLO', purely for the convenience of readers and contributors to this thread so that they will not have to constantly keep reviewing that thread to see if ideas have already been suggested.

In order of suggestion, to post 108:

Comment deletion explanations

Make automatic email notifications a default choice

A poll re holding an OLO Christmas party

Publication of protocols re banning

A time-limited facility for making correcting edits to posts

Mandatory posting of occupational and/or qualificational status in signature block

Provision for posting an optional bio on user page

A 'sin bin' or 'gaol' for deleted comments

Facility to set personal display preferences in user profile

Notification of newly added comments on post preview page

A link-to-last-post facility in email alerts

Replace 'iParliament' button with direct link to General Discussion index

Text or background colour identifying still editable posts

Rejection of apparently duplicate General Discussion topics

A discussion index list ordered by recency of posting activity (a 'bump' facility)

A 'take me to the last post' facility

Name of topic being posted to displaying at TOP of 'Write new post' (preview) page

List of OLO posters in order of number of posts made

A 'lurkometer' showing number of viewers online

A private messaging facility

Correction facility for topic title spelling errors

A page page

A user status indicator - suspended, departed, on holiday etc

A user settable option for 'page at a time' or 'all pages' display of a topic thread

Photos or illustrations within articles

Online submission of articles

An article author PM contact facility

Explanation for apparent timestamp anomalies

Permissibility of a second alias for article contributors

Greater colour, font, text size, italic, bold, emoticon and image posting options

Fix the article index bug

Display of a 'hard' intra-thread post number on each post

Strike-through display of post edits, with edits in distinct colour

Public disclosure of all requests for post deletion

Advanced search facility

A post deletion OLO user 'jury'

A Gepopo (a secret post police)

Forrest

Public disclosure of all requests for post deletion
I think that is the most important of all you listed .

PALEIF, there are two main types of posts I recall recommending for deletion.
1/ Stuff that looks like spam. A post with with no connection to the thread and a link to an advertising site being typical. Happy to have those acknowledged.
2/ Posts which appear to be inciting violence or making physical threats against someone. Frankly given that the poster has already indicated a disposition to violence I'd rather not advertise the fact that I brought the post to the site administrators attention.

A decision to delete and or suspend is the administrators decision, the focus on who brought the issue to the administrators attention is irrelevant unless it's part of a pattern of dodgy complaints against another poster. It's hard to think of any good reason why a legitimate RFD should be made public. It seems quite likely to cause vendeta's against those who've rightfully drawn posts to the administrators attention by those who've already shown disresepect for site rules and decent behaviour. Perhaps there might be more reason for outing posters running a campaign of unjustified RFD's against another poster.

R0bert

Robert
I take your points but there are many positions to be considered and each poster is different.

Take pale for example. We are 'absolutley certain' some people only joined olo to defame and troll us hiding behind false names.

Make no mistake Robert there is a cold war going on in Australia between some extremists animal libbers and any main stream groups.

RSPCA have said for years that the biggest thing that holds back animal welfare in this country is the inta fighting between groups and we will work with everybody but they must act within the law.

We have been attacked on OLO by these extremists

abusive emails to our office of the same nature. Once the same person wrote 82 emails of abuse to one of our RSPCA CEOs in two hours..

Because we work in conjunction with RSPCA QLD (but not only that) its surely understanable that we would ask OLO to remove such comments as those below. I will just give you a couple for examples= I will not add the posters name.=

1 "PALE has abandoned all but one thread now in its attempts to avoid answering my questions. What sort of "organization" is PALE? Not one to do with animal welfare, honesty, accountability and transparency, obviously."

2
Pale support FGM

I feel Robert there was good grounds to ask for those two posts to be removed-( Which are still up on the world net)

No I would be much happier if there was a pannel of respected posters making that descion and not just one person.
Maybe several of the people making comments could put their hands up and ask if we could have a pannel. It might also save OLO staff a lot of time.
Just a thought. Would you consider such a position- just asking

Regards

PALEIF, I'd not have any great opposition to a panel as long as they were not too close to the the action. I think that there are a number of posters we each would not like to be reviewing complaints about our own posts. I suspect that it would slow the removal of serious breaches and at the end of it editorial responsibility remains with the sites editors.

I happen to think they do a very good job of keeping bias out of editorial decisions, I've seen some fairly nasty claims about Graham stay up on the site and the fact that they exercise such restraint in my view is a rare and precious thing.

We've been over this before but we do take a different approach to some of these issues. I think the main harm done to posters reputations is by their own actions not by what others say about them especially where the opportunity exists to rebutt false claims. Someone (Veronika I think) made the point recently that name calling says a lot about the person doing the name calling. For the record I don't recall ever asking for a post to be removed which was directed at myself, rather if it concerned me sufficiently I've taken care to rebutt the claims.

In regard to those attacking without cause I mentioned earlier that outing someone with a pattern of making unfounded complaints against another poster could make sense. I've not spent much time thinking about that so I might be missing something. At a guess the editors would soon get very tired of someone using the RFD button against another poster on a regular basis.

We've spent far to much time in the past discussing the merits or otherwise of being publically identifable on OLO, we have different needs in this, different histories, different circumstances and have made different choices. I doubt that we would help each other or stay in Graham's good books if we revisit that subject yet again.

Cheers
R0bert

What sort of "organization" is PALE?

"Not one to do with animal welfare, honesty, accountability and transparency, obviously."

"Pale supports FGM"

Robert look at those comments again and pls remember they are only two of dozens of comments. By law they ARE classed as defamation.

Ask yourself if anybody should be allowed to operate outside of the law.?

Now to take it further is very costly. So of course one would hope to rely on the good common sense of the editor or staff.

We have others to consider that we work in conjunction with. - Such as RSPCA QLD

It is possible when you give the power to any one person that rightly or wrongly that person uses their own reasons to allow posters to stick it up somebody they do not like. I am left in absolutly no doubt that our editor personally does not like me and we have had quite a few personal words on the phone I can assure you.

After all we are all only people and nobody is perfect.

A panel couldn’t slow things up anymore than it is now considering these comments have been up for months now.

Also didn’t I read in the rules it was against policy to use olo to flame and troll people or organizations.

I might add I have seen comment taken down for far less than these and we have been subject to those ourselves.

I really would prefer if I have to request something to be taken off it was posted for all to see alone with the reason I am requesting it taken down.
I think that is a far more honest and open way to operate. Not only for OLO but for life in general.

People who post in false names attacking an organization be it ours or others are free to misuse OLO and that is what they are doing.

Anyway thanks for your thoughts on my suggestions.

Why am I not surprised. Your correct about a pannel Robert.
Few people have the backbone to speak out. You open a thread about a better system but when people give a example of what can happen people head for the hills.

Perhaps everybody should enter parliment.
They already have the training.

PALEIF I'm up in the hills on that one too. I think we both know that we have some fundamentally different views about how the forum should operate and on the value of alias's. Were not likely to reach agreement and I don't feel like I've got anything new to add.

I'd rather be able to have productive discussions with you about animal welfare than long running debates about posting choices (nor do I want to see either of us banned).

R0bert

Just to clarify the claims made by PALE here - those posts are being attributed to me. At no time did I state that PALE "supported FGM", I merely pointed out that when I spoke out against the practice, PALE accused me of "upsetting Muslims". Let's be absolutely clear about that.

The other post refers to a series of questions I asked PALE following its comments about fundraising activities of other animal advocacy groups, in the context of it not raising funds itself. PALE had/has a "PayPal - donate now" link to its website, and I asked why that was there if it doesn't raise funds, and what it did with the funds it did raise by that mechanism.

PALE, after avoiding the questions for some time, chose to use several of its posters, using the same PALE formatting and grammatical style, to issue a series of heated denials. One claimed she "disabled" the Paypal link in 2003, but had elsewhere claimed that she joined the organization in 2006.

Just thought I would clear that up. There has been no defamation on my part, but possibly the reverse is true, with various comments made by PALE and/or its contributors about my mental state. I chose not to request deletion of those despite their libellous character, seeing them for what they really are.

Nicky

Nicky
There you go again. Only one person posts under pale as you very well know.
Over and over again you claim pale are breaking forum rules.

FYI A list of your comments were sent on to our lawyers- It is 'their legal opinion' that they were defamation.

Despite what you may think by my making comment on this thread regarding this it really was to point out that one person making descions IMO isnt a good system.

So it really was about how OLO should operate.

For example if there was a board all your comments about our fund raising could have been voted on. Including this one>

What sort of "organization" is PALE?

"Not one to do with animal welfare, honesty, accountability and transparency, obviously."

Nicky you raised pales funding dozens of times and the answer was always the same.
It was that pale in conjunction with RSPCA QLD is funded by RSPCA QLD and five kind lawyers and myself who put in from their own pockets.

So your aware those types of comments also causes RSPCA QLD distress.
We do not pay ourselves unlike 'any other group.'

We also pay for feed when we can and deliver it to farmers.

For the life of me I can not understand why you have spent two years rubbishing fellow animal lovers.

Its beyond the pale

I think a pannel would be a much better system with perhaps at least one of those people with legal knowledge.

Far more fair to everybody- including yourself.

I also think Robert makes good sense and we should drop this before we both are banned.
Which kind of says it all really.

PALE, I was simply correcting your mis-statements (and trouble making).

At the risk of repeating myself. I have never accused PALE of anything, merely asked questions which would attract a "public interest" or "fair comment" defence at any time. Furthermore, only a "living person" can be defamed, (except in Queensland where such action has been extended to the dead, and you appear not to be dead). Perhaps your "lawyers" might care to revisit their definitions.

Speaking of OLO rules, perhaps you would care to explain, if only one person posts under the name of PALE, whether or not that person also posts on occasion under the name "TarynW" and "Macropod Whisperer", because there are distinct similarities with some of their posts and those of PALE (grammar, formatting, spelling and punctuation), while on other occasions their posts are markedly different (more coherent).
I'm sure a "panel" would readily identify that too.

It was not I who began the accusations either, and my lawyer certainly regards any remarks about a person's mental stability as libellous and actionable.

You shouldn't dish it out if you can't take it. Are your "lawyers" aware of some of YOUR more startling accusations? If not, I suggest you seek their advice on that.

Nicky

Nicky
From your first post you attacked us
We are the only ones prepaired to post our real names- complete with pictures.


I do not have a problem with anybody working to help animals what so ever- never have.
As for your legal advise I suggest you get another lawyer.
Regarding the posts you are 'again ' calling me a liar.

"Macropod Whisperer",is as you are aware Antje. Taryn is Taryn . Its as simple as that.

Your insults speaks volumes for all to see regarding spelling. One person is Germann and one aboriginal. Both have limited english and a heart of gold. They both work for animals in their own time.

Nicky said

You shouldn't dish it out if you can't take it....
Ah Nicky talk about calling the kettle black. Perhaps PETA and their mates may have just learnt that message themselves.
We will continue to work towards reopening abattoirs to faze out live exports.
Despite theirs and your best efforts to warn everybody about those awful 'animal killers'

You see Nicky the real difference between you and I is that I think for myself.
I understand PETA has made it harder to help the animals in regards to live exports.

I get that- but you do not.

I can see the Government are delightered to be able to call these people extremists.

If you want to make changes you MUST present the farmers and the industry with 'sensible' alternatives.
Now after twenty pluss years none of the groups world wide have done that or even tried.
We are very young and at least we have tried. Until others do someone about reopening plants nothing will change.

But- Do you know what? I suspect Yabby may be right when he says thats not really their intention.- sad.

btw guess who raised live exports eight years ago and your friend said they did not do it because it was too political= Umm indeed.
I`ll say it is.!

PALE, some of Antje Struthmann's and TarynW's posts are, if I may say so, far more coherent than yours. Some are remarkably similar to yours. That is merely an observation and statement of fact, not an insult. There does not appear to be a facility for posting photographs on OLO.

I am perfectly satisfied with my legal advice and my own legal knowledge. I hope that you have the same confidence in your "lawyers" (who continue to be conspicuous by their silence).

I am not a member of PETA or any other organization other than (ironically) the RSPCA. RSPCA Queensland advised me that its relationship with PALE is the same as its relationship with (for example) Animal Liberation Queensland (not so much the close relationship that you imply beyond the IT provision).

I would suggest that, in the interests of credibility, you provide proof that any other animal advocacy group said they would not "touch live exports", and that PETA has helped more animals than you could ever dream of in the global perspective.

Nicky

Robert
If you are still reading this thread pls note the fact we cant win. Remember when you all complained that many people were posting as pale. GY said there was no rule against that- The rule was one person posting in many iDs.
Still we changed it anyway just for peace. Antje got her own and so did Taryn,. The others got sick of the fuss and just stopped.
So now by the last two posts perhaps you can see pale can not win.

As for RSPCA QLD Nicky I wouldnt be surpised what they might say to you TBO.
Everybody is away of your contiuned attacks on this post against pale and your pro peta support. Member or no member.
i do not agree PETA are helping live exports.
They are getting other groups names as being extremists.
btw pale is the only group in Australia working in conjunction with RSPCA QLD. However! unlike other states we all get on well with other groups.
You should try it some time because uless people work together the animals will contiune to suffer.
Pls keep that in mind before attacking fellow animal lovers. You asked me for the name of the person who said they didnt touch live exports before.
Thats easy Its was Glenyse. Why dont you ask her. Since then herself and Lyn have done a great deal towards it.
Thats very much to their credit and we support them totally

R0bert, if you ARE still reading this, I think I have made myself clear. By the content, formatting, grammar and punctuation of a large number of posts, I think PALE posts also in the name of "Macropod Whisperer" and "TarynW", while on other occasions those people genuinely post themselves. You only have to check across a number of posts from all three to see it.

While this sort of behaviour goes on, of course PALE cannot win and nor should it. RSPCA Queensland says that it has provided PALE with some computer facilities but beyond that its relationship with PALE is no different from its relationship with any other animal advocacy group; that is, it supports any who contribute to animal welfare in Queensland. I have no problem with that assessment.

PALE's problem is that it apparently believes it is fine to discredit everyone else involved in the movement (PETA, and Glenys Ooojges of Animals Australia in particular), then cries "defamation" when questions are directed back at it.

PETA's (and AA's) activities are not single-issue as PALE's are; they focus on all animal cruelty, not only live exports. I have excellent relationships with a number of groups and individual advocates, while PALE, with its bullying, aversive attitude, has alienated everyone.

But back to the topic. PALE claims that anyone and everyone else breaks the rules of this forum, yet expects to be able to do so itself with impunity and screams "foul" and "defamation" when challenged. The problem is that they make it so obvious. I think Graham, in spite of being on the receiving end of a lot of this behaviour from PALE, has done everything he can to address it, so I guess we all have to live with it.

Nicky

Nicky
Why do you keep bothering RSPCA QLD and writing to the department of fair trading claiming we are 'whatever.'

As I have said RSPCA QLD are well aware of the antics and the opposition from extremists groups against our work to reopen abattoirs. They actually warned us "before" we opended in fact.

Pale does not work in conjunction with RSPCA QLD on intensive farming or any other topic however we do with Live Animal Exports.
We work 50 50 in conjunction with RSPCA QLD on live exports only.

Youself and your friends are consumed with pale.

I am not trying to discredit Glenyse or anybody else. You asked the question and I answered you honestly.

IMOP their biggest mistake was to publicly be linked to PETA.
Of course that is only my personal opinion.
Sure we are going out of our way after being attacked by such organisation to get the truth out to the public.
Do you know why Nicky? For the Animals.

If the public are told all animal welfare groups are a bunch of extremists then that of course works in reverse for animals.
We do not oppose people eating meat or wearing clothes made out of Animal Products.
We do encourage the best conditions for those animals while they are living and the quickest death possible.

Nor do we answer to you about my posts Taryns or Antjes - or anybody else for that matter.
If you really cared about animals as you claim you would not have attacked Antje Taryn or myself for that matter.

You would simply be pleased as many people as possible were out there working against live exports.( Despite their spelling or where they came from.
You and your spelling and your fancy web pages wont make much difference.
I met a man last week who can not write or read. He just switched from sending live to chilled.
THAT! is what we are looking for Nicky People who dont carry on with a lot of rubbish and actually do something to make a difference.

PALE, I should back away while you can really. No denials?

Having one person posting in three names does not equate to "more" people working towards animal welfare, and it was PALE who has been raising issues about others not complying with the rules of OLO, while doing just that itself over who knows how long. You brought it up, not I.

For the record, it took only a minimal enquiry to get the information I wanted from Queensland Fair Trading and the RSPCA.

AA does not publicly link itself to PETA, so far as I know. It would be interesting to know what precisely is the "50/50" (with RSPPCA Queensland). too. Who makes what contribution?

AA does not attempt to force a vegan/vegetarian agenda, either, that's just part of the misinformation you keep trying to put out there to discredit Glenys Oogjes because she appears to have at some time presumed to ignore you or disagree with you or declined to fall into line with your slaughterhouse plans. That would be because AA would not want to be seen to be profiteering from animal slaughter. Different strategies, different philosophies, and AA is not a single issue organization, as you very well know.

You know as well as everyone else what AA presents to the public, and I remind you that it is AA which represents animal advocacy at consultative level, so it can hardly be described as "extremist". I would describe it as authoritative, in fact, to the point of being on the conservative side.

You even turn on the RSPCA when it suits your purpose. I remember calls for a "Royal Comishon" (sic)

So - I think there should be an agreement (in fact, there is) that PALE complies with the rules of this forum. Having more than one computer with which to log on does not exempt you from that.

Nicky

Nicky
This will be my last post. I made comments on this thread like everybody else to give an example of what we feel could be improved.

The fact is as you spend your whole life running around checking on pale and what they are doing- You should ask Graham Young who posts as MS and Taryn etc.
Antje posts very little these days because she fees you will start up again as you are trying to right now. Which is to try to discredit pale.
Just a few days ago I received an email reading. Pls check for OLO comment( Or words similar)
When I asked her why ?she said - Quote" I wont post unless you check it because I dont want to saying anything to start trouble. I said listen Antje you post what YOU think.
A I dont have the time and B why let Nicky bother you.
Then she started crying. Thanks very much Nicky. Your such a charmer!

Antje has a wealth of knowledge and has worked in wildlife care for over thirty years. Again as I said you may see Antje on our web page.
Taryn does not post much anymore because she got sick of you picking on her spelling etc.

I dont think anybody in this thread is interested to here about AA or RSPCA or even PALE.
It was opended for suggestions on posting OLO.

I suggest please Graham Young as you have spoken with Antje on the phone as well as myself you set this business about pales posting straight once and for all.
Thank You Graham . It would be appreciated.
Probably it would help other OLO posters to know the truth as well.

Once again, I have posted what I believe to be the clear and obvious facts. If Antje is not aware that her pseudonym is being used, along with that of TarynW, by a third party, perhaps she should be. And if she/they cannot take the pressure, the answer is quite simple...

Nicky

Hello Graham,

About two years ago PALE joint as an Institute and it was agreed that all PALE members could post under that one Identity.

Ok as you well know we tried it and the trouble started in the car park.
After my phone conversation with you I then gave up pales ID and started to post under my own ID only.

Certain people of the public `can not` and won’t accept the fact that Pales member are able to post under that banner `only`.

You told me/us over the phone that People posting as PALE could not have a second ID. All PALE members are very much aware of it and have the choice to use Pales ID only – or their own – but not both.
In the past Taryn and I made it very clear over and over again - that we only use our own ID.

It is a criminal act to use somebody else’s ID for what ever purpose. Nobody would be that stupid to let somebody else use it for ……

Yes, we make spelling mistakes etc. we cut words short, leave hyphens out etc. -to save a word or two - an intelligent mind can work out what is meant, and is flexible enough to ignore that and not to procrastinate on that.

There is too much time being wasted on this rubbish re apparent misuse of Pales ID and this time is taken away from the animals which are obviously more important to us than this vicious endless circle of repetitions that is doing what, where and when.

Someone must have a lot of time on their hand and be obsessed that pale posts where ever, when ever and what ever it wants.
This thread was opened for suggestions and I think its time you put this to rest.
You are the one who can do that please Graham as it is most unfair to Taryn, myself and all pale members.
Thank You

Nicky, how dare you suggest Iwould allow anybody other than myself to use my ID- Or that anybody would

Macropod Whisperer, if you didn't, there are the most extraordinary deviations in your written style, language, grammar, spelling, punctuation and formatting. I suggest a thorough review a good cross-section of the posts under your name. Then cross-reference them with posts written by the person using the PALE pseudomym. You will find no such deviations between those two. How clear do I have to be?

I think you might find that it cannot have escaped Graham either.

Nicky

Graham
I think its very clear that Nicky is only out to try to discreit pale in any way she can for her libber extreme buddies who hate us -

A because we support RSPCA and B because we are working to reopen abattoirs with Muslim Leaders and farmers.

Antje has made it "very clear" as you well know that nobody is using her tag.

I find it offensive that pale can be accused of this over and over again while you know its untrue.

Address this problem please for everybodies sake.

I am sure the other posters on OLO are just as sick of it as we are- and yourself.

These comments are made only to discredit pale working in conjunction with RSPCA QLD against the live animal trade and come from a bunch of anti meat eating extremists.
Pls put a stop to it.

The evidence speaks for itself.

Nicky

It certanly does!
We are waiting for you to clear this matter up once and for all pls Graham
I am sure Robert would be interested to know whom holds what Ids tags with which names.

I would like you to confirm what Antje has said is one hundred percent correct.
We do not appreciate our organisation being tagged as cheats on OLO by anybody.
I for one would like Robert and all those who joined him to understand 'why' we were upset by the car park.

We were upset because we have followed you posting intructions to a 'T'
We waited for you to say something.
We still are.
Only YOU hold that information.

I would suggest a pannel might be of great benefit to all in my opinion. People have a right to know the truth and we have every right to except the owner and operator to be honest and put an end to a organisation working in conjunction with RSPCA QLD on the live Export trade.
Apart from Pale we have RSPCA QLD to consider.
So should you.

Would you like me to post some of the cross-referenced entries than clearly demonstrate what I have said?

Nicky

Hello Nicky,
Are you calling me a liar?
Nobody, would or could access my ID or password.
It seems to me that you are a stalker and have a personal vendetta re pale.
You seem to be overly consumed with PALE, its members and my ID and to me its very clear that Animal Welfare is certainly not your main agenda.

Graham, in the past you told us to ignore Nicky, because it makes it harder for you to deal with the problem.
I have waited almost 2 years for you to deal with this.-
That is why I stopped posting. How much longer until you enforce your own Forum rules?

Also Graham I seem to recall you saying to Robert that anybody bring this up again would be banned.
You ruled on this and this is what you said-
"Robert I do not think there is a rule against several people using a tag- rather a person using several tages.
I do not see that pale get anymore posts than others. I am putting an end to this and if its raised that person will be banned."

After which for peace sake Tayn and Antje both decided to post under their own ids.
I think pale, Antje and Taryn have all bent over backwards to put a stop to this.

NOBODY is posting in anybodys somebody elses tags-= There is no need to and we are very upfront as to who we are- unlike others.
Its a cowardly thing to do to allow someone to contiune to accuse an organisation of lies and cheating on your forum while using a false Id themselves

Example Post 1 (extract)

cAnd yes, when it comes to the crunch you run except for this low standard level of reply. There is no need for you cuphandle to use dirty, filthy uncivilised language if Nicky is not willing to respond to questions asks.

Just say that you can not answer the question but don’t go diverting the topic because of “ your” failure or inability to respond.

Not one of you has offered a solution or alternative to the cruel live exports what so ever and yet you believe to be above everybody else and can treat others like what ever.
You met with me the wrong person.

Cuphandle said:
I suggest that there is an opening for you ..

MS:Your filthy language does not make two wrongs right.
Your own uncivilised words speak for themselves and they are there for everybody to read …
Isn’t it marvellous to think one can get away with it just by using a Nickname??

By the way you are wrong. People are listening- they comprehend what’s written on the Forum.
They think about it and are capable of making up their own minds.
Pale does not have all the answers but tries to get the info when being ask…

Just because you started the thread does not mean that you have the right to use inappropriate language and bad-mouth people for speaking the truth.
The truth is “already” out there for everybody to read.
May be you are illiterate? No offence meant.
Where is your proof to substantiate your claims to back up your bad mouthing? Pale can provide evidence by the numbers

MS:No, wrong again, you destroy your own or what’s left of it.
Unlike you PALE is straight forward and does not want sympathy for its cause.
Pale’s priority is and always was animal welfare.
Its agenda is to inform the public to broaden their view about the Animal Welfare in AU in general and to help farmers to get a better deal for their product.

Macropod Whisperer, Saturday, 2 February 2008 8:56:42 P

Example post 2 (extract)

Then when run off opening another thread ignore us which is rude and praise peta.

Our members donate to other groups on a regular basis.
peta being one of them'AA another. Its a policy of ours to help others!
We are not anti peta so why are you so anti pale.?

Peta refuse to discuss any of the projects that Bridgett fully supports.

I find THAT simply amazing.

We wont be bullied and we ARE the only ones with the contacts the MOUS the plans to actually do something about live exports and Intensive farming .

Instead of AA and PETA welcoming these projects like Bridgett they have flatly refused to work with us.

Instead of being delighted we are treated as the enermy.

I find that beyond the pale
Posted by People Against Live Exports & Intensive Farming, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:07:19 PM

Example post 3 (extract)

Gertrude cant post at the moment. GY didnt like her comment on forum owners.

I can say personally you are so right about the liberation lot.

This thread is only a small example of what they are like.

People like Nicky follow like sheep with no idea of the industry. I loved this comment

@(Yabby, as I have pointed out before - don't bitch about it, do something about it.@?

Note Yabby how the only lot run by Gertrude has been treated. What a joke she says do something about it!

Its interesting that Nicky still prefers to hide behind a false name while myself Antje Struthmann and RSPCA QLD along with Gertrude are happy to be open and upfront.
Oh No Of course Nickys not speaking on behalf of the others. Of Course Ha!

Not one thought of her own on this forum in over two years.

Then she goes on with this-

(I don't care why the live trade exists ...

Yabby I cant understand how people can be so stupid. Of course we need to understand why the live trade exists !
In order to fix anything you must fully understand the reason for it in the first place.
No wonder why the Government dont take them seriously.

What terribly damage these people do towards Animal Welfare to make such irresponsible statements
Posted by Macropod Whisperer, Monday, 7 July 2008 8:01:46 AM

Nicky
Your clearly crazy. What are you saying here? That Antje and pales posts are similar?
Of course they are you twit! we are all following the one policy.
Yes our members do send funds to certain PETA projects if they happen to agree with it.
So what. Would you prefer nobody helped the animals.
Anyway its clear to me you are unstable so from now on we simply will not respond to any more of your posts.
Thanks for your kind assistance Graham .

I now completely rest my case. I've posted the evidence of almost identical posting habits in terms of grammar, spelling, and formatting, (including actionable libellous statements) in three different names. That's it from me, folks.

Nicky

GOOD!
I am Sure Graham will be as pleased to hear that is we are.
*I do not, Taryn does not, nor Antje, expect this to be raised again!

AND just for the record NOR are pale raisings funds outside the guidlines- RSPCA QLD handle ALL! the fund raising!.

Now that you have confirmed our alligations that you are not really interested in helping animals- rather disrupting anybody other than your extremists friends =we will let this go as well.

Make SURE you do not raise this again in the threads.

Everybody is sick of your trouble making including other posters.

'YES' Nicky people have contacted us through our web site asking us why we havent got GY to put a stop to it.

If your really cared about animals you wouldnt give a stuff whom wrote what.

DO NOT ADDRESS POSTS TO US because you will get NO RESPONSE.

Go back to your extremist fund raisers who refused to assist in the only programe to faze out live exports and divert to reopened plants. The ones that are trying to take over RSPCA and for the record you all have buckleys chance!

Just keep rattling your tins as Yabby says.
I appreciate you care about animals but you need to realise your being conned.
if you REALLY want to help Animals work to help the RSPCA and make them stronger!- because walts and all thats all the animals have. RSPCA are the only ones who can change laws and help them.
That is the best advise I can give you and my last post adressed to you- ever.

Ahem, just clearing my throat, have read every post in this and related threads.
The thread was a good idea, in fact a few threads related to the health and wellbeing of the forum got a read from me.
Even the one about how many posts and that idea of buying extra posts, knocked that back, we have enough.
Those of us who can afford to help out should donate when we can but extra words god no look at the rebuttal of that we see often.
But I while supporting the editing tools and new fonts ,every good idea in the thread has value, can we have a new place to post?
We can post in places like this let us have a car park place all the time.
Lets take it outside instead of having threads turned into battle grounds.
Let us obey a long standing forum rule, not diverting threads and invite those we wish to get down and dirty with outside.

Fair Enough Belly.

Lets make sure everybody follows those rules.
This is a fair comment in my opinion.
However lets not have a thread like this. If forum forms were enforced we would not need one.
No Trolls flameing and OLO staff to make sure the rules are followed by everyone.

Caught out, PALE?

Unfortunately for PALE and its multiple personalities, we can, within forum rules (those of us who abide by them, that is), post what we like. What PALE and its alter-egos "expect" is bordering on the irrational (again), as is the notion that people have "contacted PALE on its website about posts on this forum (where's the proof (again)? I am comfortable with my credibility, and I shall raise what I like on these threads.

I note that the Paypal "donate now", as well as other payment options are alive and well on all PALE websites (so much for no fundraising). On the whole, although I've never done it, I think that there's something rather more honest and committed about "rattling tins".

Furthermore, the RSPCA cannot change laws in this country - only the government, the executive and the judiciary can do that. Animals Australia is as representative at consultancy level as the RSPCA is.

Finally, spare me from any advice from PALE and its multiple personalities!

Nicky

Graham Young

You are well aware that our organisation is working with RSPCA QLD.
I have personally spoken to you about the fact the web sites are controlled by RSPCA QLD.

You are also aware of who is posting- and who isnt posting

You also said if anybody raised this topic again you would ban them- Hense Roberts comment to me-

That was over a year ago.

Could it be that Graham sees the situation for what it is and is waiting for a complaint from me and others who agree with me?

Nicky

I think Yabby sumed you up very well to be honest.

Attacking Farmers RSPCA PALE Muslims. Its endless.

Perhaps Graham Youngs advise was best after all.

Which was simply ignore it

Consider it done

Yeah, right. Which alter-ego is this?

Nicky