Subtle OLO Censorship?: Differential Posting Recency Flagging

Is it OLO policy to retain the red recent posting flagging for differential periods as between individual posters?

If it is, upon what basis do some posters have the red flagging removed sooner than do others after the same periods of posting inactivity on the respective threads?

Is such differentiation fair to all users?

Consider the following taken from two screenshots 16 minutes apart.

@1350 Thu 30 Aug 2007

Rudd's IR watering down the soup 10, 97 mins ago (in red)
The Last Refuge of the Intellectual Weakling 25, 65 mins ago (in red)
Why the Battler is Feeling the Pinch 9, 2 mins ago (in red)

@1406 Thu 30 Aug 2007 (16 minutes later)

Rudd's IR watering down the soup 10, 2 hours ago (in black)
The Last Refuge of the Intellectual Weakling 25, 2 hours ago (in black)
Why the Battler is Feeling the Pinch 9, 18 mins ago (in red)

Rudd's IR ... still had one minute to run, and should have shown 119 mins in red, but didn't.

The Last Refuge ... still had 39 minutes to run, and should have shown 81 mins ago in red, but didn't.

Why the Battler ... still had 102 minutes to run, and was showing 18 mins ago in red, as it should.

All threads had the same numbers of posts at each time.

How does the differential treatment come about?

It is difficult to imagine OLO having any policy, outside of the published Forum rules, that in any way discriminates as between different users or contributors. Such would only operate to reduce OLO's credibility as a premier national political and social commentary forum. At no level would it make any sense, and I do not believe any officially sanctioned unpublished OLO policy of discrimination exists, either.

Now, to be sure, reducing the time for which the red post recency flagging displays does not actually censor what a poster may have written. What it may do, however, is to reduce the noticeability of a particular thread as being relatively active, and this in turn may result in fewer viewings of that thread by visitors to the site, particularly the sort of visitors who like to monitor what is seen as topical by OLO users. To the extent that such a tactic as reducing the red flagging may operate to deter viewings, it would seem to be operating against OLO's own interests, which would surely be to maximise exposure of topics and encourage conversion of visitors to users of the Forum. Again, it would make no sense to do it, and I don't believe OLO is doing it.

The problem is, however, that it actually happened, and I have the screenshots to prove it. (I will email these in to OLO as soon as I can grab nerd geek son for long enough to see that I do it correctly.)

The thing is, we nearly all of us (even us dinosaurs), now live in a digital environment, an environment that offers many opportunities for external interference with any online experience. OLO may have been hacked, or more correctly, cracked, by some external interest group that has worked out how to tweak the post recency settings to its own advantage.

The other thing is, and this is becoming more topical by the day, that just as we all are more exposed to online security loopholes as OLO users, so too have the electoral rolls become exposed to clandestine digital manipulation.

Wow forest :) you are a stickler for detail mate.. not just with the Genealogies of Christ but with 'OLO recency flags'.....

I can see you would be the bloke to have on intelligence assessment work.. you don't work for Asio on the side do you? :)

I strongly recommend a viewing of the movie 'Obsession-the rise of radical Islam' (doco) and then applying your obvious analytical skills to some trends in Australian social/political life in this connection.

What's your background Forest ? I'm still in shock over your attention to the genealogies.

Cheers cobber.

While we are talking about possible hacking, cracking, or tweaking of the OLO site by unidentified external interests, I will refer a matter that came up on 20 October 2006. On that occasion I thought I saw differential posting limits being applied to the same threads at different times during the day. Back then I did not know my way around the Forum site as well as I do now, and it may be that I confused myself between the Articles area and the General Discussion area of the site. Anyhow, I was pretty sure I had seen what I commented upon in this post on that day: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5018#58637 Unfortunately I have no screenshots from this period to substantiate what I thought I saw.

If it does transpire that any external crack is found enabling post recency flag tweaking, it might be worthwhile to see if posting limit tweaking also has ever occurred or been possible from outside OLO.

The thread upon which the differential post recency flagging occurred was "The Last Refuge of the Intellectual Weakling": http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=950

The thread upon which the suspected posting limit variations occurred was Sir David Smith's article discussion "Rex Connor: The Other Dismissal": http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5018

Now I can't imagine what is so sensitive about the subject matter of these threads as to attract any tweaking of the site to the end of suppressing discussion or viewing. Could it be something I said? Or that some other poster was saying? Its hard to imagine. See what you think viewers. Click the links and form your own (I mean OLO's, he he) opinion.

The only common factors I can see to the two threads appear to be that two instances of excrecable journalism and/or editing by the newspaper 'The Australian', although over thirty years apart, were commented upon, and that interests dear to the heart of Edward Gough Whitlam were in some way touched upon in each thread.

OLO appears excellent to me. I know that topics go black and vanish quickly, but that appears o be fully automated to my inexperienced eye. If you want shockingly-run forums with nitwits given moderator access and deleting posts and users they don't like at random intervals, check out Aussieseek. I had no idea how bad a forum could be until I went there.

How silly of me! I failed to mention that another common factor of the two threads mentioned in my third post on this topic as being subject to tweaking was that of the raising of questions as to levels of propriety and competence within Australian electoral administration generally, and of the Australian Electoral Commission and its Central Office specifically.

I know I mentioned the general exposure of the electoral roll-keeping system to clandestine digital manipulation in my second post in a very general way, but the two threads have content that touches upon contended misinterpretation of electoral and Constitutional law by the very bodies that have been responsible for electoral administration over the years: much closer to the bone, perhaps, than more general observations as to mere exposure to hacking and cracking risks. But again I ask viewers: was there anything sensitive enough in those observations to have motivated attempts to interfere with the OLO site from outside? Click and see.

I suppose its distantly possible that an administrative entity feeling its competence to conduct an election may in some way be being called into question could be motivated to desire that certain discussions be suppressed, but as to it actually doing anything by way of censorship or digital interference, surely not? Still, if the legislative framework and technological environment in which such an administrative entity had been tailored to work within offered opportunities for other unidentified parties to improperly influence electoral outcomes, there would be a strong motive to attempt to suppress public discussion of the subject, wouldn't there?

BTW, I saw OLO user ID 'whitlam' on line yesterday. I don't suppose it could have been the Great Man himself?

ChrisPer,

I think the very fact that OLO are prepared to let this topic run is evidence of the overall propriety with which this Forum is operated. It is in OLO's own best interests that the impartiality of its moderation and fairness of its forum rules be clearly seen. I suspect this event is a puzzle, at this point in time, to the Forum administration.

Forrest
Yes we have noticed it and dont feel you should be critised for bringing it to the attention of others.
You should be thanked.
No idea. Perhaps a computer thing but its good to know we have a person like yourself who has to me- what I call a normal interesting mind.
I like OLO and would hate to see it changed.
Although I think the Government along with a few others are going to try to control forums.
Well I hate to be a bore and bring up the same old subject but speaking of controlling comunications etc Did you hear the Government are giving Optus and elders a billion dollars in grants towards their programe.
That would be Off Shore Optus and Elders.
Elders the Live Animal Exporters. Live Exports takes our jobs off shore and creates unbelievable suffering for millions of Animal Each year.

Is it any wonder Animal Welfare groups have been "ignored" along with the RSPCA regarding Live Exports.
huh!
Speaking of plots.
The plot thickens.
Anyway Thanks Forrest.

Forrest,I feel privledged if this is so,however it made little difference since very few posted a comment on my article "Why the Battlers etc"

I doubt that it is a conscious effort by OLO at a subtle effort at censorship but more the luck of the draw depending upon how many articles they have to process.

BOAZ_david,

Sorry for the delay in acknowledging your encouragement. There were things I had to put in place first, before the posting limit intervened. In answer to your first question: not to my knowledge, and if notwithstandingly it is so, I don't have any access key to my pay account! As to my background, just in case I am unknowingly on the payroll, I would have to say that I would blend into it, if I was any good, wouldn't I? Nevertheless, it is surprising the trail of clues that litter the wake of OLO users as they transit through cyberspace. I feel it best that the credibility of a user rests upon the verifiability of the things posted, rather than credibility derived from claimed background. One is, after all, always free to build one's own speculative picture from the litter.

ChrisPer,

I don't have a very wide experience of forums in general, Chris, so I'll take your word for it as to how OLO stacks up against the rest. As you can see, I agree that it is a pretty well run forum.

PALE,

Thank you for your support. Its nice to have someone else drawing the flak for a change, isn't it? (Sorry, couldn't resist that one. I have observed some of your duels with higher authority in the past.) Our interests may not always coincide, but we all need a level playing field, at least here on OLO. Scrutiny is how you help ensure you get it. Just like in elections.

Arjay,

Your thread provided a good benchmark in the comparison of the other two. The two screenshots of the recency flag on your thread showed that the OLO posting clock was keeping correct time, rather than running uniformly somewhat fast. Don't be disappointed with the (in your view) small number of posts to your thread; they were all good ones, and I was sorry I hadn't been able to post there myself when I clicked through. Australia having to lead too much with its chin, alright!

In relation to the general subject of digital security (or the difficulty of obtaining it), I mentioned in a previous post the exposure of the centralized computerised electoral roll management system of the Australian Electoral Commission to digital manipulation or interference. This is a link to a list of submissions to a Parliamentary Inquiry into the 2004 Federal elections: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/em/elect04/subs.htm . Submissions 123 and 161 have a lot to say about how that system may be operating. This link was posted in error to an off-topic post to the topic "The Last Refuge of the Intellectual Weakling", from which it may have been removed.

I've just noticed a neat little feature of my screenshot program, KSnapshot. If, when trying to look at some of the awkwardly oriented tables in those two submissions 123 and 161, I take a screenshot, I can use the screenshot program to rotate the table 90 degrees, and then zoom in or out. Saves twisting the neck!

Another little correction I should make is to my previous reference to OLO user ID 'whitlam'. I should have checked the OLO users index, not gone from memory. It is in fact capitalized. My apologies. It should have been 'Whitlam'.

I also note that I never seem to see an article come up on the index with zero comments. How does an article get its first comment, and where on the site does this happen? I know the answer must be staring me in the face somewhere, but can anyone help?

If it is of any help to OLO administrative staff in checking out this differential post recency flagging, could I suggest that the apparent discrimination as between users may alternatively be a discrimination as between particular threads or topics?

It could well look like particular posters are the targets for discrimination, when in possible reality it may be the subject matter, the thread, that is the target. By making the thread appear relatively less active, it might be thought that further comment may be somewhat reduced or discouraged. I know that in suggesting this there is implicit acceptance of a number of underlying assumptions as to why posters comment in the first place, and one of them is obviously that comment attracts comment. I don't know whether that is really valid; I'm just tossing it up for consideration.

I have been watching the posting clock on a number of individual postings, and without being able to determine whether there has been any discrimination as between threads or posters, it does seem as if the red flagging switches off a little earlier than the actual expiry of two hours after the OLO time stamp on the post. Its a little difficult to pin down, but I think that is what I am seeing.

And now, on the lighter, or, more likely in Oz, the darker side, some little glimpses of the broad sunlit uplands of digitized democracy in the land of the brave and the home of the free. Suck this and see: http://homepage.mac.com/rcareaga/diebold/adworks.htm (Dedicated to OLO user "Quick Response", who has advocated an advanced variant of this milieu for Australia.)

Yes, I know, but ONLY in America? I bring you the Diebold Variations. Enjoy.

PS If the corporate identity seems somehow familiar, viewers may note that some ATMs of some banks (which bank?) are manufactured by this firm. Proof of just how good they are at issuing the right amount of 'paper'.

Congratulations OLO! The posting clock appeared to keep perfect time, and ran for sure up to at least "last post 117 minutes ago" for the 11th post to this thread. I can't confirm that it remained in the red until 119 minutes from posting, as there seems to have been a bit of site congestion right at that time when I was attempting to refresh pages. (I've screenshotted the timeout messages I got in each case, and will email these in to OLO in due course in case they have anything to tell re this problem.) As far as I am concerned, on this occasion the clock worked perfectly.

However, if you were to have been watching the topic "If there were no secrets...", you would have observed that at 1021 or thereabouts the flag had already changed to "2 hours ago". The third post to this topic bore the timestamp "Posted by DEMOS, Monday, 3 September 2007 8:38:38 AM". At around 0951 OLO time this topic was showing the red flag "74 minutes ago", on a page that had only just been refreshed and upon which I took a screenshot while monitoring the Technical Support thread. 120 minus 74 leaves 46. As at 0951, "If there were no secrets..." should still have been showing red for another 46 minutes. It had already changed to "2 Hours" by 1021, at least 18 minutes early. There still exists a differential clock on the site!

Einstein was right: we are seeing time dilation in action. You saw it first on OLO!

And thats another thing. Although not directly related to subtle censorship, I seem to observe that some new article topics enter the index other than from the top. Why does this happen? I sense that it may be related to my issue of not seeing topics come up with zero comments, so I am probably only digging a deeper hole for myself by asking. But hey! What else is a dinosaur to do? We need pretty big holes! This could be a matter of grave importance.

Lest it should be thought that the 'time dilation phenomenon' differentially affecting post recency flagging is only of the order of 15 to 20 minutes in advance of real OLO time, I should refer to a post I made when I first noticed this problem. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6276#91981 . There is another post of mine a little further up that thread for anyone who is interested in a comment more pertinent to the article. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6276#91345 . I was on that thread for a reason.

The time dilation on the post to the "Rupert was right to worry" article thread was of the order of at least 50 minutes, as opposed to the 18-20 minutes observed on the topic "if there were no secrets ..." just yesterday.

Could some sort of jealousy of bloggerdom on the part of, well, other more established media, or media corporate entities, be motive sufficient to attempt computer cracks of a site like OLO? I wonder what Tim Dunlop would think?

Or could it be unidentified Fat Controllers attempting to fast track political expresses around the figurative political rail network just practising their skills? Better tread softly, warily! Better that than to Die Bold, as in the second poster, by exploiting imagery. See: http://homepage.mac.com/rcareaga/diebold/adworks.htm

BTW, it looks like the fourth post on the "if there were no secrets ..." topic might have been a bit of a barbecue stopper. That would be a pity. What do you think viewers? Here's the link: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=973#17104

I must make a mental note on a piece of paper to compile a cattledog of barbecue stoppers.

Speaking of barbecue stoppers, I wonder whether this post will turn out to be one? See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6284#92471 . No, I can't see it. Its not like these two:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6306#92286

Back to paranoia. Tick, tick, tick, ..... .

Forrest
Sorry I didnt see you post. Look I think the main thing is clear we both agree to a fair go for all.
I left a message for a new poster to let her know the tag on her thread- Live Exports from tassi was not working.
I suggested she let OLO know.
I am pretty sure its working now. I suppose with such a big sytstem things are bound to go wrong from time to time so we we should not jump to any conclusions.
I did see something a few minutes ago and must go back and look.
it was just before I thought to pop down and see how you were going with your thread.
I thought I saw an new thread open on hicks.
I went in and here was a comment I had made ages ago.
Maybe I am suffering from lack of sleep.
I will go back and look again and let you know.
I would like to also add I have read many of your comments and although we may not agree on some issues I by now way hold that against you.
Your comments are also often agreed with on several issues.
Probably more than not

Dear, dear. The clock on this thread was out again on Tue 4 Sep 2007. Time dilating all over the place. The 13th post in the thread was timestamped "Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 7:59:17 AM". A screenshot taken at 0938 that morning on my computer shows the posting recency flag standing at "2 hours ago". The red flag being taken down at least 20 minutes early.

The same sort of thing was happening in the article discussion area. The 8th post to "Canning Federalism-the Liberals' legacy?" was timestamped "Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 9:25:47 AM". A screenshot taken at 1101 of a newly refreshed page shows the posting recency flag standing at "2 hours ago", the red flag having come down around at least 25 minutes early.

BTW, it looks like the 7th and 8th posts to "Canning Federalism-the Liberals' legacy?" were barbecue stoppers, after all. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6284#92471 . Last post was two days ago! Sorry, Klaas. I wonder if Justice Kirby has looked at them yet?

As a matter of interest, an article was published in yesterday's "The Australian" newspaper in the Higher Education section under the headline "I am the one who has been humiliated" by Michael Noonan. See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/highereducation . It deals with an academic dispute over Michael Noonan's PhD thesis "Laughing at the Disabled".

(This has also been a long-running OLO discussion. See: Philistines of relativism at the gates : Comments http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5730 , if you are into that sort of thing.)

The article reminded me of something that nearly happened in 2004, something very relevant as a footnote to the current article discussion "The States are Redundant", see: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6297

So I'll just use this thread as a little OLO blog to tell this story while I wait for other instances of time dilation affecting the red posting recency flags.

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 1.

There once lived a man in the land of Oz whos name was Joh.

Indeed, Joh still lived and breathed during the run-up to the Federal elections of 2004. But Joh was old and full of years, having long passed his threescore years and ten. He was not senile, as many of the Public Purveyors of Lies had for many years past tried to make out that he was. But he was sick, and near to death. Joh had Parkinson's.

It had come to pass that at around the same time as the 2004 Federal elections approached, and on the little rectangular boxes widely used by the Public Purveyors of Lies to inform the populace of things that were deemed to be 'news', there was lots of time for additional moving pictures called 'ads'. And Parkinson's NSW ran some ads at this time featuring actual sufferers from the disease making fun of themselves and their disabilities. The idea was that the ads would help raise money for the Foundation. Some thought them in bad taste, but they worked!

Now rumour has it that at this time there was a plan that Joh would help Parkinson's NSW get lots of free publicity. Joh, having been a very public man for the greater part of his long life, although he had a different State of origin to NSW, had a very high profile, even on the little rectangular boxes where lies were constantly told about him. Indeed, he had helped many throughout the community through those very boxes, just with his frequent exhortations not to worry about this, or that. He could get publicity, all right, and he knew exactly how.

For some time past, Joh, along with many other Australians, had been very concerned to see Malcolm Turnbull, who not so long before had led the charge to turn Australia into a republic (thereby, effectively, destroying the States), branch-stack his way to becoming the endorsed Liberal Party candidate for the Division of Wentworth.

TBC

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 2

Joh, as was well known, was a man of faith. There had indeed been a moving image of him conveyed over the little rectangular boxes not long before, in which, sitting in his wheelchair, he had observed that he was "at the end of this life, at the edge of the life to come." He was looking death in the face, and not blinking.

The rumour has it that it was suggested to Joh by a certain discomforter that there was nothing in the law standing in the way of his nominating in the Division of Wentworth when the elections were called, notwithstanding his age and condition.

Indeed, Joh's perceivable proximity to his end was the very thing that would have focussed public attention upon an otherwise foregone conclusion of a 'contest' in the Division of Wentworth. Parkinson's NSW would sure get some publicity, not that Joh's candidacy would have been taken as a joke. You see, had Joh nominated, and then fallen off the perch, so to speak, between the close of nominations and polling day, Malcolm Turnbull's whole intended shoo-in entry to the Federal Parliament would have been in tatters.

Joh's quite foreseeable death in those circumstances would have brought into action the provisions of Sections 180 and 181 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Under the provisions of Section 180, with Joh's death, the election in the Division of Wentworth would have been deemed to have totally failed. The Governor-General would have been required, under the provisions of Section 181, to issue a writ for a supplementary election.

One of the implications of the holding of a supplementary election would have been that the electoral clock would have had to be started all over again in the Division of Wentworth. From Malcolm Turnbull's point of view this would have been a profound embuggerence. Just for starters, the whole matter of Liberal Party endorsement would have to have been revisited.

Parkinson's NSW would have been laughing!

TBC

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 3

Given that Joh would always have been one for going out with his boots on, one has to wonder why this Parkinson's NSW publicity stunt did not actually transpire. It would almost certainly have been a great temptation to Joh, as a bloke who had turned his back on his superannuation entitlements when he retired from active public life, and subsequently faced down trumped up perjury charges intended to blacken his name to those that remembered him.

It may well have been that, true to form, Joh refused to deliberately commit a public mischief. For Joh's discomfitors had come to the knowledge of vast unforeseen electoral consequences should Joh have received his call-up between the close of nominations and polling day here in Oz, in the context of contesting the election in the Division of Wentworth.

As already mentioned, Section 181 of the CEA required that the Governor-General, in circumstances of such death of a candidate, issue a supplementary writ forthwith. Sub-section 2 of Section 154 of the CEA is absolutely and unequivocally specific that only eight writs shall be issued with respect to elections to the House of Representatives at any general elections.

This latter provision had been introduced in amendments made to the CEA in 1990, amendments sought by the Australian Electoral Commission itself, to which the Parliament subsequently agreed.

The AEC had sought these amendments after the DROs had threatened to refuse to certify the rolls which were to constitute the certified lists upon which the 1987 Federal elections were to have been conducted, rolls over the preparation of which the DROs had had no control. The Central Office of the AEC had, prior to these elections, usurped the function of roll keeping from the statutorily appointed officers, the DROs, by adopting a legislatively unsanctioned form of centralized roll-keeping.

Prior to 1990, the Governor-General, on the occasions of general elections, had issued a writ in respect of each electoral Division to that Division's DRO.

TBC

I must briefly interrupt the flow of the story "The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time" to honour the fundamental purpose of this thread, which is to explore the problem of differential post recency flagging.

John Simpson, in this post yesterday to the topic "Please Stand Aside Now John and Allow Peter be Our Next Prime Minister", see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=985#17267 , highlighted a possible further implication of the accelerated red flag fall that is occurring on some posts. Could the accelerated flag fall have the effect of enabling a prolific poster to post again sooner than some others, when otherwise that poster might remain up against the site's posting limit within any 24 hour period?

I have not as yet tried to check whether the OLO clock continues accelerated as the black post recency indicators progress from "2 hours ago" to "3 hours ago", and so on. More work to do! As if I haven't enough to do already, what with having to write entertaining (true) stories about the events of yesteryear, expose the incompetence of the Australian Electoral Commission's Central Incubus (er, I mean Office), get rid of Malcolm T, task the research staff of the Commonwealth Parliament, and brief the Governor-General on his possible options in the face of apparent nation-wide electoral improprieties threatening to sabotage the Constitution.

This is all definitely worknotcalledchoiceanymore, possums. Oh, and I nearly forgot, lambaste The Australian, and bait the Fat Controllers while I'm at it. Before you know it, someone will be asking me to plan a re-structure of the High Court as well! Yeah, bugger off youse bludgers! There are just too many problems. And 350 words will only go so far to fix them all up.

Yesterday, (when all my troubles seemed so far away), the red flag came down on this post, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6297#92705 , to the article "The States are Redundant", at least 50 minutes early. Am I paranoid, or what!

Nil Bastardum Carborundum!

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 4

Now Joh's discomforters (for there were more than one of them; three, in fact) had not of themselves presumed to latterly badmouth the then but recently intended Parkinson's NSW 2004 election-time publicity stunt. They had between them, one way and another, obtained a legal opinion from perhaps the most pre-eminent practioner in the field of Constitutional law in the entire British Commonwealth, in relation to the operation, inter se, of Sections 154, 180, and 181 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

Mr Leolin Price CBE QC, of 10 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A3SU, (who as Australian [NSW] Queen's Counsel is able to appear in all Australian courts) had indicated, amongst other things, in generality that "modern law-making in Australia - as elsewhere - [had] been infected with slovenliness and inefficiency.".

Yeah. Right on!

For it had become apparent to Joh's discomforters that for the Governor-General to fulfil the requirement of the statute, viz. that of Section 181 of the CEA that he issue a supplementary writ forthwith to deal with the totally failed election in the Division of Wentworth, as the consequence of the (then prospective) death of a candidate, the Governor-General would have to cancel the one existing writ under which all the other 50 or so elections in the other Divisions within the State of NSW were intendedly proceeding, and start that electoral clock afresh! Just imagine the utter mayhem! The costs incurred by the AEC in consequence would be the least consideration; just think of the prolongation of the uncertainty as to the outcome of the Federal elections, with 51 seats undecided, for starters.

Politicians' bladders are not built to take that sort of strain!

What blinding incompetence on the part of the then Australian Electoral Commission to have recommended such a change to electoral legislation to the Parliament as would fail to provide for such easily foreseeable possibility as the death of a candidate between close of nominations and the poll!

It appears I may have answered my own question posed in yesterday's first post above "Could the accelerated flag fall have the effect of enabling a prolific poster to post again sooner than some others, when otherwise that poster might remain up against the site's posting limit within any 24 hour period?"

I deliberately attempted to post my first post on this thread yesterday early, 10 minutes or so before the 24 hour posting limit period had expired. (I had made four posts to this topic the previous day, Thursday, and was up against the posting limit.) As it should have, the OLO site locked me out and displayed the lockout notice, which advised that I could post again in one hour.

I again attempted to post around 0750, as my then oldest post became 24 hours old at 7:48:55 AM. This time, only 10 minutes after the first attempt, the post was accepted, seemingly showing that the OLO posting limit program takes input from the timestamp on posts, rather than any more approximate method of triggering.

The question has to be asked as to why the posting recency flagging is not also tied to the posting timestamp. Was the red flagging feature introduced when OLO was first set up, or was it a feature added after the site had become operational? My suspicion is that the flagging program has the capability of being tweaked where the posting limit program does not. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that such a feature, or weakness, depending upon how you want to look at it, was built into the site's software to permit tweaking from outside by a third (unidentified) party.

Such a concern is seen to exist with respect to electronic vote recording and counting in the USA, hence the infamous "Diebold Variations", see: http://homepage.mac.com/rcareaga/diebold/adworks.htm

It seems, from submissions made to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the 2004 Federal elections, similar concerns exist with respect to the unlawfully centralized electronic roll-keeping regime of the Australian Electoral Commission.

You're barking mad aren't you Forrest?

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 5

There would have been much alarmed clucking, not only around the political commentariat traps, but among Federal Executive Councillors, at this development! The Central Incubus of you-know-what would undoubtedly collectively have expected to MIUAUG its way out of this one, of course. The High Court of Australia, was it to have been asked by the Governor-General for a ruling, may well have taken resort to the principle "ut res magis valeat quam pereat" to avoid legal nonsense and assert that in spite of the requirement of the Act for only eight writs there was room for a new writ and a supplementary election as had been the case before this legislative blunder was made.

If the High Court was asked. You cannot have legal debate and contention in such circumstances as being mid-stream in Federal elections!

The Governor-General, however, with both the unequivocally clear letter of the law, and electoral precedent to guide him, would have remained free to take a different approach, one perhaps indicated by that provision in Section 61 of the Constitution that charges the Governor-General with the "execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.".

Section 181 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that the Governor-General should issue the new writ FORTHWITH. A 1989 report into the conduct of elections to the NSW Parliament, a report by a then serving, plus a retired former, Electoral Commissioner, speaking with respect to the meaning of "forthwith" in an electoral context, quoted the meaning as being "at once". The schedule to the CEA set out the form writs were to take. There existed no form for any supplementary writ different to that of the eight prescribed by the Act. The law guided the Governor-General clearly: as it stood, the Governor-General was required to replace the writ for all House of Representatives elections within the State of NSW!

To think, all this, just so Central Incubus could bully DROs and usurp roll-keeping!

TBC

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 6

It was not that alarmed clucking would have worried Joh all that much, especially not when looking down upon the cluckers from a great height, as was prospectively in view. He had been around chooks most of his life, and they held no fears for him. Indeed, he had been known to regularly feed chooks. He knew, as a consequence, that it was very easy to take wheat off blind ones.

Joh could see that a lot of wheat was being taken off a lot of blind chooks around Canberra, for example. (You know, the national capital you have when you want national government to be hidden away from the people. The place where they build bridges over artificial lakes.) The problem was that anything Joh could have done to stop it would have been represented by the Public Purveyors of Lies as just sour grapes or spoiling tactics directed against his mate, John, in the Federal sphere.

The answer came to Joh in a dream. He was to go quietly. He had done enough, and his family suffered enough, in the service of the nation over many years. Besides, John (his Federal mate) reckoned he knew best about Malcolm, who was not Joh's Federal mate at all, in that he, John, had welcomed Malcolm's entrance into the national capital as but an expression of "robust democracy" at work within the Liberal Party. "Let him find out for himself", thought Joh. "That bloke will turn out to be an albatross around John's neck!".

And so it came to be. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=445#8741

Joh had found out, you see, that his election result in 1986 had, through no doing of his, been likely assisted by massive electoral fraud. It was such a massive win that his party had been able govern in its own right in the land of the banana-benders, but with that win came all those hangers-on with skeletons in their cupboards!



TBC

Dear Forest...I should have KNOWN that your extreme attention to detail in the genealogies :) would be symptomatic of something... now I know what it is... aiks.. mate.. bless you and all...BUT...

can you try the 'HEADLINE' and subtext method ? I simply feel weary even looking at all that part 1 to infinity there.. try to put your thoughts into READABLE bites mate..... condense condense condense... u know.."Locationx3" thats what it's all about..

I have to disagree on principle with Ginx though :) I think ur quite smart.

Time continues to dilate!

A screenshot taken of a newly refreshed page of the OLO article discussion index at 1649 Mon 10 Sep 2007 showed the 15th post to the thread of Andrew Murray's article "Direct democracy comes to Australia" ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/index-articles.asp ) with a red posting recency flag reading "62 minutes ago".

A subsequent screenshot, also of the newly refreshed article discussion index at 1659 Mon 10 Sep 2007, ten minutes later, still showed 15 posts to the discussion, but the post recency flag was now black and reading "2 hours ago".

This means the red flagging was removed around 50 minutes BEFORE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

The first screenshot showed the 13th post to the thread of "The hidden assaults" with a red posting recency flag reading "104 minutes ago". The subsequent screenshot showed the 13th post to "The hidden assaults" with a black posting recency flag reading "2 hours ago". The red flagging on this thread was also removed early, but only to the extent of around 16 minutes before time.

Different threads, and/or different posters, are being given differential treatment, but there seems to be no apparent rhyme or reason to the extent of early removal of the red flagging between different posts.

Even Einstein may have been confused!

What on earth is going on?

Oh, and something I have wanted to be able to say, but have never had the words for: Hi, Ginx! Woof! Woof, woof!

Now perhaps I am looking at all this differential post recency flag falling the wrong way.

Could it be that, perhaps unbeknown to OLO, the site's software has been so written or cracked that it is possible for a sort of panel of post adjudicators to be sitting, somewhere outside of OLO (perhaps in the groves of taxpayer funded academe), and effectively rating posts for potential destructiveness of governmental impropriety? The rating being delivered in accordance with the number of minutes early that the flag falls.

Why didn't I see that earlier?

Why didn't I imagine a sort of panel of Dickos, with perhaps the odd Fat Controller or two, looking at how close to the bone some comments might be getting? I mean, if you just let posts run on their merits, golly, whole droves of hack journalists might be rendered even more useless than they may already be. Talk about Australia idle!

Yesterday, Wednesday 12 September, saw the continuation of early red flag falls.

A post to the article comments on "Direct Democracy comes to Australia" made at 11:32:27 AM was shown in a screenshot of a newly refreshed page to have had the post recency flag change to the black "2 hours ago" reading by 1:11 PM by my computer time. This means the red flag was down at least 20 minutes early; just exactly how much earlier I can't be sure.

In another instance, a post to the topic "Flight 93 ......" in the General Discussion area was red flagged at "51 minutes ago" when by my computer's time it was 5:42 PM. A subsequent screenshot taken at 6:31 PM showed that post as having been made "2 hours ago". Only 44 minutes had elapsed between screenshots. "Flight 93 ...." should at that point have been reading, in red, "95 minutes ago". Its flag had gone down at least 25 minutes early.

Why cant the flags be tied to the posting timestamp? The posting limit warnings clearly are.

Until the next anomaly, cheers.

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 7

The week ending Saturday 15 September was one for the books in at least one of the Original States of the Indissoluble Federal Commonwealth, wasn't it!

St Peter of Queensland, Earl of Traveston, Lord of all the Rings, and Count of the First (and Second) Water, pulled the plug!

Who would have thought?

It was astounding to see how little the Public Purveyors of Lies had to say about it all. But Peter did leave behind the Bee-Attie-Tudes on OLO, which he had inspired. See:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=884#15532

No doubt all will come out in the wash. The real reasons behind the sudden departure, that is. Certainly it would appear as if daggett of OLO had had a substantial hand in it. In the moment of its happening, however, it was almost as if Joh had reached out from the grave and delivered a ghostly tap on the shoulder to one who so clearly aspired to be like him, effectively saying "Its time".

Wonder why the ghost of the old bible-bashing bastard was so convincing?

Before his demise, Joh had come to understand about censuses. (You could read about censuses, and the things that accompanied them, in the Bible, if you wanted to: there were at least three referred to, two under David, and one under Augustus. All involved the taking of names. But I digress.)

Joh's discomforters had recollected that names of Ozzies had commenced to be collected with the censuses in the Kingdom of Oz some time in the 1970s. They also recollected that by no later than 1989, the "census walks" had been brought into correspondence with the "habitation review walks" of the Electoral Commission (or maybe it was vice versa). They noted that the Census was a potentially good source of names for the Keepers of the Books of Names to keep. For a start, there was Felix the Cat. You know, the one that got out of the bag!

TBC

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 8

Joh's discomforters remembered that back in 1991, a year which, quite apart from being numerically palindromic was also a census year, there had been a bit of a hoo ha over something that had been done by a TV/radio shock jock called the Human Headline, one Derryn Hinch.

A short piece of reportage contained within the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald made mention of a claim that Hinch, who at that time appeared on Channel 7, had bum-drummed the public with respect to the address to which persons not comfortable with the confidentiality of information on their census forms in the hands of census collectors could post their forms. As a consequence, so the Herald article claimed, something of the order of 200,000 census returns had been delivered to a wrong address. An un-named spokesperson for the ABS was quoted as saying that those who had followed Hinch's advice had in fact placed the confidentiality of the information in their returns at greater risk through posting them in, rather than returning them to a census collector.

That same year, 1991, at around the same time of the year, also saw the inadvertent release, in digital format, of the entire collection of electoral rolls containing all the confidential entry information in relation to electors normally privy only to the AEC, to political parties. Then Australian Democrat Senator Karin Sowada blew the whistle on this little inadvertency in Parliament. Everyone had to give the confidential digital roll information back. Of course, no copies would have been made beforehand, would there! That would have kept the bastards all honest, wouldn't it?

Should it have ever come about that information, the source of which could only ever have been from confidential census forms, was to have been detected in an electoral roll information context, a good explanation existed to explain the leakage: all those returns delivered to a wrong address!

There was only one problem: the Herald story was a beat-up.

TBC

The 29th post to this topic was posted at 8:02:21 AM on Saturday 15 September 2007. A screenshot taken 11 minutes later also showed the 37th post to the topic "Is there a god?" had been posted 19 minutes before.

A subsequent screenshot taken at 9:16 AM by my computer's time (there is a two to three minute difference between my time and OLO time, mine being behind) showed the 37th post still being the last to the topic "Is there a god?" but having had the red post recency flagging taken down and displaying in black "2 hours ago".

The two screenshots were taken 63 minutes apart. When the first was taken the 37th post to "Is there a god?" had already been posted for 19 minutes. 19+63=82. When the second screenshot was taken, the 37th post to "Is there a god?" should have been displaying in red "82 minutes ago". The red flag had fallen at least around 38 minutes earlier than it should.

A screenshot taken at 9:54 AM showed the red post recency flag on the 29th post to the topic "Subtle OLO censorship? ...." standing at "113 minutes ago", giving every indication that the red flagging was operating as it should for this poster/thread, red still showing with only seven minutes still to go to the two hour mark.

The last screenshot, taken at 9:59 AM, showed the 29th post to "Subtle OLO censorship? ...." as having been made "2 hours ago", which, with the slight time difference between my computer and the OLO clock taken into account, was as it should have been. The same screenshot showed the 37th post displaying a post recency flag of "3 hours ago". Only 125 minutes had elapsed since the 37th post had been posted, but it was now displaying "3 hours ago", seemingly implying that in fact the red flag had fallen 55 minutes earlier than it should have, rather than the "at least 38 minutes earlier" previously deduced.

Happy debugging!

You are a busy boy. Just thought I would mention the red tag on Tassi Live Exports doesnt seem to work
' dont you get lonely down here?

Hello
Just to let you know I think that was my mistake
It seems fine. Cheers

PALE&IF,

Don't be so sure that the post recency flag is working correctly on the thread of "Live Exports from Tasmania".

A screenshot of the index showed "Live Exports ..." as having 28 posts at 6:23 PM on Sun 16 Sep 2007. The post recency flag was red and showed "35 mins ago".

A subsequent screenshot at 7:08 PM, 45 minutes later, recorded the post recency flag as black and showing "2 hours ago". There were still only 28 posts to the thread.

35+45=80. At 7:08 PM the post recency flag should still have been red, and showing "80 mins ago". The red flag had fallen at least 40 minutes early.

There does not seem to be rhyme or reason to these early flag falls. It appears they may be momentarily corrected on a particular thread, only to be out on some other thread during the same time interval. For example, in my post of Saturday, 15 September 2007 6:50:36 PM, I observed that the flag on "Subtle OLO Censorship? ...." was working properly. A little later it wasn't. At the same time, the flag on "Is there a God?" was not working correctly.

I had not been posting to "Is there a God?" prior to making this observation: it simply just happened that that thread was in the screenshots at the same time as "Subtle OLO Censorship? ....". (I might add that I have since posted to that thread, as the subject of censuses looked as if it could gainfully be brought up.)

As for loneliness on this thread, PALE&IF, my posts here appear merely as a matter of record. They are there for those who may care to think about their implications. They are intended to stimulate thought, rather than opinion.

There are many other threads where a comment made might be off-topic: this thread is really a blog, to which an informative link I think relevant can be posted in other comments without disruption to other posters. This blog aims to operate within the OLO Forum rules.

Cheers.

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 9

1991 was also the year in which, in addition to the inadvertent release of the electoral roll tapes, and the claimed breach of the confidentiality of the census, another strange little event occurred.

Around the middle of 1991, a break-in was reported by a Sydney newspaper at premises located at 1 Francis St, Darlinghurst. The report identified the premises as being that of the Unitarian Church, which was seemingly true enough, as that entity certainly occupied the ground floor of the building.

Police had, when called to the scene of the break-in, found large numbers of empty Australia Post mailbags. Some other mailbags concealed desktop computers. It seems "druggies" had been squatting in unoccupied premises adjacent to 1 Francis St, and that the computers had been at one time in that unoccupied building. Detective Duncan Demol, who was later to 'roll over' to the Inquiry into Police Corruption (the Wood Inquiry, I think), conducted, or at least was involved in, inquiries into this little escapade.

The newspaper report, for what it was worth, quoted one of the office girls employed on the first floor as saying words to the effect of "perhaps this explains where our missing software was going" in relation to the break-in.

The quite extensive article in that Saturday paper never once mentioned the identity of the occupant of the first floor of that building. The first floor was occupied by the NSW Electoral Commission.

I don't suppose a clandestine computer hacking operation with the NSW Electoral Commission as its target could have been occurring, could it? The NSW Electoral Commission was totally dependent upon the AEC for its electoral roll information. If one organisation had been successfully hacked, so may have been the other. Could names derived from the Census have been being emplaced upon NSW Electoral District rolls, at correct addresses for those names, with the NSW rolls later coming to be regarded as an authentic source for the emplacement of those same names upon Commonwealth Divisional rolls?

TBC

It has been found that one of my posts is deflamatory, well suprise suprise suprise the labor party having a cow.

The truth is just what i posted.
Now maybe those will think this is defamatory.
They knew but did nothing.
They knew and let it happen.
They knew but never reported it.

The truth always the victim

… and ain't i a woman?: Code of silence

10 November 1993
Code of silence
On October 28 Keith Wright, ex-honourable member for Capricornia (ALP), was convicted of rape and indecent dealing with a girl under the age of 14, and sentenced to eight years in jail

“We all knew about Keith”, a valiantly anonymous “powerful figure” in the Queensland government told the Sydney Telegraph Mirror on October 30. “We all saw Keith regularly in action ... It didn't surprise me that he slept with her [the then 13-year-old girl with whom Wright had what he called a “sexual relationship” for three years] -- and the thing that makes me feel real bad now is that I thought it was all a joke, the way he chased women.”

It was a joke until it threatened election prospects, and then it became serious enough to take action -- not to take steps to prevent Wright physically and psychologically abusing young women, but to remove him to a position in which his crimes were less likely to be brought to public attention.

It was the abused woman herself who finally brought Keith Wright to some measure of justice, reporting to the police and testifying that she had been unable to stop Wright's sexual advances.

One of Keith Wright's final hobby horses, before he lost his seat following his arrest on these sexual assault charges, was a campaign to have “adult” magazines placed in brown wrappers on special high shelves in newsagents, so that children's minds wouldn't be polluted by them. As a Baptist preacher, he was ever concerned to protect the innocence of young children

Interesting point you raise, tapp, about the "knowing but doing nothing", the "knowing but letting it happen", the "knowing but never reporting".

The matter you raised is, of course, a personal failing of one man. It is not necessarily reasonable to tar, in this case, the ALP and/or the Baptist Church ministry, with the same brush over what was individual criminal conduct.

The wider question is as to whether evidence of double standards existed upon which pre-emptive action could have been taken by associates in either organisation to deprive the perpetrator of the particular advantages that may have been offerred by his public standing in either capacity.

I would suggest, given his lay status, in the absence of substantive evidence against him, there was perhaps little the Baptist ministry should have been expected to do before the event.

Just why political colleagues couldn't or didn't seem to see a need for earlier action is a more pertinent question.

I suggest this sort of experience has come to be the seeming rule as a consequence of the very long term practise throughout Australia of electoral improprieties covering the complete range from 'gaming the system' to plain straight electoral fraud.

Such a system operates to drive out from public life most people who have high standards of ethics and believe in the rule of law. Such a system selects for the very opposite of integrity amongst those entering the ranks of what are now dismissively identified by the public as 'politicians'.

There are undoubtedly people of great ability within politics today, in all parties. Its just that consciously or unconsciously, many of them seem to have confused the heavy responsibility for making the law with being above it.

The answer lies in cleaning out the now scarcely concealed rorting of the electoral process, not changing the process itself. It may well be that the public subliminally recognise the existence of a corruption of the political process, and are ready to endorse corrective action. Not necessarily by revolution: in a constitutional monarchy, correction can come from the top down.

Is this by any chance a "Forrest Gump" site?

SPANKY,

I'm disappointed that there should be any suggestion that it should be thought to be merely a matter of chance that this thread may be, as you describe it, "a "Forrest Gumpp" site".

In the 15th post to this thread (out of which 15 posts up until then only 10 were mine!) I made the express statement: " So I'll just use this thread as a little OLO blog to tell this story while I wait for other instances of time dilation affecting the red posting recency flags." And that is what I have done! This thread is my blog. (Well, not really; in reality, it is OLO's blog of mine, at least until the end of September, when it will, presumably, drop off this superficial mortal coil, and become accessible only to those who are prepared to select "display one quarter back". Gridiron thus makes its inroads, as you may choose, or not, as the case may be, to see.). Welcome to the blog, SPANKY.

Feel free to pose questions, or contribute to the topic as stated, or the topic as I may from time to time have seemingly refacetted it.

This thread is the Forrest Gumpp Dump Site! Hopefully a site for sore eyes.

Things are frequently placed here as a matter of record before the event occurs to which they may subsequently be seen to relate. The idea being that nobody may complain that they were not warned of what it really is that they may, or should have been, about, particularly at the level of national government policy formation.

Of course nobody is infallible (least of all one Josef Ratzinger!), and the stuff dumped is up for challenge, if you think there are grounds, or just plain don't like where it leads you. I just try to tell it as I have seen it. I must confess to a compulsion, wherever possible, to substitute verifiable fact for opinion. To this extent, perhaps, I may not be seen to be always acting as a genuine contributor to OLO.

C'est la guerre!

Ce la vie et bon chance!
Good one Forrest, keep up the good work mate!

Forrest
Thank you for the time you put into the Tassi Live Animal Export site.
Also for your detailed reply it was decent of you.
To be honest I thought it was not working a few times but as I work all day and often only look at olo late evenings I thought perhaps it was just my mistake.

We have had problems on the site but not with the tag of the thread not showing up but the tag itself.
We were told by olo that only one person could post under our tag.
Despite that olo allowed a thread to start questioning why several people did not post and each person put their name up.
It does seem a bit odd if not the least unfair.
So our integrigty has been questioned because simply as a result followed the intructions.
Call that cenorship of sorts but the surley censorship should be left to staff not other posters.
So we are under olo censorship as well as ordinary posters who also think they have the right to have their own Censorship as well.
No rules or murpheys rules seem to apply.
We think Censorship should only be carried out by staff and nobody else.
We are happy to abide by rules so long as people are not allowed to challange those rules in a public forum to imply we are cheats or hiding.
Of course the other thing we have always maintained is everybody should have to post in their real names. This would cut out much irresponsible behaviour thuss making the forum are far more informed

Yes we now see you do enter other threads.
Thanks for your attention to detail