Who is the most active member on this forum?
I'll vote to Boaz_David, how about you?
please all members say their ideas. Thank you.

I do not think it matters, I could get a run of late but who ever it is we need more posters.
Worth noting main subject must be very close to religion, and we often balk at our name sake politics.
Some threads fail to get up and running.

I couldn't care less who is the most active.

What difference does it make?

Do they get a Noddy Medal?

Do we have to choose? Each one is different - (and never boring).
And isn't that the idea? Some get very heated at times - but that's O.K. (Considering that we're often dealing with emotive topics).
But, as long as we're learning from each other - and respect each other's point of view - I think that's what matters.

More to the point, who is the most balanced and constructively contributive member of OLO?

That’d be someone who doesn’t spend all day every day on the damn thing and posts only good meaningful stuff.

Of course my vote would have to go to………………ahhhh ummm err…..Ludwig…. of course! (:>)

(or it would have done if he hadn’t post this piece of meaningless blurb! (:>())

Actually Ludwig - you were one of the ones at the top of my list...

Nepotism and mutual admiration societies do not auger well for our survival.This is what Iemma NSW does on a daily basis.Would you want to go there?

Top-ten countdown for the qualities of a good poster:

10. Can spell
9. Can write in grammatical sentences
8. Can write an entire post without SHOUTING
7. Writes about stuff s/he actually has thought about
6. Reads the other posts in the discussion before posting
5. Has a sense of humour
4. Engages in discussion rather than indulging in polemical rants
3. Acknowledges the worth of opposing views
2. Refrains from personal attacks
1. Treats the other participants in the discussion with respect and where appropriate, admiration.

Ludwig's conduct in the long discussion about Chris Hurley http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5586&page=0 impressed me as displaying most of these qualities. A poster named Snout http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=27225&show=history also shows similar qualities. Regrettably he hasn’t appeared around here for a while.

many points well made... in fact who would have thought that an opening like Angela's would lead to such a valuable post as JPW's ?

Perhaps I've been a bit too frequent.. and should lay low for a few weeks ? :)

blessings all.

No do not leave BD! if we read that post a few of us will shuffle of out the door head down on our chests.
It is however rather pretentious in parts.
Grammar? mum used to cook a pie made out of it didn't she? spelling? it is my spell checks fault!ruddy thing should have known! it said heard I meant herd!
Come to think of it my spell check is over worked it needs stress leave.
I have met thousands of people since that day as a kid 12 years and ten months of age that I walked out of school.
Learned far more in the next few years in workplaces far from mum and dad reading every thing I could lay my hands on.
Some of the best educated people never understood much of the world at all.
Can not spell the word but it sounds like paradigm it reminds us in a group intent on solving a problem , it may well be the person who sweeps the floor that finds the long lost answers.
We have great posters here, some constantly remind me they do not agree with much I say ,but I place some of them close to the best we have here.
Remember this, we are not all alike, if we divide ourselves into groups based on how we say things not what we say we divide indeed.
While self confidence is a worthy asset it is often miss placed.
Regards all
Blley!

“It is however rather pretentious in parts.”

I’d be more inclined to say pompous than pretentious. Don’t worry, Belly, my tongue is firmly placed in cheek.

I wanted to put in “Stays on topic”, but since I was going off-topic myself, I decided that might be a little too impertinent.

Thinking still about the best posters around here, I have to say that I really miss Steve Madden, who honoured many of my proposed good qualities by ignoring them: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=23339&show=history

Thanks jpw and Foxy.

Woops, when I reread my earlier comments (“someone who doesn’t spend all day every day on the damn thing and posts only good meaningful stuff”), it sounds like I was slanting it at Boazy, given that he was mentioned earlier. I wasn’t. It was just a general comment.

Boaz isn’t part of the furniture of OLO, he’s a couple of walls and half the roof.

So yes Angela, Boazo gets my vote as the most active member, certainly over the life of this forum, and probably also in the short term. He’s put up over 4400 posts!! I don’t think there is any other contributor with over 2000.

Onya David.

So if an award was to be presented for the most prolific contributor to this forum, would it be called a 'spammy' ? :)

mine too. population control is the ultimate source of resource management, and deserves thoughtful discussion, which ludwig provides.

but it's not good enough to just talk. talk with no action is just gossip. (not that there's anything wrong with that). however, population, resources, environment, global warming, armed conflict and repressive legislation should all be regarded as important enough to demand action.

here in oz, only parliament can act for the nation, yet parliament has presided over, even created, these actual and potential disasters. this is not because they are evil, merely because they are human. working in a parliamentary society, they seized their opportunities for personal success by making the most of their talents at climbing up the party ladder. this does not select for planning or administrative success. neither does it select for admirable character. the result is we are ruled by arrogant weasels with a winning smile. they used to go into used car sales, but this pays better and is safe from misrepresentation suits.

so, if you're genuinely concerned about these major matters, you should begin with democracy: rule by the people.

I like to see a variety in comments from various posters, rather than a single wheelbarrow being pushed.

But I guess the fact that we have a wide variety of posters with a wide variety of posting habits (even if that includes those with a wheelbarrow) is pretty crucial to the forum.

FOUR.....THOUSAND....FOUR....HUNDRED ?

goooood GRIEF.... CJ is "RIGHT".. (Oh the pain of saying that:)

Most of my posts are 349.001 words, and including research it probably takes 15minutes to do a good one.. assuming 99% of my posts are 'GOOD' ones (note the humility) :) then.. aargggh.. where has my life gone?

4400 x 15min= 141 WORK_DAYS!

Sheesh.. if business is going well.. and I manage to work a full day, and at around 80% efficiency.. then it works out to be a business cost of around $28,000!

Well.. I've never been thinking about the money, I get more out of sharing Christ than any amount of $$ can ever provide.

Consider this. George Verwer founder of "Operation Mobilization"

>>Verwer's first contact with Christianity was through his neighbor, Dorothea Clapp, who gave him the Gospel of John and also put him on her "Holy Ghost hit list". Verwer gives her a lot of credit for him coming to Jesus, and for what resulted.

When he was a pupil at Ramsey High School in New Jersey, he went to a Jack Wyrtzen meeting in which Billy Graham spoke in Madison Square Garden, New York. There he was converted to become a Christian, at the age of 16<<

Just ....one bloke. But where did that lead?

1/ Within a year, about 200 of his classmates became Christians.

2/ Operation Mobilization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mobilization

By 1963, 2,000 Christians had joined summer outreach teams in Europe. At the same time, the first year teams moved into the Indian sub-continent and the Muslim world. Their ambition was to bring the gospel message those who had never heard it.

Since 1970, OM's ships have visited over 480 different ports in 150 countries and territories around the globe. On average, 1 million visitors are welcomed on board every year.

One life...changed for Christ... can change the world.

ps...thanx for the words of understanding from Ludwig and Belly.

Turn right then left, with respect I in my mind have placed you, Ludwig and most in this thread in the best but.
Wheelbarrows are meant to be pushed, and you are quite right we need every poster.
My wheelbarrow brings me into conflict, even with my side of the fence, see I am from Labors right, and a trade unionist, from that faction, comes down to it unionist first.
But I try my heart out to be honest, no side of politics is always right.
I while l hide my thoughts on some things because I think this country needs change, but one day after the election will call for 2 maybe three of this NSW government ministers to be dropped and issued mops and brooms to match their talents, how about that arjay we agree!
However I just have to remark some who push wheelbarrows could do much better if they put the thing on its wheels before pushing.

“One life ... changed for Christ ... can change the world.”

Oh dear – even this thread has been turned into a platform for proselytising.

“thanx for the words of understanding from Ludwig and Belly”

You won’t get any from me, David. You were the worst example I could think of when writing the “top-ten,” so it came as something of a surprise when you failed to recognise your own failings there.

You were also the main poster I was thinking of when I wrote, “Being able to block posts from particular users would also be nice – there are several people around here whose words simply don’t need to appear on my screen.” http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=7878

I don’t doubt that you are the most prolific poster on OLO. You are also the most annoying, and the one who most often hijacks threads by putting an irrelevant (yes, irrelevant) religious slant on them. Your inability to keep your superstitions and prejudices to yourself is a burden upon everyone that visits these pages.

Following my own standards, the best thing I can say about you is that you are possibly well-intentioned. However, good intentions don’t excuse imposing your ill-formed opinions on the rest of us.

Please go and waste inordinate amounts of time praying for my endangered soul – just don’t tell me or anyone else about it.

My apologies to everyone else here - unfortunately I find myself unable to follow my own advice with respect to personal attacks.

Amen to all of that, jpw :)

I'd been wondering how many lives have been for ever turned from christ by the efforts of some our resident fundies (some of whom are extreme enough to make Boazy seem almost moderate).

My impression is that Boazy's 4000+ posts would have done far more to turn people from the christain message than towards it. On the other hand it gives Boazy something to quietly brag about at the wednesday night prayer meeting as he raises prayer points from his missionary efforts with the heathen on OLO.

If nothing else Boazy and other fundies continue to remind me how glad I am to have left those sad belief's behind.

R0bert

Hi there JPW

well... I'm out of intensive care now.. (needed stint in it after that rather brutal onslaught in your last post:)

So..now in outpatients only..I'm ok to repost.

You said:

"hijacks threads by putting an irrelevant (yes, irrelevant) religious slant on them"

Actually JP, you are simply showing bigotry than anything else there. I'm not meaning to attack 'you'-but ur view. Here is my understanding of your reasoning.

1/ "Religious viewpoints don't matter"
2/ "No matter what evidence or history they are based on...they are irrelevant."

Perhaps I have the wrong word.. bigotry is when you have the 'Don't confuse me with any facts, I have my mind made up' kind of thing.

I deliberately bring up a 'religious' perspective as you describe it in many threads, because what you don't seem to realize is that much of the opinion and reasoning coming from some posters needs to be challenged on the basis of their presuppositions.

The classic is 'morality'.. "right" and "wrong"... most posts are made from people with a view about this. I maintain, and always have, that unless you bring God into the picture, 'right/wrong' is nothing more than 'opinion'...and put 2 people in a room and you will have 2 'opinions' about right and wrong.

So..it is not just 'mindless babble' that I come out with in bringing a religious perspective. Furthermore, being a democracy, I shudder to think where your attitude would take us if you ever have serious power...

Belly opened a thread "Is there a God" and it received probably the all time most posts from people.. doesn't that say something about relevance?

Also.. nothing is 'imposed' on you here. No more than your views are imposed....on me.

Boazy: "Belly opened a thread 'Is there a God' and it received probably the all time most posts from people.. doesn't that say something about relevance?"

Boazy, you're being deliberately obtuse - either that, or you really do have some kind of intellectual deficit.

A religious perspective is indeed relevant to a thread about whether or not God exist. But it's not relevant to a thread about the deficiencies of the Australian electoral system (see http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6638#99364) - as just one example of your boofheaded insistence on hijacking discussions about any topic and using them as platforms for your religiously inspired blather and bigotry.

Actually I think the thread that scored the most hits was the article about hating Nicole Kidman.

Depressing innit?

CJ.. you are a stubborn little vegemite arn't you?

You said:

>>A religious perspective is indeed relevant to a thread about whether or not God exist. But it's not relevant to a thread about the deficiencies of the Australian electoral system<<

Now there you go, demonstrating your own blinkered biases and not forgetting a little ad hominem
-"intellectual deficit"
-"Boofheaded"
-"Bigoted"
-"Blatherer"
-"Hijacker"

I take that back... in a post of around 100 words thats A BIGGGG ad hominem.
Anyway.. moving on.

For a Christian, the electoral system is VERY much relevant to our spiritual outlook.
In a prophetic sense, it is also relevant in Gods world to speak into the political process as the likes of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel and so on did in days gone by. (they never won any popularity contests with either the kings or the people..such is life)

The primary call of the prophets was "Justice, Righteousness, and Faithfulness to Yahweh"

Now.. in view of our rather secular society, we should be able to make 'just and right' kind of appeal, and warn people against a selfish greed based vote, and at least exhort them to return to God.
They can take it or leave it, but it's still relevant because Christians (Nominal or otherwise) constitute around 68% of the community.

According to the poem by Yeats, it is when the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity that things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and anarchy is loosed upon the world.

We live at a time when the worst are indeed full of passionate intensity. The question is whether the rest of us have the courage of our convictions and the wisdom to make the right choices.

Wisdom comes from learning, which comes from education. The heart of education is the search for truth. But there are many kinds of truth.

In mathematics and science, knowledge accumulates. Theorems are built on top of theorems and laws on top of laws. We discover that the Earth is round and will never again think of it as flat.

We learn that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Through experiments and research, scientists steadily add to our store of knowledge.

We are, in this sense, far wiser than earlier generations about how the world works. In the areas of global politics and interfaith understanding, however, I'm not sure we are any smarter now than we have been in the past. When the new millennium came, we vowed to make a fresh start, but we haven't begun well.

We may hope, however, for leadership at home and abroad that will inspire us to look for the best in ourselves and in others.

TO BOAZ DAVID,

You go right on summoning "the better angels of your nature"
summoning your capacity to care for others in ways that can't fully be explained by self-interest, logic, or science...

Once again, everyone, apologies for my spray, and for the fact that it has actually prolonged the nuisance.

CJ, this is simply the price we pay for freedom of speech, just as world-beating skin cancer rates are the price we pay for living in a sunny country.

Bring on that user filter http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1189#21843 (I buggered up the link last time)

I'd have to endorse the value of jpw2040's top ten countdown for the qualities of a good poster, given in the eighth post in this thread. I intend using it as a post quality assurance test for my draft posts. It has been copied and pasted into a Gedit document that is now permanently displayed on another desktop on my computer (No. 14 - the number of his name) that I had some time ago labelled "character map" but had not used, which seems appropriate enough. Ah, the power and elegance of Linux!

I'd have to endorse the effectiveness (oh, how I long to write EFFECTIVENESS, but I can't, and don't) of this countdown in eliciting posts that display these qualities. Look at the very next post made! Only 41 words, and in the first sentence demonstrates compliance with No.1, in the closing salutation compliance with No.2, in the second sentence compliance with No.3, and overall, with No.6 and (exempting the probably instinctively honorific capitalization of 'jpw') even No.8!

Now it has to be acknowledged that the ninth post miserably failed Quality No.9. Two of the three sentences uncapitalized at their commencements! Unbelievable!

The real biggie in the elicitation effectiveness stakes has got to have been compliance with Quality No.8, and compliance at that by the acknowledged winner of the award effectively proposed by the opening poster, Angela84. It cannot be said that there was not a large enough sample against which to judge the significance of this octal-quality elicitation from this poster.

Rejoice, jpw2040: your setting of the literary decathlon bar has achieved a demonstration of new life in an old poster! Old Chinese proverb say: "you give new life to lost cause, you responsible for rest of that life!" Yep.

Now, as I go to close and look at this document's automatically given Linux opening title - Unsaved Document 1 - I've just realized Bill Gates and Microsoft have a serious, serious, copyright and trademark problem. In the beginning was the Word, ....

I admit that seeing who gets the Prolific Poster award means nothing to me either. Quantity, to me, having nothing to do with quality.

But...last semester, teaching a Journalism class here (in China,for anyone who doesn't know)I posted a number of sites during the Course that I wanted my students to check out and even perhaps to participate in.

To my shame posting the OLO url turned out to be a huge mistake. Some students who, at the beginning of the semester, had professed a desire to visit Australia, changed their minds totally. One girl (Chinese Uni students are much more naive than their Western counterparts)actually began to cry in class reporting her findings, and the entire class said that they were shocked and horrified at the way people treated each other on many of these threads. A couple even reported feeling nauseus after being exposed to the level of hatred and bigotry they encountered.

We also discussed the fact that those who were the biggest offenders seemed to dominate the posts and how this therefore had given them the impression that these thoughts and behaviours were the dominant ones in Australia.

So: couldn't give a fig for who posts the most. Proves nothing more than verbal flatulence. But who adheres to the principles set out above regarding clarity, fair-play etc? To me thats the biggie.

p.s. I hasten to add, BD, that these remarks were not directed at any one person.

Hi Romany...no drama about who those sentiments might have been directed towards.. (from the Students) ..

Here is a thought :) if you want to live dangerously, and adventurously, ask the students "Do you know how Tibetans feel about Chinese, and why " ?

Ooooooh Brother! I'd love to be a fly on the wall on THAT day :)

Your post demonstrated something very important. And I mean VERY!

Without access to a cross section of viewpoints, a group of students can actually believe the country they live in, is some kind of holy citidel of virtue, when the reality is, it is full of horror and oppresion, specially of non them, such as the Tibetans.

Those same Chinese who are "Shocked and offended, even nauseated" by OUR rather colorful linguistic efforts, would be stunned into absolute suicidal depression if brought face to face with the exploits of their own government. How do they feel about 'Taiwan'? :)
As Jesus said "He who is without sin, may cast the first stone"

This is one of the primary reasons why one of my oft mentioned subjects is 'immigration/refugees/immig policy' and I specifically mention that it should be 'responsibly selective'...now.. if they read that little chunk...they probably would think "AAAAH... WHITE Australia" so you can tell them I'm married to an Asian and have mixed children. I have more relatives in Asia than Australa, some even CHINESE :)

JPW.. you need a 'filter' ? are u not capable of simply ignoring posts ? Even with a filter, others will be still exposed to what your 'enemies' say, so unless you can filter a person right out of OLO, you would simply be putting your own head in a rather sandy place.
I have a feeling, that if you could, you would remove ALL posters who you don't like, and become guilty of 'totalitarian information control'... you don't have a secret membership of the Kmer Rouge pre Vietnam invasion do you?

Ahhh... some more "verbal flatulence" from Boazy to start the day.

Ho hum.

Dear BD,

Those Chinese students probably have no idea what their government does. Besides, if you look at the actions of western democracies - in cause and effect, the crucial difference is distance from the carnage, and the dissemination of insidious propaganda that says a crime is not a crime if 'we' commit it.

It was not a crime to murder more than half a million peasants with bombs dropped secretly and illegally on Cambodia, igniting an Asian holocaust, It was not a crime for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Tony Blair and his Tory predecessors to have caused the deaths in Iraq of 'more people than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history,' to quote the conclusion of an American study.

Their medieval blockade against 22 million people, now in its thirteenth year...the facts are rarely published.

A report by the United Nations Secretary-General in October 2001 says that the obstruction of $4 billion of humanitarian supplies by the US and British governments is by far the main cause of the extreme suffering and deaths in Iraq. The UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, says that the death-rate for under-fives has almost trebled since 1990, before the imposition of sanctions, and every month up to 6,000 children die mostly as a result of the blockade. This is twice the total number of deaths in the Twin Towers and another vivid reminder of the different value of different lives. The Twin Towers victims are people. The Iraqi children are unpeople.

I don't believe in pigeon-holing people - giving them labels - and then saying, 'some of my best friends are -blacks, Jews, et cetera.'
People are people - and 'spiritual beggars' exist everywhere.

Hi Foxy.
well.. on matters historical, I prefer to speak in more general terms than focus just on just one nation and its sins. I'll give you an example why.

You said:

>>It was not a crime to murder more than half a million peasants with bombs dropped secretly and illegally on Cambodia,<<

I cannot throw around the word 'legal/illegal' when it comes to wars. It assumes that there is 'out there' a body which is the epitomy of "truth, justice and the who knows who's way".

We Christians are often criticized by the Left for trying to offer 'simplistic solutions to complex problems' but its amazing how crystal clear it all becomes to the same people when it comes to finding 'the bad guy' in such things as Iraq. Even stranger to me, is that they DON'T find 'Al Qaeda/Insurgents/Former Bathists/Criminals' as 'the bad guys' yet they find those fighting them (Bush/USA/Coalition).. the VERY bad guy....
There is no question that the Iraq adventure was poorly thought out, that some things were underestimated, that some people will seek to capitalize on the strife, that many 'innocent' people will be killed...
But I'm more comfortable about Iraq than I am about Vietnam. Ever since I found that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was done by the Americans themselves, you can hardly do other than point to the outcome and say 'You reaped what you sowed'.

I won't call the Iraq invasion a 'crime'.. the judge and jury are too soaked in sin themselves for that to go down well.

The sanctions? here is what I mean by 'complex'.. I watched with stunned amazement the construction of HUGE new palaces for Sadaam... during that 'sanction' period.. and I'll guarantee, he was caring not a scrap for the hardship of his people, rather was rubbing his hands together in glee at the propoganda value of the suffering.

So, in summary, lets not find the speck in Bush's eye when we have the odd chunk of 2x4 in our own :)
cheers.

I tend to agree that there isn't much value in pointing out who is the most prolific poster.

However, I think there may be a few interesting insights if we consider which articles have provoked the most discussion.

Here's the articles which scored more than 300 hits:

Reflections on a multicultural nation
The energy directed against multiculturalism has been truly evil, it has been advancing an agenda of superiority, while disregarding the consequences.
By Andrew Jakubowicz - 15/11/2006
Hits: 335

Islam's coming renaissance will rise in the West
The authority of the pulpit is collapsing by the hour. A wave of rationalism is spreading from émigré Muslim intellectuals.
By Ameer Ali - 4/5/2007
Hits: 338

The abortion conundrum
Pro-choice advocates must remain eternally vigilant.
By Brian Holden - 18/5/2007
Hits: 340

The nonexistence of the spirit world
In the absence of church teaching, ideas about God will always revert to simple monotheism.
By Peter Sellick - 12/2/2007
Hits: 347

Reading the Bible with a pair of scissors
John McKinnon reviews Jim Wallis' book 'God's Politics - Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It'.
By John McKinnon - 6/5/2005
Hits: 355

Abortion back on the agenda in Victoria
Abortion is bad and there are far too many of them. What are our politicians doing to reduce the numbers?
By David Palmer - 13/8/2007
Hits: 391

The case for GM food
David Tribe argues that GM foods deserve a fair hearing.
By David Tribe - 22/11/2005
Hits: 447

The semantics of abortion
When does human life begin? A discussion on RU486, abortion and choice.
By Helen Ransom - 9/2/2006
Hits: 487

I hate Nicole Kidman
Adrianna Maxwell explains why she hates Nicole Kidman
By Adriana Maxwell - 10/1/2005
Hits: 674

The numbers aren't totally conclusive. Most are thrown out of whack by a few prolific posters, however the numbers are a reflection about the intensity of opinion from certain individuals.

So, what's important to Australia?

Culture, culture, abortion, god, god, abortion, food, abortion, but most of all, celebrities.

That says quite a lot..

Mind your manners online: the Internet is being degraded by rude and self-centered people who smother civil discussions.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/11/13/manners/

(via Club Troppo http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/11/20/missing-link-4-days-and-counting-down/ )

The point of my post had nothing whatsoever to do with governmental shortcomings or world politics. The point was that from a selection of international sites OLO posters did not appear in a very good light; the most offensive posters were, in the main, the most prolific; this was cited to give substance to my stated claim that quantity does not equate to quality: this belief, in turn, being my reason for not finding much value in who posted more than whom and the reason I agreed with those posters who considered it was more valuable to poll the most fair and balanced identities on the forum.

That said: - BD -

Bear in mind I was referring to a Journalism class for 4th year University students, so naturally they are aware of world opinion. The purpose of such a course is to study opinions and writings across the political spectrum from all over the world. They are therefore exposed to both the negative and positive.

I would hardly be so crass therefore as to hold them accountable for Governmental policies over which they, personally, had had no control.( Evidently: they do not, as do other countries, vote). The suicide rate here IS alarming and and the young people are troubled enough without me adding to their woes. Tibet and Taiwan are, of course very fraught issues here and not just side issues as they are elsewhere. My students, while being emotionally naive, are not stupid. I would consider deliberately setting out to bait them to be both uncharitable and rude.

Their dismay was directed at the fact that ordinary people, not warring factions, should show such disrespect, unwarranted rudeness and lack of feeling to each other in general discussion. I repeat it had nothing to do with either Australian or Chinese politics.

Thank you, Foxy, for the quotation of Yeats in your earlier post. It certainly seems very descriptive of the general context of political affairs in Australia, if not elsewhere.

The question for me is as to whether the 'best' as represented in the poem have actually lost all conviction, or still retain conviction but have by means of sustained deception been displaced from, or prevented from attaining, positions of influence or leadership in, Australian public life.

In the historical context of our constitutional monarchy with its parliamentary tradition, of necessity it would seem that any actual mechanism of such displacement or exclusion must involve any one or all of the following:

The effecting of a change in the cultural character of a people across the board;

The removal of legal and constitutional safeguards against the abuse of executive power;

Some capacity for tampering with the electoral process.

Now whether posters like it or not, the cultural characteristics of Australia, until recent times, were overwhelmingly British. In turn, many of those British cultural features derive from, or have been heavily influenced by, beliefs derivable from the Old and New Testament scriptures, as distinct from the dictates of organised religious tradition and ecclesiastical authority as exercised in Britain until about the last five centuries.

B_D's posting activity focusses upon this cultural aspect.

It is a fact that the recorded circumstances of, and claims arising from, the life of Jesus, called Christ (Greek for 'the Golden One') are profoundly challenging for most, if not all, people.

It is also a fact that, taken uncritically, many of those claims are appropriated as a basis of 'authority' by would-be power trippers, of which there has been a surfeit over the years.

One response to such claims is to resort to the big guns, and apply ridicule. Another is outright censorship. It is the latter that is really implicit in the proposal of a user filter. Such filtration would supply the seeds of excuse to evade Quality No.6 in jpw2040's excellent top ten countdown of good post(er) qualities.

Every day I walk past the newsagent and choose not to buy one or more of the publications on offer. Similarly, there are several radio stations that I never listen to. If I’m up and about in the early hours of the morning, turning on the TV never crosses my mind, because I know what the commercial stations have on offer at this time.

This is filtering, in the old-fashioned second-millennium way. I’m not agitating to have the unwanted media messages banned – I’m simply choosing not to expose myself to them. No-one would ever call this censorship, because quite simply, it’s not.

With new media, it’s different. I can filter out emails, but without the assistance of the server owner, I can’t filter out forum postings I don’t want to read. In proposing the introduction of a user filter, I am not suggesting that any people or topics be banned from this forum. I am simply asking for help with the same kind of filtering here that we all apply to more traditional media.

Naturally, this is seen as a threat by some people, because it will limit their opportunities to dump their messages on others. In response to the perceived threat, emotive terms like censorship are used, which in fact don’t apply here.

So let’s get one thing straight – filtering out particular users’ postings is not censorship. It’s enabling individuals to use third-millennium tools to customise their personal use of third-millennium media.

Like I said before, bring it on.

I just happened to be in the same room as our TV the other day, and the Dr Phil show was on. I am not an avid viewer, but Dr Phil was making the interesting observation that "oftentimes things that are phrased as questions are really statements, and are so phrased because the poser of the question does not want to own the statement".

Angela84 posed a simple question. It was equally simply answerable to anyone familiar with the site tools by resorting to the user profiles, and indeed it appeared she may have already used the user profile tool. Her question did, however, open the gate to responses, some of which seem to have attempted to equate posting activity with offensiveness or a hogging of the discussion.

Inspired by TRTL's gathering of statistics on comment-attraction of topics, I offer the following rough statistics on posting activity of participants in this thread, in afferbeck lauder.

Poster - Total Posts - Joining Date - Posts since mid-October 2007

Angela84 17 9 Aug 2007 <17

Belly 1250 7 Nov 2005 128

BOAZ_David 4478 8 Jan 2005 76

CJMorgan 1068 18 Sep 2006 177

DEMOS 616 13 Jul 2006 110

Forrest Gumpp 305 10 Oct 2006 7

Foxy 173 21 Oct 2007 173

jpw2040 73 18 Apr 2005 <30

Ludwig 1679 6 Nov 2005 106

Romany 189 5 Jun 2006 18

Spritegal 20 8 Sep 2007 <20

TRTL 1122 23 Jun 2006 141

Perhaps what can be derived from this tabulation is that whilst some posters (perhaps most notably B_D)maintain a fairly consistent output of posts over time, others seem to be more prolific during periods like the run-up to an election. The latter being hardly surprising, in a forum of social and political debate.

To my way of thinking, there seems to be no case for introduction of a 'user filter' or 'ignore' function to the Forum on the basis of a user's posting output, unless all of the black sheep of the Forum happen to have flocked together on this one thread.

Forrest, the data you have provided say nothing about user consistency. You’ll need to graph them over time if you really want to support your conclusion here.

This is my 15th post since 15 October, so your <30 figure is somewhat off the mark. None of my posts have been election-related.

Nor have I made any claims about a relationship between quantity and quality.

Finally, I’m not suggesting "a 'user filter' or 'ignore' function ... on the basis of a user's posting output." I think any individual user should be able to filter out any other user for any reason at all.

jpw2040,

Further to the subject of a user filter.

On reflection, I agree my use of the term "outright censorship" in relation to your proposal of a user filter, in my last post but one, was less than the best choice of words. I certainly wasn't trying to be emotive. If anything, extreme subtlety would be more the hallmark of what might be a concomitant of such a site feature.

In your last post but one, in relation to your filtering proposal, the key phrase was "... without the assistance of the server owner[, I can’t filter out forum postings I don’t want to read.]" You are precisely correct. The server owner would, with a filter facility such as you have proposed, have the basis for a covert and exclusive analysis, arising out of the use of the filter, of the seeming positive dislikes of particular users for other particular posters, or their seeming 'messages'. Such analysis would be the exclusive property of OLO, and rightly so given that it is OLO's forum, not ours.

Once in possession of such data generated by the use of the filter by users, it would be possible for all manner of subtle editorial influence to come to be exercised. Now I am not suggesting that OLO would advance its own credibility by actually using such data in this way. The real point is, however, that once installed, data from such a feature's use would of necessity automatically be collected somewhere in the OLO computer system. Once collected it could be capable of being used by somebody, not necessarily OLO, for manipulating the Forum. Cracking of sites, not to mention theft or loss of stored data on discs, is not unknown. If never collected, exploits based upon such data cannot occur.

Perhaps I can make my concerns more understandable by reference to an analogous unrecognized collection of data for exclusive analysis by the collector in another arena, that of electoral administration. This will take at least another post, so I hope I do not bore the Forum too much.

(continued)

In process of constructing the 'mark-back roll' after any electoral event, the AEC scans all the unique-to-polling-place certified lists of electors that have had the names in which votes have been claimed marked off during the polling. When all such lists have been scanned with an optical mark reader, a data base will have been constructed from which it is possible to determine all those names against which no claim for a vote has been made. This sub-set of enrolled electors becomes the target of the 'please explain' letters. A completely legitimate use of data.

Perhaps not so well known is the fact that an analysis can be done as to in which polling place any elector cast their vote. It is called 'catchment analysis'. It has been happening since 1987. A good picture now exists as to the degree of habituality with which electors use polling places.

In the wrong hands, such a tool could be used in effecting electoral manipulation. For example, in the case of a polling place with a high degree of habituality of electors voting thereat, and also a pronounced local bias as to the political party characteristically favoured, with this information it would be possible to target particular electors for disfranchisement with a statistical probability that they would have likely otherwise voted for a particular party.

In similar manner the information could be used to mask genuine trends by targetting particular polling places as the places to cast votes claimed against bogus enrolments marked to give opposite effect. If such claims broadly matched the number of local disfranchisements there would be little apparent change in the number of electors voting in that polling place. It would appear as if there had been a change in party support by the genuine habitual voters in that place.

The point is not that the AEC is unlikely to misuse this data. It is that the data has been collected in the first case. Once in electronic form, it is so easily copied, transmitted, hacked, stolen, or lost without anyone necessarily knowing.

jpw2040,

I must thank you for the link supplied in your post of 5 November 2007 to the thread of the topic "What about 4 posts a day as the limit?" (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1189#21843 ) linking to OpenForum.com.au and the Australian Government Policy Development Blog initiative (http://www.openforum.com.au/Survey ).

All fascinating stuff, and a most interesting site to surf. On a first perusal of some of the pages it becomes clear how relatively advanced some of the OLO features are by comparison. One thing isn't quite clear though: the page you provided the link to states that the survey has already closed, whereas elsewhere on the site it says that comments will be received up until 1 December 2007. Do you know the true position?

With respect to the rough posting statistics in my earlier post, the operative word was 'rough'. I certainly wasn't trying to make it appear as though you had posted more frequently than in fact you had. I had simply taken a stab at random at your posting history as shown in the user profile. The post I opened was dated 30 May 2007. It was obvious that by no stretch of the imagination could you be regarded as a prolific poster, so I just didn't bother to refine the figure. 15 posts since mid-October would have been about my rough guess, too.

Overall, I was just trying to introduce some perspective with respect to other users postings than those of the unofficial winner of an 'award' based upon the greatest number of posts. Incidentally, at an average rate of 130 posts per month, B_D is trailing Foxy who is currently posting at around 170 per month since joining on 21 Oct 2007.

All,

I also belatedly notice that I inadvertently omitted RObert, who had participated in the discussion, from the posting statistics for this thread. He had made a total of 1740 comments since joining on 20 January 2005, with 45 since mid-October 2007. Sorry, RObert.

Forrest - there was me thinking I'd slipped under the radar.

I'll have to have a little celebration on the 20th January.

Have a great weekend all.

R0bert