Robert
Yes Cilvia is sensible. I have noticed reading the posts over the last couple of months.
Ozgirl, funny girl.You just stopped by to say your banned. Please dont leave your humour is much needed.
Robert I have a question is Scout still posting.? I heard Scout had left OLO.

What can you do if a person sets about to stop your use of OLO.?
You have threads- They follow you. You change topis- they follow you.
You point it out to staff. Nothing happens. I cant say many seem to know about take it out side or your car park .
I am sure others would use it if they did.
What can be done to let others know do you think?
I hope I have not brought you bad luck but it would be nice to be able to post somwhere without being attacked.
For your sake if it starts I will leave this thread For the mean time Robert and others dont you think that once its clear people are just out to make personal attacks and smear a target for what ever reason there should be some record kept on that person and they are warned.
How do you see the car park working for example if the two people dont agree or sort something out.
Say for eg one party just wants to get back to the subject at hand and the other just wants to be destructive. What can be done do you think about that.
Do you think other posters should step and and complain as well?

I know when I was trying to catch up on a couple of threads it was a very difficult to follow with the personal attacks and things going off post.
Do you have any more ideas how to keep posts on track so the thread is not destroyed.
Good work your doing here. Just wish more knew about it.

OZGIRL, I missed that last post of yours when you put it up. If you are still reading the posts thanks for your kind words and best wishes for the future.

benny, sadly Scout has left OLO. I won't touch on reasons here, Scout values her privacy.

In regard to your questions I liked an idea that Celiva made on the "Take it Outside" thread. A voting button that could be used to record a preference for a discussion elsewhere. If a few readers voted for that and site administrators agreed that the discussion was an ongoing off topic discussion then a warning could be posted to those involved. Continuing the discussion in the wrong place could then lead to deletions and or suspensions.

Options for discussions with posters who seem to be trying to pick fights include
- Ignore the off topic parts and only engage them in the relevant bits
- Ignore them completely
- Start a thread in the general discussions area and put a post in the original topic asking the other party to take it up there (with a hyperlink to your post in the new thread)
- Continue the discussion with them in the original thread

My experience (and what I can see in the site rules) suggests that the administrators try and maintain a very hands off approach, they generally only delete for serious breaches of site rules (extreme flaming, promoting violence etc). The posts I've seen prior to deletion have been ones where I've fully supported the deletion.

If they start deleting because a poster does not like something someone has said that is not clearly a breach of site rules they risk acting in a manner that does not look impartial. My laymans understanding is that the legal risks are increased for site administrators who have a strong hands on policy.
End of Pt 1
R0bert

Pt 2
Benny, my suggestion when dealing with the stalkers is to remember the large number of readers who don't post. Graham put up an article some time ago which suggested that posters are vastly outnumber by readers, if you have something worthwhile to say remember them. You will probably never convince those that strongly oppose you but there are others who are trying to learn and understand.

Also keep in mind that sometimes you will share common ground with people that you strongly disagree with on other threads. Don't take the fights to topics you agree on.

R0bert

Benny, there is to much that I don't know to want to dig back into that stuff.

I will say that I've given the cristain church a fairly hard time over my years on OLO (ex christains can be a bit like ex smokers)and I've never had any trouble with Graham. There are plenty of other posters who don't like the christain church or it's ideas of god and they seem to still be around as well.

I struggle to see a valid reason why the site would be desperate to put itself through all this because Graham or someone got upset about anything Wendy had to say about church leaders when they leave other posters alone who are often harder on the church than Wendy was. If they wanted to ban somebody for saying things against the church better to pick on someone who does not pay anything and leave Wendy alone and hope they get another $1,100 next year.

I'm left with the reality that I've been a poster here for a long time and have never seen evidence of foul play from Graham or others accociated with the site. Apart from claims about Wendy the only other complaint I've heard is of someone telling me that they were reprimanded via their private email address by one of the team from the site. I'm not privy to enough of the detail on that to comment further. In as much as I've been asked to comment I choose to give Graham and the OLO team the benefit of the doubt.

R0bert

Benny, I went and looked at the posts by "Farmers Against PALE". As far as I can tell there were two of them, one was deleted for Flaming and the other one had nothing obvious in it to suggest that it was one of the existing posters other than a shared dislike of PALE. It may have been, not sure how the site would tell if they provided a second distinct email address unless they admitted that they were an existing poster.

R0bert

Yessss Robert..*slap*... you certainly do *slap slap* give the Church a hard *slap* time :)

Now.. you DID say its the 'carpark'....right ?

Benny.. I didn't realize some folk had been banned like you explained.. I just sail along going about my business and don't notice these things.

Robert.. if you have any way of contacting Scout, please convey my best wishes, and if I've hurt her, throughout our various encounters I would regret it.

I also get the impression that some cheeky people are trying to use OLO for commercial purposes, but I won't mention which article.
Though Tony Kevin's book plug was pretty obvious :) He isn't the one I mean.

OZGIRL ! I hope you don't leave, I enjoy your posts immensely. Don't take stuff personally.

So, other than that, if anyones wants 'some of me' here is the place :) go sharpen those teeth and starttt a chompin.
Cheers