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 At no level would it make any sense, and I do not believe any officially sanctioned unpublished OLO policy of discrimination exists, either.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.