I’m surprised to hear that. First, the name overtly implies privacy. And I think that’s the reason for the feature’s existence. If PMs aren’t “private”, why have the feature. We already have public fora.
Second, a poster once innocently revealed some of a PM I had sent. Without any urging from me whatsoever (I don’t think I was even aware of her post at the time), a Mod politely explained to her the PMs were, in fact, private.
And even if there is no board “rule”, it seems that keeping them private is better behavior. And the mods should encourage better behavior not work against it. I don’t think its a big deal here, or even in the situation that I had, but it would cause me to use the helpful feature less if a PMs contents were apt to become public. I think it was a bad an unnecessary move, twickster.
The warning for plagiarism was rescinded, because, as several people have pointed out, “plagiarism” isn’t exactly the right category for cutting and pasting a long piece of text that’s been floating from email to email for however long. (Please note, however, that “not against the rules” doesn’t mean “something we’re enthusiastic about that we’ll hope everyone will start doing right and left.”)
I announced that that warning was withdrawn when I withdrew it, because we make public announcements when we issue or withdraw warnings. In that same announcement, I also reported that he had received a second warning, for abusive language to a moderator in her role as moderator.
The system of warnings here is public, because this isn’t a police state. In order to keep that system operating publicly, we need to announce (1) the fact that a warning is issued, and (2) the reason for issuing that warning. In this instance, there was no way to take care of the second point without making the contents of the PM public, because he chose a PM to abuse me.
This has come up before, but it bears repeating: a PM is like an email or any other communication, in which the sender has no guarantee that the recipient won’t tell another person what was in that message. In general, it should be considered bad form to quote someone’s PM, but it’s not against the rules, and in this case it was necessary to explain the reason that DG got a warning.
For those keeping score at home: DudleyGarrett’s warnings yesterday ended up with a net gain of one, for abusive language towards a mod.
See above. Yes, I agree that keeping PMs private is preferable, and this is the first time (out of hundreds that I’ve sent and received here) that I’ve made one public. In this case, however, it was necessary.
Would anyone actually have preferred it if I had said “DG received a warning for something he said to me in a PM, but I can’t tell you what he said”?
That is my understanding, yes. He wasn’t actually registered during the period when he didn’t have a valid email address, so couldn’t avail himself of any of the functions of the board that you need to be signed in to use.
I really, really don’t care about the warning. I think it’s petty and somewhat spineless, but that’s just my opinion, considering that not a sole would have known anything transpired if you didn’t make it public.
You could have easily said, “I’ve issued another warning to DudleyGarrett for unfavorable behaviors. He’s acknowledged the warning and the details of it will be kept private.” See, then it’s between me and the moderation staff, just how I intended it from the beginning.
Then you publicly state your warning AND maintain a level of professionalism with your job. However, one thing that has come out of this is at least one poster on the Straight Dope has lost confidence in you as a moderator who I think can effectively deal with a slight (and I mean really slight here) problem.
I really don’t want to continue this in public. If you’re going to respond publicly, I won’t respond. If you’d like to continue in private – and I mean PRIVATELY – I’m happy to.
I see that I’ve arrived just in time to close the stable door. Any further discussion of Dudley’s warning or the rules pertaining to Private Messages belongs in About This Message Board. We now return to our regularly scheduled pitting, already in progress.
I see that I’ve arrived just in time to close the stable door. Any further discussion of Dudley’s warning or the rules pertaining to Private Messages belongs in About This Message Board. We now return to our regularly scheduled pitting.
The pit is for complaining. You apparently are incapable of understanding this. And you apparently have a thin skin, since I can’t even PM what I think of you. You see, there are a lot of things against the rules in the pit that are not in PMs.
Oooh. I’m shaking in my boots at the prospect of some anonymous windbag telling me what they think of me in a PM. :rolleyes:
I have no idea whether I can or can’t recieve or send PMs, because I’ve never used that feature here. So don’t go accusing me trying to avoid anything.
And as far as what the pit is for, I understand it completely. Complaining and whining about what big bad Dudley did is weak assed shit. Especially now that we know that Dudley didn’t do anything to intentionally turn off recieving PMs.
Feel free to kiss my hairy ass. Right in the middle for maximum effect.
Hey, since Starving Artist’s plagarism thread was brought up, I would just like to say that I thought it was pretty clear that he wasn’t plagarizing either, and it was a bit odd for me to see him buckle on that.
Yeah, I meant, when I initially read that thread (I hope I remember correctly, I am at work, dope is blocked and the work around I’m using won’t let me click on linked threads) I could tell from the gate that SA wasn’t trying to ‘pass it off’ as his own. Couldn’t figure out why dopers couldn’t see that.
Actually two things: this and the post preceding it.