Ok.
Inor claims he is banned. He still has member under his name.
What’s the deal?
If he is banned, then are there others who are banned but are not labelled as such?
I’m not looking to question whether or not he SHOULD be banned, I’m just curious about his actual status Vs. his visible status.
I don’t think inor has been officially banned. From this thread:
I seem to recall something about his posting privileges being suspended temporarily, but I may be misremembering. Anyway, I think it’s a mutually agreed upon situation right now.
I thank everyone for their informational posts in this thread, y’all are helpful.
Originally inor had asked for his privileges to be removed while he took a little breather.
Sometimes people take a little break like that, they ask us to forcibly keep them from posting, apparently they can’t stop reading the board and then can’t keep from posting.
When that happens, we remove their posting privileges but don’t change their status and they come back when they’re ready.
(Yep, it’s addictive as caramel-covered crack, all right.)
I removed his privileges as he requested. THEN I found out about the last posts he made before his request, most especially about where he was told by staff to modify his behavior and decided not to. I was also asked about threats that he made.
The next day inor requested to have his privileges reinstated. By that time we were getting inquiries about this becoming a legal matter, with the Reader getting dragged into it.
That tore it for inor. We can in no way afford that kind of legal action. I can think of nothing that would close this site fast enough as the Reader being served on our behalf. Whether the suit is groundless or not doesn’t matter; the cost of defending against even frivolous suits are more than we’re worth to the Reader and they have made that clear to us. I don’t blame them, it’s business.
I’m sad about the situation; I actually kinda liked the little snuffdipper. He had some genuinely neat things going on for him. But like quite a few people we’ve had to deal with lately, he decided that the rules that everybody else lives by didn’t apply to him. It’s always awful when someone decides to go down that road, there’s only one ending.
I hadn’t gotten over to change his status yet, but since you brought it to my attention, now I will. Sorry for the confusion.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Tuba,
I don’t mean to be a snoop here, or a pain in the butt, but from what I read, this means that legal issues were being brought up by those other than inor and that’s why it was decided to ban him?
Okay again, it’s none of my business but I wonder if people involved in the thread, if this is where it stems from, are just a tad too sensitive in this regard. I have seen and been part of, in the past, the worst of the worst of human tongue lashing, yet a threat of legal matters is enough to stiffle inor or anyone else that gets their Under Roos in a wad over a message board exchange?
What I am getting at is, there has to be some sort of “lack of legal liability” when it comes to The Reader and this message board as we are all here of our own free will, if you haven’t stated as such I recommend it now in the FAQ and in the sign up. I am not sticking up for inor or anyone else as I have been accosted here and never thought once about holding The Reader or the SDMB liable for my emotional problems or whatever else might be the threat that you received. I mean geez, you have to be incredibly sensitive over what I saw (in that thread) as someone getting PO’d and feeling he needs to defend himself.
It makes no sense, if you don’t get rid of said poster I will sue your company? Is that what this comes down to? It has always been well known and spoken that if you enter The Pit, you are basically on your own. Did inor say stupid stuff? Yes. Did he say anything that wasn’t said in the past (as one that’s been here for 1 1/2 years) NO. I’m not saying that tact isn’t a good thing in The Pit, and often can get your ass flamed for. But sheesh, if someone feels the need to hold The Reader liable for language a member said out of anger and obviously was never meant as a “physical” threat, then I think it’s time that the admins of this board need to take a step back and realize none of that would wash in a court. If inor said things in email and threatened the person then I could see where you might have a small point, but that’s also involving the ISP that inor has not The Reader.
I am sorry if I am butting where I don’t belong but if every Pit exchange becomes an idle threat to The Reader to sue you, then you might as well shut the forum down now and tell people that if they have a bitch about another they better take it to email or to the alt.news group. This is ridiculous. inor is about as harmless as a housefly with a few teeth. He got pissy, as many have done and I could post a list of threads here to prove where I am going with this.
That’s my take and I hope that you know I am not putting you down as admins/mods, it’s just from my perspective. I would have taken this to The Pit but it’s not Pit material.
I know this has been mentioned before, but perhaps this is a good opportunity to mention it again:
If the Pit makes the entire Board look like a liability to the Reader, then the Pit should look like a liability to the Board. It’s mostly just MPSIMS now anyway, with attacks on the tribulations of daily life. Why not let it stop there and disallow all posts attacking other posters?
I’d like to know who the dumbass is who:
Thinks that the actions of inor are somehow The Reader’s responsibility, and
Is threatening The Reader legally.
I sure hope it isn’t Ben. Because in my mind, it would seem that the person threatening to sue The Reader should be banned as well, since they obviously have a serious personal problem in applying blame to the proper parties. Or at least need a lesson in maturity - which would best be learned over at another Board.
IMO.
[sub]Note: The opinions of Una Persson are hers alone, and are in no way associated with those which may or may not be held with The Chicago Reader, it’s employees and staff paid or otherwise, it’s Readership. She’s just a random member here, and doesn’t speak for anyone else but herself. No liability or obligation of any kind is transferred to The Chicago Reader from this post. In fact, Una isn’t even a real person after all, so it would be pretty dumb to get upset over this, Sporty. But then, if you are such a microcephalic that you think that message boards are responsible for and should be sued for the posts of the members on the board, then put on your aluminum-foil helmet that protects you from the Orbital Mind-Control Lasers and go throw yourself under a bus and do the rest of humanity a big favor, loser.[/sub]
In the thread where inor blowed up, he said:
This could conceivably be seen as a physical threat, though in context it most likely wasn’t. But then he went completely over the cliff:
That seems more like a physical threat. inor himself claimed otherwise, and I suspect he was telling the truth…but that doesn’t change the fact that he did something which can be prosecuted as a criminal act in many jurisdictions (called “terroristic threats,” or something of the sort). There’s a difference between hurling insults, no matter how derogotory, and issuing physical threats. You can get pissed off at an airline and call them incompetent twits–that may be slanderous, but it ain’t illegal–but you’d better not announce that you feel like blowing their planes up. You can call Bush all sorts of names, but you’d better not spout off about how you’d like to shoot him. There are lines you don’t cross, and inor crossed one–at the very least, he committed enough of a jerk-like act to be given the heave-ho.
Anthracite said:
In the legal biz you cover your ass from possibilities, not probabilities. It’s entirely possible that the inquiries came from Readerpeople nervously contemplating being sued, rather than from Ben or somebody contemplating suing.
MysterEcks,
Then please find my Pit Thread worthy of your attention…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=64896
In my eyes there is no room to hold the CR liable for what its members say. And I said before in no uncertain terms, there are more than enough Pit threads to hold someone liable over such piss ant stuff, but take it there, not here.
I don’t disagree with you, techchick. And for that matter I personally doubt that the Readercould be successfully sued over this sort of thing. But note the weasel-word “doubt”–there are no certainties in law. Just ask McDonald’s whether they thought somebody spilling McCoffee on their thighs would result in a $million-plus judgment aginst them. (Later reduced, but nevertheless.)
That isn’t the point, however. As Tuba says, even frivolous suits would be too much–it still takes legal resources to deal with them, and the Readerwon’t put up with that. Postings on a messageboard shouldn’t result in legal action against the Reader…but that doesn’t mean some yoohoo with more bucks than brains will never try it. Hence CYA–anticipate possibilities. It may well suck, but that’s the current reality on our time-line.
Are the offending passages deleted or not? I see lots of links to them. If they still exist, shouldn’t they be removed right away? Doesn’t leaving them up jeopardize the board even if the poster is gone?
I’m pretty sure it’s already there, although I’m too lazy to check. However, disclaimers don’t mean squat when it comes to someone getting riled up enough to actually serve a summons. If my last name were Reader, I could sue the Reader for illegal use of my name. It would be laughed at and thrown out of court, but it would still be a pain in the ass and expensive to deal with.
On the other hand, free will does not exist, so…OOPS! Forgot this wasn’t GD. 
J.E.T.
Umm, Ben’s not exactly my favourite person 'round here, but from reading the linked thread and everything else I know of him I can’t believe he’d try something like this.What am I missing? What would lead you to even consider him capable of something like this?
According to inor in a post on another message board, Ben (in email to inor)did threaten to sue inor personally and his ISP and inor was told that the Reader could get drawn into such a lawsuit-which would be bad. There was no mention of Ben suing the Reader directly.
Not that I think that’s much better.
Look folks, inor couldn’t be bothered to pay attention when we told him to shape up.
We threw him out and he’s not welcome back.
If you choose to disagree with us about it, that’s your right. You’re invited to go to the Pit, open a thread and express yourself. (Within certain limits, of course, there’s limits to everything, you know.)
I never understand why it is that people that annoy and harass others get big sympathy when they’re faced with the consequences of their actions . . . and the people that are the victims of said aggravation are overlooked and disregarded.
It’s the job of the staff on this board to make this place as great for our members as possible. We’d like it if everybody played nice but when people choose not to, what’s left for us to do?
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Tuba,
What bugs me, not the exchange so much as the implication that The Reader would be held liable for percieved threats. As stated in another thread, here in ATMB, The Reader needs to make a legal statement that The Reader is not liable in any way when it comes to exchanges between members, real or not.
That was my main reason for starting The Pit thread I did.
I am here, as a member, of my own free will. I, personally, do not hold liable the CR for any exchanges I come across. What’s next, a SDMBer is physically attacked, literally, at a Dopefest and then it’s the fault of the SDMB even if the attacker wasn’t an SDMBer to begin with?
That’s my problem. I started the Pit thread, people can post their thoughts and feelings in the thread.
I am a member of AOL (God help me) and usually I take it upon myself to handle serious buttheads on my own terms, over six years in chat. You all know my cut throat comments at times, I am worse in chat because they spill out with little or no thought (much better lately though.) What I am getting at is, the CR needs to have a statement that the CR will do what it can to take away the fire but is not responsible for an individual’s comments on this board or in email. If they have further problems, say in email, the member who is experiencing the problem needs to contact their ISP and the ISP (if available) of the offending member.
Heck, I got rid of a jerk wad by blocking said jerk off from all the email accounts that have been listed here or other known places that the jerk head knew I was a member of. Not a peep out of him/her. < teeth bared >
Again, what it comes down to is the smallest idea that a message board is remotely responsible. Try that in an alt.news.group and it’s fallen on deaf ears. The only thing that’s different is that there are people here to help calm the waters when a hurricane happens, with that I see no need for those to get sue happy on anyone remotely involved in the administration of this or any board. This includes making a place like the SDMB remotely a part of it.
It’s a big world out there folks, we all know that. So live, love it or leave it. No one person on this board is responsible for your behavior, no one person is responsible for my behavior except me. Know that if you decide to tangle with issues, in any forum, you may have bitten off more than you can chew. This is something I, now, accept with every post I write.
So, if you’d like a word exchange or care to get nasty with what I have said, please take it to the Pit where I started the thread (listed above.) I dig this place and the moment people threaten it I get a little harsh.
Yesterday in Portland, a teenager was picked up by Federal agnts for sending a vague threat via e-mail to another tenager’s school across the country in New York. He had neither the materials to carry out his threat, a firm plan written down anywhere, or even the means to get to New York, but he is being charged with threatening terrorism across state lines(thus involving the Feddies).
His threats were a lot more vague than the ones inor made and repeated.
It doesn’t matter a whit what you consider a real threat these days. I mean, children are being arrested for making paper guns!
I would not normally do this, since it is not my place to speak for someone else. Hoever, inor is not here to defend himself. He is my friend, and I already said all I have to say in a previous thread.
Could we PLEASE stop debating the subject of why he is no longer with us? He is gone, it is a done deal, there is nothing more to debate, except possibly IN GENERAL the interesting question that techchick raised. And THAT question has it’s very own thread in the pit. And THAT question stands on it’s own, and really has nothing more to do with inor.
I would really appreciate it if everyone, friend or foe or indifferent to inor just LET THIS GO!
PLEASE!!!
So I am asking you to lock this thread, TubaDiva.
Sorry if you feel your friend is being dissed, but actually he’s not been talked about at all in this thread.
His ACTIONS have been discussed, his poor choices mentioned. Which, btw, he himself admits, so let’s just keep it real here, okay?
I do feel enough has been said about this issue in this thread.
Except for one thing: if you follow the few rules we ask you to live by on this board, there’s not any problem.
Why people choose to make it more difficult is more than I will ever understand.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator