No, I can’t. Sorry.
I’ll ask Ed to clarify, Cartooniverse, but I believe he’s saying that if we got wind of something that would be a serious problem (a planned board war or hacking) based on posts elsewhere, we might act in advance. That’s a very different ballgame from banning or warning people for saying “the SDMB smells” on another board.
I still think the incident with Melin was not handled as well as it should have been, and I still miss many of the folks who left the board at that time, never to return.
Yeah, this is another one of those. Our community is fractured once again. I hate that.
Given that Melin hasn’t been on this board in a decade, I think it’s time to let that one go.
I would say that a careful reading would note the specific references to board wars and threats. Given that Fathom actually had a Forum, in the early days, that was devoted to comments about the SDMB–many of them negative–for which no poster on the SDMB was banned and that identifiable SDMB members have submitted fairly nasty comments about other posters and staff at alt.fan.cecil-adams and misc.facts.straight-dope with no repercussions, I suspect that one can read “threat” in the most literal way. If one is organizing or suggesting a board war, a denial of service attack, or a threat to launch a lawsuit, then the SDMB is going to consider that grounds for banning. If one simply posts the thousandth “Mod A is a doodyhead” post on some other board, it is not going to be perceived as a threat and no action will be taken.
Ed is free to amend my comments, but I figured I might allay some of your fears.
You both do see where your posts, especially the one from TomnDebb, confirms my concerns, right?
The very fact that there will be a vetting and discussing process of posts written elsewhere on the Internet by the Admin of this message board and that punitive action may be taken if they decide they want to, creates an environment where it is " Post Here Or Not At All, Pal."
–Snipped Quote-- ( Bolding mine )
First of all, I support the need to protect your business. The very specific examples stated above are great reasons to ban someone. In fact, depending on the threat, they’d be a great reason to call the gummint and get em involved. ( Past history here shows this has happened a small handful of times already. ) However, the gray area- and it sure is a huge gray area- is where I’d like to see some clarification.
Wouldn’t take much for Ed Zotti to come up with a clearly defined list of what activities and threats and whatnot made out there on the Interweb would constitute a threat to his business, therefore justifying a banning.
Otherwise, we’re back where we were when I wrote my post. Nobody knows what they can say on any message board or web site that may or may not result in a banning at SDMB. Do I think that Ed & Company will dedicate their lives to sifting through billions of web sites? No. We all know they don’t need to. They need only visit the few similar or splinter sites and visit their version of “The Pit” to see what is being said.
Fathom and the rest of the early ( read: older than 6 months ago, when the Rules of the Road started changing fundamentally ) are entirely irrelevant. What was true is no longer true. That is accepted and understood. I seek clarification. TomnDebb]'s post points up why it is needed.
Doesn’t seem an unreasonable thing to want clarified. I do appreciate Marley23 and TomnDebb sharing their thoughts, but the only person to set policy is Ed Zotti. So with the understanding that he is a very busy fellow, we await his reply.
Many thanks.
Cartooniverse
No, I can’t. The rules against bringing real-life or off-board fights onto the SDMB have been around for a long time. By the same token, like you said, it’s not a surprise that some pre-emptive action would be taken if we heard someone was planning a board war or something else Ed characterized as a “threat.” But nowhere in there is there any comment about warning people for making critical comments.
I spend enough time on this board and I also have a job and other things to do with my life, the last thing I need to do is read other boards to see what people are saying about this one. 
I think that goes for the rest of us as well. By the same token I’ve never heard any mod or admin express an interest in making up reasons to warn or ban scads of people.
Ok, I’ll try and ask it here then. And if not here, please be specific about which thread you feel would not be hijacked by the question. Thank you.
DOpers consistently link to other places on the net. Things they find interesting, humous, worthy of scorn etc.
Can some one please explain the difference between Baldwin mentioning another baord, with link, and Opals thread and why one would elicit a mod removing the link and demanding the poster not repost it, and the other remain unmolested?
ESPECIALLY since in the first case, Baldwin has absolutely no financial or personal interest in the board in question, yet Opal linked to a pic of her art, with the expressed interest in getting people to buy it. Which frankly defines the difference between spam and not to me.
This is not spam.
We encourage Dopers to share their artistic work, which covers OpalCat’s link but not Baldwin’s. We prefer that they ask first, although I don’t know if OpalCat did so. Whether she did or not, though, I wouldn’t define it as spam. She was celebrating an achievement in her career, which was Fine Art America putting her work on their main page. If she’d started a thread called “Check out the bargains at OpalCat’s House of Crap,” and pitched her crafts to Dopers, it would’ve been spamming.
Or if she’d gone into a bunch of threads on other topics and dropped links to the page, that would have been spamming and they would have been removed.
Not so. She said she hoped the placement of her piece would lead to greater exposure, not that she was linking to the board to get Dopers to go over there and buy her work.
I beg to differ The site apparently expressly offered the option to purchase prints, as another poster asked “how are sales going”, and then she ends the thread with
It’s a very short thread. It is clearly different from linking to pictures of some one’s own artwork (encouraged) but rather, linking directly to a site with “OMG, Look at what I did” and you can purchase copies of it there or follow links to my site where you can also purchase stuff - which is clearly “SPAM”.
And, no, I don’t believe she got prior permission, 'cause there was some little minor dust up about it at the time (I’ll be damned if I try the search engines to locate that). But it was something that I remembered. and doesn’t compute given this.
You’ve still not given an explanation of why his linking to another message board was in and of itself considered spam.
And she also linked to yet another place where folks could see and buy her art in a local venue in the same thread.
Very short thread. Several of her posts are directly linking to availability of her artwork to be purchased.
no mod warning or action.
links were kept there
She, directly profits, no problem. ** Baldwin **, doesn’t, and yet it was spam.
I know, I read the thread. She’s speaking about sales in general, not “I’m linking to this so you’ll go over there and BUY BUY BUY”
Somewhat, yes.
I disagree, for the reason I gave earlier. Your view is that OpalCat started the thread to “promote a venture,” as it’s described in the registration agreement; my take is that she was making note of a milestone in her career.
Because Baldwin was advertising for the site, in this case another board, by linking to it repeatedly.
This has been covered in this thread, already, so let me reproduce one of my posts from there:
In short, Baldwin was advertising another site without getting prior staff approval. It doesn’t matter whether the advertising is for profit; we ask that you get staff approval for it, period. As it’s stated in the Registration Agreement:
I couldn’t disagree more strongly. She notedly and repeated linked to sites where folks could purchase her stuff. Even stated she’d hoped that the first (which she linked to) would lead folks to more sales.
The contortionist position you’re in is amazing.
With reference to Dopers, she did not.
Since his first posting elicited the mod response - that’s why I’m questioning it.
And in short, your second quoting of the rules would suggest that Opal should have gotten admonished for her acts (repeatedly) in that thread.
And, it seems that every citing of any other site would be subject to the same thing, then. I know you don’t want/mean to have folks running and asking if it’s ok to link to cnn.com or us.gov to prove a point. And there’s no shortage of links to a wide variety of stuff.
what I’m trying to get clear on is: How is a poster supposed to figure out which links you’ll perceive as spam and which are not (please again, the issue of Baldwin’s repeating it after being asked to drop it is a straw man in this question). Especially since, I would believe the average poster to figure out that “if I have a financial interest in the cite, I’d best ask first”, would have included Opal but not Baldwin
That’s your answer?
Yes. There’s nothing objectionable about OpalCat saying she hopes the prominent placement of her artwork will lead to more people buying it. You can see from the thread that many posters were already aware of her work, including that specific piece. If she’d encouraged people to go over there and buy it it would be another story.
And Baldwin “gee I think this place is swell, check it out” was more objectionable and more like "Spam " to you?
GOod luck with that.
When he kept repeatedly dropping it into threads that had little or nothing to do with the subject, yes.