Eh. I’m not too concerned about transparency. I much prefer consistency. So long as similar situations are handled similarly, I’m happy*. I do agree with you that it needs to be part of the FAQ. People are so used to automatically agreeing to TOS’s they no longer actually read them.
*It’s understood that no two situations will ever be exactly alike and there will likely always be mitigating factors.
It’s a fact of life for us that any of our messages will end up on this board or other ones if the sender does not like what we’re saying. And that’s true for anybody else, too, but it’s more of an issue for us. I can’t say I like that state of affairs but that’s how it’s developed.
Just to be clear, there is no baptism of fire allowed on the Dope any longer. This pussified pitting that is the only criticism of mods allowed is not the same thing at all.
Because there is no legitmate reason that anyone has provided that indicvates that PMs should be more private than any other conversation.
Discussing your love life (or sex life)? Pick your audience and don’t tell someone who won’t keep a secret.
Discussing politics/religion/baseball scores? It is not private unless the speaker explicitly asks that it be private.
Insult someone? It is no more private than any other insult one hurls.
The same rules apply as apply in any live conversations.
I think they were originally designed and conceived by vBulletin to be private. I don’t think they deliberately chose to use an oxymoron to describe their feature. They could have called it “Direct Messaging” or something, if they had intended it to be nothing more than a way to communicate without posting. That said, however, you powers that be can clearly make anything of it you wish. But with great respect, Tom, the statement that “there is no legitmate reason that anyone has provided that [indicates] that PMs should be more private than any other conversation,” is not even testable by the Truth Table. It’s just your opinion as to whether a reason is legitimate or not. Of course, your opinion carries far far more weight than, say, mine. So, that’s really all I have to say about that.
As a general rule, that’s probably correct. I certainly feel it would be wrong of me to disclose the contents of PMs sent to me by other people on the board.
But…
If someone sent me a PM filled with abuse and insults, then i wrong also consider that a “wrong, gauche, inconsiderate thing to do.” Furthermore, i would feel no obligation to keep it secret, especially if it was clear that the main purpose of the PM was to insult without other members of the Board knowing about it.
As i said earlier in the thread, i keep the content of PMs that i receive private out of respect for the people i’m communicating with. My PM conversations have, so far, all been friendly and amicable, and have been held in private mainly because they related to issues tangential or irrelevant to the Board as a whole. But the obligation i feel to keep them private would not apply if someone sent me an unsolicited PM filled with abuse.
I thought we agreed you wouldn’t talk about my sex life.
But, seriously, telling someone to shove things up their ass is also wrong, gauche, and inconsiderate. It’s also, as far as I understand, against the rules of this board. I think both sides probably acted inappropriately here.
I grant that it is just my opinion, but I have seen no actual argument that even addresses the points I have now made in two separate posts.
What is the difference between a PM and a conversation in an office or a hallway or a parking lot or a living room? Do most people routinely keep such conversations entirely private? Or do most people use the contexts of topic and audience to judge whether they will share opinions in such conversations–or whether they will refrain from passing on the views of others expressed to them in such conversations.
Based on time constraints, I have not even been more than an observer to the discussiion in which the rest of the staff has engaged. I have, however, been prompted by the high dudgeon expressed by magellan01 to address his particular cries of outrage for which he has provided no actual basis beyond an emotional response. That entire argument boils down to the name of the software includes the word “private” and we are violating something or another whenever we share any statement ever expressed using the software. I have provided an explicit counter argument based on magellan01’s premise that we are developing etiquette and ethics for the internet to correspond to already developed rules in real life and I still do not see any actual argument to counter my point. For that matter, I do not see any actual argument that even ignores my points, just more of the same the word “private” appears in the name of the software; what is wrong with you people?. That looks a lot more like a bumper sticker than a logical argument, legitimate or otherwise.
I am open to considering an actual argument, but I have not yet seen one.
A) Does vB allow you the flexiblity to change the word “Private” to “Direct”? If so, just change the name and stop the butthurt.
B) There is no possible way to make a rule that revealing Private Message content that could be enforced. Had such a (stupid) rule existed, all that Twickster would have to do is say “I’m warning whatshisname because he abusive and insulting language like telling me that I could (paraphrased) stuff my warning up my butt, only in considerably cruder terms”.
C) For all those that are stressed about this, the easy answer is just this simple: don’t send abusive, harrassing crap via private messages while assuming that the word “private” will protect your anonymity while you abuse people. You call my house and leave an abusive message on my machine, I’ll make it public. You send me a letter where you’re abusive, I’ll feel free to let people know. And you send me an unsolicited PM where you’re abusive, I’ll share it with the board.
D) The word “Private” clearly means the method of messaging-“private” as opposed to “public”. Or “one-to-one” as opposed to “one to many”. It’s not called “Confidential Messaging” after all. Think about telephones: the opposite of a party line is a private line, not a confidential line.
This is not a case where both parties behaved badly. Twickster did nothing wrong, except maybe rescinding the original warning for plagiarism.
We have three ways to communicate here: post, email, and PM. What function would the last one serve that could not be fulfilled by the first two? The answer—painfully obvious—is the PRIVATE nature of the correspondence. So to say that there “is no legitmate reason…that PMs should be more private than any other conversation” is ridiculous on its face.
But let’s say you’re right. And PMs have not and need not the component of privacy. Let’s say that’s the way the world is. Now, let’s say I propose a way, a mechanism if you will, through which posters would be able to communicate with each other in a manner that the expectation is indeed that the contents of such communications will NOT be made public. Now while the administration of this board cannot control what members do outside these boards, they can control members’ behavior on these boards, and could make the revealing of said communications a Violation, and enforce it the way they enforce other violations. Sounds like a good enough idea, but oh, what should we call such a mechanism. Hey, I’ve got it! How about “Private Messages”. what’s that you say, the term is already taken? well, that’s fine, sounds like you already have the mechanism I described. What? No? Wait, you already have a mechanism that allows people to correspond one-to-one, privately, but the messages aren’t private? Well, why the hell would you do that. What do you propose I call my new mechanism? Oh, I know—how about we call them Public Messages, but have them be private? You know, like the opposite of Private Messages. Whataya think?
Someone sends an abusive message, the receiver reports it to the mods. If that mods feel it’s over the line, they take action against that poster. Just like if someone used abusive language in GD. The post gets reported and the offender is slapped based on the severity of the offense. Sounds pretty fucking simple, if you ask me.
Anyone, as in person? No. I agree. But there was harm. What was harmed was the board itself. PMs served(d) a function. You admit that they generally remain private. So, there is an expectation of privacy. Twickster, again by your own admission, did not need to reveal the offense in order to do her moderating, she did so unnecessarily. And that makes PMs less useful and that hurts the board.
No you’re just making stuff up as you go along. And so what if she was asked? What’s wrong with, as I mentioned, “he was abusive to a mod in a PM. And since it was in a PM we’re not gong to share that information. And that will be all we’ll be saying on the matter.” The moderating gets done. And the function of PMs is protected instead of eroded.
Confidential Messages
Sooper Sekrit Messages
A really bad idea since it’s unenforceable-messages.
As opposed to “private” in the sense of one-to-one communication, like on old phone systems. You…do know that words can have more than one meaning, right? Private doesn’t always mean “Confidential”
You’ll have to explain this painfully obvious answer to me. Email is the closest thing to private that you can have on this here Internet. PMs serve a “convenience factor” in keeping all of your SDMB-related communication together in one place, making it easy to contact people even if you don’t know their email address, and giving you a way to communicate with others without sharing your email address. But privacy? No. These messages are stored on a database server that’s outside of your control. There are backups kept. There are technicians who are capable of querying that database. Any sniffer that could snag an email in transit could just as easily sniff a PM in transit.
Emails are far more private than PMs could hope to be. If I may be so crass as to quote myself from earlier in this thread:
I think that you are going way overboard trying to invent an excuse make PMs something they are not.
Back to the “real life” situation that you first mentioned: open threads are like meetings among goups of people, whether in conference rooms, living rooms, or bars. E-mails correspond to postal services. PMs correspond to face-to-face conversations. Note that in the “real world,” none of those have an expectation of absolute confidentiality, relying entirely on context or the explicit requests of the parties sharing them, so why this odd notion that the simple selection of a type of software changes the way in which people treat their correspondence?
Going by your odd logic, no one should ever share a joke using PMs because their recipient would be morally prohibited from sharing the joke with anyone else.
Well, I think that PM’s should be Private. But I think we all know that if **twickster **had just said “You’re warned because of a rude PM” then certain posters here would say that twickster is being part of the EVIL SDMB ADMINISTRATION for not saying exactly why. So, no matter what twickster did- other than ignore it- he was going to be castigated here by a certain group of posters that nowadays find it necessary to complain about any and every Official action - or lack of action.:rolleyes:
note- this is getting tiresome, dudes.
OTOH, note that twickster did not actually *quote *the PM, which is the only thing most of us were concerned about.