CDCK is the company behind Discourse, our new forum software. I don’t have any beef with them (right now) but I did notice this little bit in the Discourse Standard Hosting Terms:
"*Customer agrees not to:
[…]
post or permit content on Customer’s Forum that harms the reputation of CDCK, or leads to unwanted or unfavorable publicity for CDCK*"
I understand the rationale behind such terms, why would I agree to host a forum that harms my reputation or leads to unfavorable publicity? Just curious if we’ll see a new sitewide rule not to bite the hand that feeds us.
Also, will such a rule apply to CDCK employees who have accounts here? Are they immune from pittings? I have nothing against codinghorror (I usually like his blogs) but he is a registered member of the Dope.
I’m a big fan of Discourse from way back and remember when Jeff changed it from “COCK” on account of all the criticism. I’m sure he’ll do the right thing here too.
While we certainly do not want to defame or libel Jeff Atwood or Discourse, we also do not want as a general rule to interfere with open, honest, frank discussion.
I have asked for clarification of the Hosting Terms and how that applies to us.
In the meantime I ask that you belay criticism of the man or the company as we work through all the issues around us, including the legal ones.
I don’t even understand why anyone here would instantly want to go to kicking them around before we’ve even fully begun this process.
Please desist and hold your fire until we get something going and some ruling and understanding here. I do not expect an instant answer and you shouldn’t either; management is kinda busy right now, ya dig? Be reasonable and let us sort this out.
Can’t do it. You cannot discuss Discourse in any useful way without criticizing it–especially right after a changeover. And most of the things that people are most critical of are Jeff’s fault.
Discourse may be new to you, but it’s not new to everybody.
Not going to be able to do that. And once we move, you’ll find that you aren’t able to do that, either. Not saying that you’ll hate it, but there are parts of it where all you can do is say shit!
But the Discourse hate flows pretty freely in most of the D-boards I’m familiar with. Nobody’s ever told us to stop.
She said not to criticize the man or the company. I think it’s perfectly fine to criticize the software during a transition to the software - it is unreasonable to impose a restriction on that. Just don’t take that extra step and disparage the company or its employees until the legal issue is sorted out.
It’s all unreasonable, barring actual libel. I didn’t sign up at the Dope to champion or stay silent about a product I don’t really like and a corporate philosophy I fundamentally disagree with.
Imagine your company is moving from office building A to office building B. Basically, you can criticize the new arrangements, and you can criticize your own boss for making you move. But please don’t criticize the landlord until we get him to sign a contract saying he can’t kick us out for criticizing him.
Pretend we start getting constant 502 errors on the new host and CDCK descends from on high, registers an employee here, and threatens to shut us down because God forbid, somebody somewhere wrote “the company behind Discourse won’t fix our 502 errors”. I have confidence that Jenny will realize it is not in the board’s best interest to ban said user or to continue with said host.
We knew going into this that not everyone would agree with the decisions made. It is impossible to please everyone.
We knew that some of you would be opposed to the change.
Dopers tend to be disputational by their nature, some more so than others.
As this is a place where people proclaim their opnions (sometime full-throatedly so) we do expect posters to share with us on most any subject, including our hosting site, the software it uses, and at least one of the owners of that company, someone who has a little bit of history on this board in the past.
You are expected to act appropriately on these subjects just as we expect you to act appropriately in every other subject in this space.
We will moderate this like we do everything else. We will step in when appropriate and in full context of where and how posts appear.
All that we ask is that you act within our rules. Just like always.
And hey, give this site a chance. We are using Discourse but we are custom tailoring the site to more closely conform with our nature. What you might have seen on someone else’s site or in the Discourse demo sandbox is not necessarily what you will encounter here. Keep an open mind and be willing to try something new.
For those of you who only want what we’ve always had, my apologies. I note that when we left AOL there were people who refused to make the transition with us, some so attached to the AOL site and unwilling to go anywhere else that they spent years thereafter living in the AOL servers looking at old board posts. Don’t be those people.
