Forum Moderation

Trust me, he’s not aggrieved. More like amused.

Sometimes, things are just what they are:

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A thousand year timeout. Ooof. That’s Hanibal Lechter type sentencing :slightly_smiling_face:

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So I was all about to post a wholly different comment on this, but then I deleted the whole thing because the topic is somewhat radioactive. This is kind of the razor’s edge, right? Moderation to protect their interests or the civility of the forums is a good thing, but it leads to a chilling of freedom to comment on things.

In the end, the forum will die if we don’t trust each other and especially the admins, but if we don’t feel free to discuss how and why someone got culled, then it’s a sign that we don’t trust the admins. Catch-22.

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I know I had many disagreements with palmercr, but I’m sad to see him banned. He provided good insight a lot of the time, just wasn’t the best at filtering sometimes.

I don’t know if there was more to that email (or any previous ones), but I think it’s rediculous to ban someone without pointing to a specific post or action they took and saying “this violated this rule.” It’s cheap and unbackable to just say “you violated a rule” without providing the when and how of it occurring.

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Probably the one where he said, “I’ll probably get banned for posting this.”

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This one.

Which, quite honestly, was only restating information that is already widely known.

Probably tempting fate, but I didn’t get banned for posting the exact same thing, twice:

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“Probably” isn’t enough for a banhammer. Sure, in all likelihood it was that one. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. But. What if it was a little more ambiguous? If they set the precedent of “you know what you did wrong” then they can get away with banning you willy-nilly and not have to answer as to why

Here’s the thing. We are guests here. All of us. Our length of stay is dictated by whether we follow the written rules or not.

Do they owe more than a “you violated this rule and it’s your second infraction of this particular rule”?

Seems like it’s a bit like firing someone. “Your services are no longer needed.” Not - you violated this rule, that rule, with a link to the handbook and the post and an “I’m sorry”, “good luck” etc.

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Yeah, kinda hard not to know exactly what you’re getting banned for when you publicly state you know it will get you banned. (And you’ve likley been banned for it before.) Bit of a no brainier and what more did they need to explain really. I don’t know if palmercr intentionally poked the bear or just rolled the dice hoping it would slide, but he chose his path. Sorry we’ve lost his insights and knowledge.

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No, they don’t owe me anything. I’m just saying it’s not a good way to run things. If you’re trying to get someone to stop doing something, do you tell them “hey, you violated this rule recently” or do you tell them “hey, please don’t do [this specific thing] if you want to stay a part of this community, it violates the rules”. You can’t learn and correct bad behavior if you don’t know what exactly was wrong with your behavior.

In this case, palmercr knew. But what about them case where the person doesn’t know?

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They don’t owe any of us anything on this forum.

What it does do is speak of the character of the company.

Banning someone for pointing out that a security flaw still exists SEVEN months after it was publicly revealed is pretty sketchy, in my book.

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This is the thing. We don’t know if he was banned for this. We’re all assuming this is the reason, and it’s a pretty safe bet. But we don’t know. And that’s a precedent I’m not okay with when it comes to banning. If someone is getting banned, I want the person doing the banning to have a good reason.

But hey, like was said above, do they owe us anything? No. I’m just not sure I want to be a part of a community that allows bans to occur without written reason

Sometimes though it’s not the severity of the act or how much impact it has overall, it’s about being asked not to do something and then you intentionally do it anyway.

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But, shouldn’t it be about the severity of the act?

Otherwise, to me, it seems arbitrary and capricious.

I mean, the very information that is supposedly such a threat to Glowforge’s intellectual property still persists in their own forum. So, obviously it can’t be that much of a concern to them.

Which leaves us with this question: Is it the message, or the messenger? Especially given that others (including myself) have delivered the same message and suffered no consequences. Not even a “Please don’t say that”.

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I think we have a fair bit of speculation here, and If i were in GFs shoes I wouldn’t comment further. What I’m saying is that I bet we don’t have the whole picture, so I’m not going to judge.

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The only communication between @palmercr and Glowforge about either ban was a single email informing him of the permanent ban he received today. That’s it. The first ban he only learned about when his login was denied.

Whatever else there is to the story from Glowforge’s side, you’re right - we’ll never know.

Assuming that you have all the info. People often leave detail out.

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I have no doubts, and I think you’ll find that just about everyone else who has come to know Chris would say the same.

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You’re absolutely right and if this was a first offense, it would be extremely unfair for GF to ban someone for such an offense. I can’t speculate as to why other similar comments went unchecked in the past. If I had to guess, it’s about the intent at the time the information was shared. In this specific instance though there’s no claiming it’s arbitrary and unfair when someone publicly says they know sharing specific information is not allowed, and they do it anyway.

Seems to me with this post they are putting everyone on notice now. They are asking people to play on their forum by their rules. I actually think they have been pretty liberal with the info they allowed to be shared here. I have been happily surprised that so much of your information and deconstruction of the GF has been allowed. It’s an amazing resource for us and it seems like GF has seen it that way too. What a shame that something so trivial and silly may lead to a tightening of it. Palmer could have easily shared the info privately, but he chose to taunt GF publicly with it. I can’t blame them for reacting.

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Unfortunately, this episode marks the end of my participation in this forum.

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