chove wrote:Have they asked for an olive branch?
It doesn't matter. In the post-C19 world in which we find ourselves, the precedent has been set that the most vulnerable and senior citizens of society are a protected class. Other people have used expletives in this forum but were not banned. Why was a grouchy grandpa singled out?
Cavesa wrote: And even if you cannot see the hidden threads, the person can for example talk about you, which is a huge problem in case of defamation.
Cavesa, this is paranoia. People talk about each other all the time! How many times have you ever been involved in a defamation lawsuit after people <gulp> talked behind your back?
Cavesa wrote: Yes. Based on my experience, a motivated person anywhere can cause you a lot of damage, if they connect the dots from one platform to another, and if they use a strong enough accusation that is extremely hard to disprove. It is always harder to prove you haven't done something, than the opposite (I am living something similar right now).
This is seriously flawed logic, Cavesa! Unless you are telepathic, you cannot assume that your current situation reflects your interaction with Speakeasy. Projecting onto someone else is extremely unfair!
Cavesa wrote: It was a moment, in which I was considering erasing all my presence here, and on several other places,
I am surprised that this is how you felt and will just chalk it up to last year being 2020 and extremely tough. Looking at this as a party who wasn't privy to the exchange between the two of you, I struggle to believe that these feelings were not brought about by external factors, namely last year's chaos.
Cavesa wrote: The sacrifice of being falsely accused of something that is even a crime in many countries, that's too much. The sacrifice of verbal harassment and feeling very unsafe, that is not acceptable. Age should never be a reason for discrimination, but neither it should be a right to treat others badly.
Let me reiterate what I said before: I don't justify what he said to you or anyone else. I am just in awe that people are still raw about mean comments on an anonymous digital platform after A YEAR. That to me is a level of pettiness that is beyond my ability to reason.
iguanamon wrote: Politics has no place here. Neither does religious advocacy.
My very first incident with a mod occurred on the day on which I joined the forum. I was told that I could never mention religion and that I should read the forum rules. When I did so, I saw that politics was also banned and immediately asked why controversial issues like people's preferred genders and pronouns were plastered on certain accounts. Suffice it to say, I have yet to get a response after 3 years. That was the day that I realised that Commandment 7 was alive and well here: All animals are equals but some animals are more equal than others.
iguanamon wrote: We can "disagree, without being disagreable".
Agreed. That said, the good deeds of a members should always be weighed against the bad deeds of the member. If we are objective, we'd EASILY see that Speakeasy's good deeds outweighed his bad deeds. If someone had a bad day (or even week, for that matter) we should always look at their character and contributions to the forum. Panglossian views don't work in the real world: people mess up and we have to let go of grudges and move on.
iguanamon wrote: The moderators have a thankless job.
I absolutely agree: the mods do a GREAT job but even they are flawed. Who's ever petitioned to ban them because they felt grieved?
iguanamon wrote: That being said, I, for one (despite the fact that I, myself, have been a target of his wrath on one occasion) would like to see speakeasy return...
This is why I have always had a tremendous level of respect for you: you were always the one who'd diffuse tricky situations.
iguanamon wrote: he took some of those away (resource threads) in a fit of vengeance just before he was banned.
If he composed the thread, he has the right to remove it. We may not like it, but it his right to do so.
iguanamon wrote: It's up to speakeasy himself to ask to return and the moderators to decide whether or not they would find his return acceptable.
If I can find his contact information, I will personally ask him to contact the mods and get reinstated.
iguanamon wrote:Speakeasy deleting these posts became a bone of contention and controversy on the forum with some members and moderators finding this to be unacceptable and others feeling that members should have the inalienable right to delete their own posts.
I've published a few academic papers. I invested the time, money and effort into the research and should have the right to have the articles retracted from any journal in which my papers are published. How can the forum have a double-standard of banning authors but preventing them from taking their work with them? I'd would go as far as calling that IP theft.
MorkTheFiddle wrote:No doubt Speakeasy contributed much to this forum. But Cavesa has contributed at least as much. Putting myself in her shoes and in the shoes of the mods and admin, and knowing next to nothing about the details of the banishment, I take Cavesa's side in this. That's all I have to say.
Do you see how biased this is?
aokoye wrote:I have been talked about with ill will by Speakeasy on a number of occasions and would prefer that not to happen again. I also don't want to see the same happen to others. It is was not pretty and it made using the forum unenjoyable at best off and on for years. The mods have made their decision and that decision should stay with them. If he wants to contact the mods and ask to come back then he's free to do so, but it's ultimately not up to us to decide what should or shouldn't happen.
With all due respect, you and Speakeasy have never agreed on anything and are thus not capable of being objective because of a long-established feud from 2016 about Early Modern English. I read that thread in 2018 and remember it clearly on the FSI German thread when I was debating starting the course.
aokoye wrote: Heck I'm pretty sure he's PM'd me harassing comments at times (it's been a while).
If you are basing your (highly biased) opinion on evidence that you can't even remember, your claims are invalid. Don't damage someone's reputation based on something that may end up being a flight of fancy.
ashipinthenight wrote: no one is greater than the collective.
The collective? This is not a scene from Ira Levine's This Perfect Day! If members of the hive mind were allowed to disparage a certain member of this forum for expressing his views about the handling of the coronavirus saga last year, why can Speakeasy not be reinstated if we've already shown that mean words don't warrant an instant permanent ban? If mean words warrant a ban, then such a ban must be issued retroactively to every single person who used expletives in the discussion about the handling of the pandemic. I am only asking that we have a standard that doesn't just single out grouchy grandpas but is applies to everyone by UniComp.
chove wrote:My run-in with this poster was them asking about gender differences in language learning and then getting angry whenever anyone mentioned the impact of sexism. He was the one getting offended by ideas, and not even controversial ones.
The fact that you are writing a treatise on the matter shows that you were offended enough to even retain this in your memory. People get offended: it's what humans do. Should we ban them all?