• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Good Posting Practices

Tunn11 said:
Trouble is, I'm not sure where, or even if it is worth it.

I think that an effect of the Savile revelations has had a detrimental effect on the way society views relationships between age groups, certainly sexual relationships, but also long term relationships and friendships. A sort of assumed grooming scenario from old to young whatever the reality of the situation.

I wonder why certain events seem to have this effect and others don't. I'm thinking Satanic abuse panics, bogus social workers etc. but did they have any long term effect on other areas of society? (I know we have threads on these but I'm not sure if this fits in those)

Were/are people who wanted to become GPs or neonatal nurses following the Shipman and Letby revelations treated with suspicion. Have fewer mothers wanted to give birth in hospital or are these seen as tragedies that should have been spotted but weren't; let's get back to normal.

Are there other events that have had long term, perhaps not immediately obvious effects on how society in general reacts to certain groups or situations and if so why? Is it to do with the reporting and the media or do some events trigger a sort of group reaction that reverbates far more when others don't?

Does this discussion have any merit and if so is it worth a new thread (and if so what the hell do we call it)

Alternatively, am I talking complete Horlicks, which is not unknown and I should forget the whole thing? :dunno:
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The mods have just about achieved a quorum and decided:
  • To remove the material on the Jimmy Saville thread that has drifted far beyond the immediate aftermath (it has been a good while since the revelations surfaced). Yes, this will be slightly arbitrary, but it's the best we can do. The awe-inspiring deception of society, the devious methods of the criminal and the doubts and delusions people hold about this man are deserving a place on our Fortean board of fare, the general beliefs and actions of society towards sexual crime etc. are not. New comment on existing material (and more on-topic material) will be welcome just as soon as the thread has been edited and reopened.
  • To retain the Russell Brand thread for as long as the membership can a) collectively avoid making libellous statements, b) refrain from drifting into all the kind of topics mentioned by Tunn11 above; in other words, if it remains, it will remain comparatively tightly focused. This may require a few edits to the existing thread, but it will remain open in the meantime.
  • To resist the temptation to initiate a new thread about, in essence, the changing nature of society (the kind Tunn11 was uncertainly considering) on the grounds that it isn't sufficiently Fortean and it will (let's not pretend) generate more heat than light. If the subject had been Fortean and controversial, it would almost certainly have been permitted.
  • That there is absolutely no need for anybody to apologise for having suggested topics and raised discussions about discussions. We have seen nothing intentionally malicious here and the exchange of opposing opinions has been quite civil.
  • This Good Posting Practices thread will be cleaned up and returned to purpose.
Now if you would all give @gordonrutter and I a good head start, you may commence fire with the rotten vegetables.

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if I may attempt to make a neutral comment, it's very difficult for threads dealing with sexual abuse / discrimination / exploitation to remain neutral. It's a subject deep to many hearts and we all have different experiences. I'm a male, but I was abused as a child. I also had a first wife who herself had been mentally - at least - abused and due to that abuse had quite atypical reactions to motherhood which led her to abandon both myself and my son. My second wife was also physically abused before I met her- her abuser was first sectioned and then, after we had been together for a short while, managed to commit suicide under circumstances which should not have been.

I try to see all sides of discussions on sexual abuse / exploitation, but it's a subject on which I suspect virtually all of us find it hard to be dispassionate. It's hardly a subject we can totally avoid, so we must rely on our moderators - upon which arguably it is an unfair burden - to referee.
 
Cochise said:
if I may attempt to make a neutral comment, it's very difficult for threads dealing with sexual abuse / discrimination / exploitation to remain neutral. It's a subject deep to many hearts and we all have different experiences. I'm a male, but I was abused as a child. I also had a first wife who herself had been mentally - at least - abused and due to that abuse had quite atypical reactions to motherhood which led her to abandon both myself and my son. My second wife was also physically abused before I met her- her abuser was first sectioned and then, after we had been together for a short while, managed to commit suicide under circumstances which should not have been.

I try to see all sides of discussions on sexual abuse / exploitation, but it's a subject on which I suspect virtually all of us find it hard to be dispassionate. It's hardly a subject we can totally avoid, so we must rely on our moderators - upon which arguably it is an unfair burden - to referee.
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This is a Fortean board so cases involving these issues need to have some connection and threads which slip away are liable to see deletions of posts occurring. This is about to happen.
 
Tunn11 said:
I've only got a slightly off blueberry and I'm not even going to fling that.

Despite @Yithian 's statement I will apologise for any distress caused and for putting the mods to a lot of trouble which I'm sure they don't need.
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For what it's worth, there was no distress to me, just a sort of looming certainty about the direction such a thread would take - which is why I chimed in.

Anyway, back to ABCs, aliens and the Skinwalker Ranch TV show which I can't leave alone! :cheer:
 
No more posts about 'free speech', 'GB News' and 'Laurence Fox', please.

It has been pointed out to us—though we already knew it—that these subjects feature the same four or five members all lamenting in chorus how terrible everything is.

We shall, for now, refrain from identifying them; they will know themselves, I'm sure.

Attempting to usher the subjects in with tenuous links to acceptable thread titles just creates more work for us. We're asking those who know better to please stop doing this.

Once again: Forteana is neither Twitter nor Facebook; what flies there doesn't necessarily do so here.
 
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Yithian said:
No more posts about 'free speech', 'GB News' and 'Laurence Fox', please.

It has been pointed out to us—though we already knew it—that these subjects feature the same four or five members all lamenting in chorus how terrible everything is.

We shall, for now, refrain from identifying them; they will know themselves, I'm sure.

Attempting to usher the subjects in with tenuous links to acceptable thread titles just creates more work for us. We're asking those who know better to please stop doing this.

Once again: Forteana is neither Twitter nor Facebook; what flies there doesn't necessarily do so here.
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Got to agree there - sometimes posts are aimed more at chit-chat rather than Fortean in subject matter. (a personal view mind):popc:
 
I am not arguing with the ruling, or the rules, but sometimes it can be tough avoiding contentious political issues, because - like it or not - politics infests most parts of our lives and there can be a bit of a grey area. After all, what if a divisive politician also becomes notable in the Fortean world? An example would be speaking in parliament of a widely-debunked conspiracy theory.
I agree that we've got to 'filter out' the political angle from the Fortean aspect, to preserve board peace and function. However, it's use as a bait for personal vitriol absolutely rests with the posters. A post needn't be taken as a chance to soapbox.
 
Stormkhan said:
I am not arguing with the ruling, or the rules, but sometimes it can be tough avoiding contentious political issues, because - like it or not - politics infests most parts of our lives and there can be a bit of a grey area. After all, what if a divisive politician also becomes notable in the Fortean world? An example would be speaking in parliament of a widely-debunked conspiracy theory.
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Talk to the Mods before it's posted. Simples!
 
Stormkhan said:
So ...
A celebrity who became a conspiracy nutter/joke has been accused of impropriety. Since this has hit mainstream media, the subject is verboten.
Got it.

It's always galled me.
Past 21 years old, Enhanced DBS checked (and you have to pay everytime for the check), Qualified in First Aid.
But you're a bloke. You are disqualified to be a babysitter. Or a nursery teacher. Or even a nurse.
You are a male, wanting to be in a 'traditionally' female profession. Nope.
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This is why so few primary schools have male staff. They're mistrusted from the start, even before Ian Huntley. A friend of mine was working at a local primary and I remember asking him "aren't you worried you'll end up getting accused of something?." He wasn't worried because he's not a kiddie fiddler. He ended up quitting the job because of random 'nonce' type comments from kids fuelled on by the school gate mums.

There's loads of male nurses these days. I was a male H.C.A. around the year 2000 and wasn't even aware it was an unconventional career choice for a man to take until my first day at work when I had the female staff ask me if I was gay. Then it was the old chestnut of 'men can't multitask' .. I got henpecked to f**k whichever ward I worked on. On the plus side, I also sometimes got flirted at which was cool. It made me think about women who had to work in an all male office in the 70's and the crap they must have had to put up with and the strategies they'd have had to have used to be able to not just be competent but also successful. It's not easy unless you can take prejudice on as a challenge instead of a threat.
 
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I thought it was people who got all the damned good pressies at Christmas!

Seriously, I know we have to tread a thin line between Fortean subjects and contentious subjects. The biggest problem in real life is the cross-over.
 
We've never had a problem with this in the past, but if you need to post sexually explicit material on a non-sexual themed thread, you're going to have to put it in spoiler tags with a warning.

Although there would have to be a pretty solid reason for posting an explicit image, I can just about imagine situations in which someone might legitimately want to, but it has to be said that such circumstances would be extremely uncommon.

The board is 18+ and I'm not, of course, referring to the mere discussion of sex or sexual practices—I'm referring to profanity-laden pornographic prose or even photos. We recently removed a text-based image of this nature from the Humour & Jokes Thread in response to complaints; if it had been spoilered, it would probably have been left in place.

For the overwhelming majority of members, none of what I have written will necessitate a change in posting behaviour!
 
A plea: when 'the photo is the story', please copy and upload the photo directly to this site; do not rely on links to other sites, least of all local newspapers that erase old stories regularly and set up new websites as often as you change socks.

We are very good at recovering missing content, but it is hard and very time-consuming for us to fix threads broken by missing images.
 
Please, for the love of God, stop spamming Fortean threads with tangental YouTube links.

I've just spent forty-five minutes replacing or deleting these things (mostly when they're dead).

The alternative is that we turn off YouTube integration and you just see URLs and have to click and leave the board to view them.
 
Yithian said:
Please, for the love of God, stop spamming Fortean threads with tangental YouTube links.

I've just spent forty-five minutes replacing or deleting these things (mostly when they're dead).

The alternative is that we turn off YouTube integration and you just see URLs and have to click and leave the board to view them.
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[Hangs head in shame]
Sorry.
 
Yithian said:
Killjoy alert.

In the last three months alone, we've had approximately fifty Cromer 'jokes' on threads that are not the dedicated Cromer thread (yes, we've counted). Around half of these were in CHAT, but the rest were scattered across a variety of Fortean threads where they have no place. We haven't included in this total the numerous Cromer jokes in profile posts (that's your personal domain), but around thirty of the duddest or most incongruous found elsewhere have now been removed.

I usually prefer not to name names, but two posters of long-standing and good character form the core of our Cromer-tangent production team: @ramonmercado and @Tigerhawk.

If they and everybody else could now limit this tendency to the Cromer thread, we'd be most grateful; we have asked nicely in the past.

It's off-putting to newcomers to have pointless derailments about crabs, and the joke is past its best before date in terms of humour.

Edit: this is not now 'a thing'—we don't plan to police use of running jokes or humour; it's just that this one has run so long that that particular domain has been left very far behind.
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We've just deleted thirty-four Cromer interruptions.

@ramonmercado & @Tigerhawk

The next step for wasting our time like this is a temporary ban.
 
Yithian said:
If we could drop the throwaway quips about Guardianistas (as a synoym for a people or a readily discernible political persuasion), that would be goodm
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Never heard of the term, but bow feel compelled to us it.

Not here, of course, but in real life....
 
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