Quote from hapaboy:
From ET's Terms of Service:
FEEDBACK AND SUBMISSIONS
You agree you are and shall remain solely responsible for the contents of any submissions you make, and you will not submit material that is unlawful, defamatory, abusive or obscene.
And from the Help page:
Certain words may have been censored by the administrator. If your posts contain any censored words, they will be blanked-out like this: ****.
The same words are censored for all users, and censoring is done by a computer simply searching and replacing words. It is in no way 'intelligent'.
Why is it that ET allows so many profane-laced personal attacks which are in violation of the Terms of Service?
Furthermore, why is it that so many obscenities are not censored?
It is one thing to disagree with someone's opinion and to ridicule that person. In the often highly-charged Chit Chat threads, it is only natural that there are going to be a lot of differing opinions and mud flying.
It is an entirely different thing to insult another person with obscenities, i.e. calling him or her a "f*****g" whatever.
Shouldn't the moderators be A) Censoring or editing the obscenities, and B) Doing something against the offenders?
ET should have some decorum rules that punish the use of obscenities when used in a personal attack. Perhaps suspend a user's account for a few days or something.
All of us frequent ET because it is a terrific site for exchanging ideas about trading and as a social forum. We should at the least be able to conduct ourselves in a manner free from obscenity-laced tirades against people with opinions different from our own.
Hapaboy,
I'm just guessing...but I think ET's
Terms
Of
Use is very old and needs to be updated or re-evaluated...in the section called
FEEDBACK AND SUBMISSIONS
http://www.elitetrader.com/legal.cfm
It clearly allows
defamatory, abusive or obscene message posts.
In fact, I've seen threads go for many pages with such style...including having a moderator join in with comments like...
please keep this thread on topic...then the thread goes on for many more pages with
defamatory, abusive or obscene message posts...before any action is taken.
My point about the above...why does it needs to go on for awhile...why not stop it after the first like post...to send a clear message...this isn't tolerated...
Here's a fact...one person's story...a good friend of mine works for Yahoo!...and I once asked her why does Yahoo! allow posters to be so
defamatory, abusive or obscene in their posting...in clear violation of their TOS...doesn't that scare away advertising dollars?
Her reply was basically this: We make a strong effort to protect the rights of posters....regardless what's being said. If they start removing members for
defamatory, abusive or obscene message posts...they risk losing advertising dollars because they wouldn't have as many members.
She even brought the fact how they fought very hard to keep the ADULT eGroups where porn was freely shared until they received too much pressure from organizations with deep pockets and good legal connections...
then when those groups were removed...Yahoo! simply started allowing porn to be sold at Yahoo! stores...
the same organizations complained and eventually won...
sort'uv
She even told me they usually receive
very little complaints...
I responded and showed her the webpages of about a dozen organizations (that advertise at their website) with petitions about the porn...
My friend with a cool like smile said this...
well...we have a lot more advertisers than that and those companies only represent a small portion.
I then showed her a poster that had been posting for several weeks using
defamatory, abusive or obscene language towards women, hispanics, blacks and gays...I even took her too posts with the "N" word.
Once again...my friend with a cool like smile said this...
if someone would simply report this violation of TOS to Yahoo!...they wouldn't hesitate to remove the user.
I showed her my email complaints about that poster I sent...along with those generic auto replies that Yahoo! sends in response after you use that "Report Abuse" menu.
I even told her I called directly into Yahoo!...took names...and reported the abuse.
Her response...
this poster has rights.
My response...
what about your TOS?
Her response...
well...if we really enforced that...we'll be in worst financial situation
I took that statement as a connection to advertising dollars and the number of Yahoo! users.
I was stunned
Here's the funny part about that abusive poster...
he/she made a comment to another poster that was very deflamatory...
that particular poster said she was a lawyer and would put a stop to it and said it won't be via the "Report Abuse" email.
The very next day in the evening...the poster with the bad behaviour...all of his/hers posts were deleted along with the Yahoo ID.
I guess litigation talks in that particular case.
Since that discussion with my friend...I only use Yahoo! to check my email...I refuse to go into any Yahoo! message boards anymore and soon I will delete my Yahoo! email address.
Then I told her about all the SPAM I get...
she said...
click the THIS IS SPAM in the email.
I said...sure...but to do that...you must open the email
In other words...if the spammer is using a beacon...many do these days...if I open that email so I can click the
This Is Spam...it also lets the spammer know its a valid email address...
if I simple delete the email...I still get the spam...a no win situation for me but a win win situation for the spammer.
She went on to say...
if we police every bad user...we wouldn't have that many users and we'll have more complaints about censorship...and less advertising dollars...besides...I don't make the decisions about how to enforce the TOS...I simply give feedback about how to bring in more money from the advertisers
I told her...here's my feedback...
the company you work for...SUCKS...and your advertisers will NEVER get one penny from me and I seriously doubt they would have gotten one penny from the guy with all the deflamatory, obscene and abusive comments...nor from the lawyer that said enough is enough...because everybody is angry.
Note: ET is a much better posting environment than Yahoo! and I was not making any suggestions that ET is a Yahoo!...
I was simply trying to draw some conclusions from my experience with a friend that works at the portal giant called Yahoo! about the impact of TOS on advertising dollars.
Also...suspending or deleting problem ET posters doesn't work.
They simply get a new email address (I'm not talking about a Yahoo! nor Hotmail address that's supposibly no longer allowed here at ET) with an ISP that freely allows their clients to change their email address to a new name anytime.
My ISP at videotron does such...I get a couple of email addresses and can freely change them anytime.
Thus, if I was a bad boy here at ET...with the email adress
mperry69@videotron.ca and Barron bans me for bad behaviour via my email address...
I call my ISP and change my email address to
spousewantsitbackdoor@videotron.ca and I'm sure I can register at ET and be a bad boy all over again.
Note: I apologize for certain words above...they in no way indicate anything about me
Thus, banning email addresses won't work either.
There has been past threads started about this particular subject...credit card vailidation...$1 dollar registration fee...an ignore menu that not only allows you not to see the message post but that actually allows you not to see the user name as if it was never there...brand the user name via putting certain words under their names...
maybe the $1 fee is a good one in my opinion along with showing IP addresses with every message posts...
ET can make some money and at least have proof to show their advertisers that we are willing to pay to be here...along with helping to limit multiple aliases.
This would obviously reduce the numbers of new members...but surely after 15k users...ET shouldn't be worry about charging new comers a $1 fee while allowing current members to use ET without the fee...
this...in the future...if your account gets closed and you rejoin to cause more havoc...it's going to cost you and ET knows who you really are...
unless its a stolen credit card
P.S. There's an old saying...if we don't like it here...we can always leave.
So far I still like it here and have made 2 good drinking buddies.
NihabaAshi
