Unscheduled outage 21-22 September

What a relief.

I'll never do it again. :O

Serously, if I am the worst... that says a lot.

Absit invidia (and DFT :nono:)

Jeff Watkins

Or when I point out that the one person has posted several anonymous comments that would prefer you to suppose they were NOT the same person.

Just goes to show, not many poeple can handle honesty.

Absit invidia (and DFT :nono:)

Jeff Watkins

The "Problematic Posts" were made aware to the user (me) as I was privy to the threats and such, as well as being the victim, or at least one of. The complainant also attempted to defame me through rather slanderous associations. All I did was advise our users that a singular anonymous user was posing as various individuals in order to improve the apparent reputation of a company reference also posted by the complainant.

I also made very general comments to the effect that people should always be very careful about joining an agency and to do their research before signing anything. The complainant took personal offence and after some to and fro statements, threats, slanderous associations on other sites (as well as here), then brought in a "lawyer", at which point, as per the legal advice offered to the Site Admin, certain comments were adjusted to remove the majority of their content, which included a large number of general advice comments I had personally posted.

I was involved in all aspects of this process. The point I think Grant was trying to make is that relative to the number of posts made on this site, the number that have "caused offence" or been the subject of legal concerns is incredibly small, fractional even. The fact that many of them are mine is representative as to the overall impact they have had.

Absit invidia (and DFT :nono:)

Jeff Watkins

Dear David

Thank you for your civil response, rather more than the ridiculing tone of my own post deserved. Please accept my apologies for the unnecessary jibes.

Given the demonstrably low risk posed by anonymous postings, I have argued that requiring registration provides no real protection while placing a barrier in the way of what have been frequent useful unregistered contributions.

I would go further than the view espoused by Jeff and make clear what I have always replied to these complaints of defamation that I do not accept their assertion that the remarks on this site constitute libel and that I will remove them only as a matter of courtesy when a direct complaint is made.

Personally, I believe that these people are employing bullying tactics and legal threats to shut down thoroughly legitimate discussion and advice simply because an informed point of view differs from their own or may be a threat to their business model.

While I am always the person responsible for dealing with these threats, I appreciate that the current committee (for this and perhaps other reasons (who knows!)) may prefer not to face the prospect that these threats may go further. I support what would appear to be their decision to encourage the site to find a new home - something I suggested perhaps six years ago but the committee chose not to pursue at the time.

Unfortunately along the way it appears the committee has been given some astonishingly poor advice that led them to take thoroughly inappropriate action.

I'm going to post an update as the administrator to the homepage but I hope that the committee will soon post their own side of this saga and confirm verbal advice to me that they will support the transfer of the domain to another incorporated association established specifically to support this community.

I really do look forward to seeing this community put this episode behind it and, in response to Jeff's gentle promptings, seeing what the future has in store.

Cheers
Grant

--
Director, actor and administrator of this website

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom"

www.moorebooks.net.au

Judging by most requests for removal on grounds of alleged defamation the worst person on the site is a registered member called Labrug.