At the risk of....

[jimmy]

This is a response to the Posting Guidelines that we all received a PM about as well is posted at the top of every forum.

Unfortunately, this response is a direct violation of the guidelines themselves

Forums should not be used to criticise club decisions – these are made by volunteers in the best interests of the club, often sandwiched between day jobs, and family responsibilities at night. Sometimes decisions are made on the go, and yes, members on the executive committee are very human and will make the occasional mistake in judgement – if you feel that a mistake has been made, or a viewpoint has been left out, you are strongly encouraged to approach that person directly (via Private Message, or using a the official club contacts, or in person after a ride) to constructively discuss your thoughts.

I can understand the reason for the guidelines. The forum membership and use has grown along with the club, and I suspect (I don't read every thread), that something occurred which caused this policy to be generated.

But suddenly, with this policy, this forum seems to be exercising censorship. We aren't allowed to criticise decisions made by the club executive in a public and open manner.

Now, don't get me wrong, most of the guidelines are fine, but some of them can be misused and some of them have gone overboard.

The ones that I think have gone too far are

Defame any business or individual
Post material which could offend any member

Suddenly, if I have a bad experience with a shop, I can't mention it on the forum at the risk of defaming the business. If a rider does something stupid in the bunch, I can't call them out for it. As for what's offensive, we all have different tolerance when it comes to offensive material. I would like to think that I have a high tolerance, as I follow "you don't have the right to not be offended".

James

[timyone]

what>?!?! I cant offend people?! or talk about the decisions made by the comittee? oh thats ok, I dont have much to say any way

On a totally unrelated note, my little brother has made some dumb decisions lately...

But yeah I reckon its fair enough that we leave a heap of it for real life, my trash talking with Alex is so much more fun in real life, and james and those hills?!

[Trouty]

The ones that I think have gone too far are
Suddenly, if I have a bad experience with a shop, I can't mention it on the forum at the risk of defaming the business. If a rider does something stupid in the bunch, I can't call them out for it. As for what's offensive, we all have different tolerance when it comes to offensive material. I would like to think that I have a high tolerance, as I follow "you don't have the right to not be offended".

James

James - I don't think there is one particular incident that ignited this code of conduct, it was general. If I did some thing stupid in the bunch I think I'd prefer the old fashioned method of some one telling me, or private messaging me rather than cowardly being a smart arse in an open forum. All you do is start a useless written war of words which serves no purpose. If its all in good fun and positive great, but if they can't man up and say some thing negative and derogatory it to me directly - they shouldn't feel they can hide behind the forum.

Debate is great in a forum but it is easy to get carried away with heated words when you are not facing some one...I'm a culprit for sure, so it is good to be reminded to keep it down.

[timyone]

if there was a like button I would like that post Jo

[jimmy]

James - I don't think there is one particular incident that ignited this code of conduct, it was general. If I did some thing stupid in the bunch I think I'd prefer the old fashioned method of some one telling me, or private messaging me rather than cowardly being a smart arse in an open forum. All you do is start a useless written war of words which serves no purpose. If its all in good fun and positive great, but if they can't man up and say some thing negative and derogatory it to me directly - they shouldn't feel they can hide behind the forum.

Debate is great in a forum but it is easy to get carried away with heated words when you are not facing some one...I'm a culprit for sure, so it is good to be reminded to keep it down.

@Jo, Agreed. My example of being able to pull up a rider via the forum for something they did in the bunch is a bad example. I'm a member of another forum, where the debates can get pretty heated, but they are well moderated, and it doesn't take much for someone to sit out a short term suspension if they start using ad hominem attacks rather than the issue.

My biggest gripe with the new forum code of conduct is the fact that we can't criticise decisions made by the executive committee. If a bad decision is made, then why can't we as members of the club have a discussion about it on the forums. Why are they above public scrutiny? If a decision is made for bad reasons, or based on bad evidence, why can't it be called out?

Personally, I'm against all forms of censorship, at this stage, I don't have an issue with the way the club is being run, I haven't turned up to AGM's for the last couple of years, and you rarely see me on Saturday or Sunday rides or down at the track, but why should the executive be able to hide the reasons for the decisions.

James

[timyone]

Ahmen brother Fight the power
(I argue with most things that go on though not that often on the forum)

[Simon Llewellyn]

I'm a member of another forum, where the debates can get pretty heated, but they are well moderated, and it doesn't take much for someone to sit out a short term suspension if they start using ad hominem attacks rather than the issue.

I don't really have an issue with this at all as long as it it is not personal but decision related. But what's the difference between "censorship" & "well moderated" if both have the same consequence of someone else rather than yourself choosing what is right or wrong? Particularly if you would feel it to be fair to sit out a suspension on the one hand if the forum is "well moderated" but would feel offended if someone just removed your post on the otherhand ("censorship"), which I would suspect would be done when it was well moderated in the first instance?

[Eleri]

Defame any business or individual

I'm a fan of free speech. However, as a voluntary member of the DHBC committee I must have an eye to DHBC's and my own exposure to liability. DHBC is a publisher of this forum and there are circumstances where we could be held responsible as a club and potentially as individuals if something is "published" on the forum and there was a subsequent successful defamation case against DHBC. The club and the committee almost certainly can't afford that.

We can certainly talk about an unsatisfactory experience with a business, we all just have to be careful about how we talk about it and not defame people in the process. What does defamation look like? Well it's not that simple in Australia but here's a link to a handy fact sheet.

[Stuart]

My biggest gripe with the new forum code of conduct is the fact that we can't criticise decisions made by the executive committee. If a bad decision is made, then why can't we as members of the club have a discussion about it on the forums. Why are they above public scrutiny? If a decision is made for bad reasons, or based on bad evidence, why can't it be called out?
James

James I think the thing to remember here is that we are a club where the committee members are voluntarily giving up their time and doing the best job they can. They're not politicians. It's not government. Its a cycling club.

I would suggest that if a particular decision of the committee is not to your liking then the best way forward is to formally approach the committee via a written submission. Playing out particular view points on a club decision in public, on a forum that is not limited to club members is, in my opinion, not constructive and not going to solve anything.

Eleri's point regarding liability is also well made. As the webmaster I don't want to end up in court.

[jimmy]

I don't really have an issue with this at all as long as it it is not personal but decision related. But what's the difference between "censorship" & "well moderated" if both have the same consequence of someone else rather than yourself choosing what is right or wrong? Particularly if you would feel it to be fair to sit out a suspension on the one hand if the forum is "well moderated" but would feel offended if someone just removed your post on the otherhand ("censorship"), which I would suspect would be done when it was well moderated in the first instance?

@Simon, let me try and explain myself better.

I was using moderation to mean that the moderators keep an active eye on all and every post. Occasionally, a post containing offensive content (typically strong objectionable material) would be edited (rarely deleted) by a moderator, they would add content to the post to show that it was updated, and a short reason why it was edited.

However, that is all that they are moderating/censoring. The moderators are simply removing content which is considered objectionable to a reasonable cross section of society. So if I post something which is anti-semitic, or extremely racist, then sure, it should be moderated. But if I post something criticising a decision by the executive, that shouldn't be, if it was, then it would cross the line into censorship. If I cross the line and use an ad hominem against someone on the executive (or someone else who gets involved in the debate and goes against me), then I should be first warned, and if I don't heed the line, then I should probably be sitting out a short term suspension. Is that unreasonable? And if I really don't get the message, then I should probably be permanently banned from the forum. Just because one of the moderators personally doesn't like something which has been posted, doesn't mean that they should be editing that post. Further, just because the executive don't like the content of a post, they shouldn't be instructing the moderation team to remove it.

Further, I would like to point out to everyone this icon . It allows you to report a post to the moderation team. I can't see where it sent to, but I suspect that it will go to Stuart and T-Bone, I'm not sure how though (as in email or PM).

James

[jimmy]

I'm a fan of free speech. However, as a voluntary member of the DHBC committee I must have an eye to DHBC's and my own exposure to liability. DHBC is a publisher of this forum and there are circumstances where we could be held responsible as a club and potentially as individuals if something is "published" on the forum and there was a subsequent successful defamation case against DHBC. The club and the committee almost certainly can't afford that.

We can certainly talk about an unsatisfactory experience with a business, we all just have to be careful about how we talk about it and not defame people in the process. What does defamation look like? Well it's not that simple in Australia but here's a link to a handy fact sheet.

@Eleri, there's a couple of interesting points in that article that you linked to.

The defamation law recognises a number of circumstances in which the interest in the material being published outweighs the potential damage to a reputation. These are codified in terms of defences to defamation actions which include:

Justification: It is a complete defence to an action for defamation to prove that the defamatory statement is substantially true.Substantial truth means that provided the justification meets the substance of the imputation, minor inaccuracy will not exclude the defence. The publisher’s motive is irrelevant, if the publisher can show that the imputation is true then it does not matter that he/she was motivated by malice.
Contextual truth: The defence of contextual truth requires the defendant to show two elements; (a) the matter carried, in addition to the defamatory imputations of which the plaintiff complains, one or more other imputations ("contextual imputations") that are substantially true, and (b) the defamatory imputations do not further harm the reputation of the plaintiff because of the substantial truth of the contextual imputations. The contextual imputations must arise from the matter complained of and not a prior publication, that is, injury to reputation must be causally related to the publication complained of.
Honest opinion: The defence of honest opinion requires; the defamatory materials to be a subject matter of public interest, a comment rather than a statement of fact which is based on true or privileged statements of facts and, fairness in the sense of being made honestly by a person who did not believe the statements to be untrue and was not otherwise actuated by malice. however, this defence cannot be defeated only on the basis of malice, ill will or spite, provided those opinions are honestly made. The defence does not require that the comment be reasonable. If the opinion is honestly held, it may be exaggerated or prejudices or accompanied by malice.

My understanding of this is that if I offer a personal opinion of someone or a business which I personally don't believe to be untrue, or it can be shown to be true, then I am theoretically immune from a defamation case.

James I think the thing to remember here is that we are a club where the committee members are voluntarily giving up their time and doing the best job they can. They're not politicians. It's not government. Its a cycling club.

@Stuart, true they aren't politicians, but they are still the popularly elected officials of the club, a club which we pay membership fees to.

James

[Trouty]

@Stuart, true they aren't politicians, but they are still the popularly elected officials of the club, a club which we pay membership fees to.

James

We could go go back and forth about this issue forever, but really there are better things to waste our time on - eg: Like Cadel winning the Tour !!! The intent of the Code of Conduct is really simple. We just need to be careful and considerate about the posts we make - it's actually not a lot to ask, especially towards people in our own club. Your points are fine James, but in the history of this forum there have only been 3 instances I can think of where things have been removed by general consensus and request of others as it was deemed offensive. It's not like it's rampant or that we are China, censoring and controlling what we want people to think!

I don't believe there has been a case of anyone criticising a decision by the executive committee on the forum, or a post like that being deleted - so not sure why your so hung up on that one. Again - there are better ways to communicate to the committee on those things than slagging them on the forum. Can we close this off, it is getting much more complicated than it needs to be.

[Stuart]

[mod]This topic is now locked - please send all correspondence to the committee.[/mod]