NO means NO
I'll admit I have been really rough on the group of contributors in the past due to my 'vision' of how I want the Oman Community Blog to turn out in the near future. But this is just a huge no-no for me; and I will not stand down from it.
As you may well remember, I reported a few days ago about how one of our own 'people' tell-taled on us and told the UAE Community Blog members that we were copying their idea. But that was only they knew themselves about it since our blog button had been there since the beginning of this community blog with the help of one of their members/moderators.
On that particular post, that certain person turned out with a spamming strategy that not only disgusted me but got to my nerves. And if there's one thing I hate more than anything - it's a spammer.
So I gave the green light to Amjad to delete his irriatating posts, his blog link from the sidebar, and anything else for that matter for one whole week to give the guy a reason to rethink what he is really doing.
Apparently, it got to one of the members that he was 'banned' and I had confirmed it and the reasons why. I won't go into much details.
Let there be no mockery that I take such issues very seriously. Anyone caught so, will face the same consequence. If you have a disagreement about such a matter, please post it in the appropriate manner.
This is a community blog - meaning we have to respect one another's rights of what we say herein, but that does not mean that our freedom of speech goes beyond the borders of rationality.
You wouldn't like someone farting in your face now would you? So what of a spammer.
15 comments:
Let's not beat around the bush. The issue here is censorship on Oman Community Blog. Here's what happened. I was going through the comments on the Called to Challenge topic when I noticed that something was off. The number of comments had come down. When I went through them I realized that all the replies by ColOman had been deleted without an explanation. I posted a comment asking about it but none of the admins replied. A couple of days later I saw SIM online on Google and asked him. He admitted it and said that ColOman had been spamming and that all his posts had been deleted and even more he has been banned from posting on OCB. At that point I told SIM that this kind of censorship is unacceptable to me and that I will no longer be contributing to OCB.
Sorry Sleepless in Muscat, but you can't call this place Oman Community Blog and then whenever you talk about it you keep mentioning how this place is basically yours to run the way you want. This ain't much of a community. You deleted a member's comments without even mentioning why. You banned him without telling him. You even went to the extreme of deleting his blog from the blogroll. That's really spiteful. You say he was spamming. It looks to me more like revenge from you for his post on UAE Community Blog and his replies on the topic here.
If this is how this blog's going to be run, then I want nothing to do with it.
I understand that being administrator is not easy task but a lil bit more of diplomacy might do the job .
Am not sure you talking about coloman but isn't he an Omani living in UAE or anyway a person related to Oman ? If you had invited him as contributor in the first place maybe he wouldn't have such hostile attitude .
Same goes to other bloggers not listed : when you create a closed club more than a community then don't expect them to be friendly .
Let's relax, we're not professional writers of a newspaper, just people who want to share ideas about the society they're living in .
Sleepless, first-timer here, got routed from the UAE Community Blog.
Congratulations for the OCB.
I understand, Oman is famous for its beautiful & natural landscapes. That true? Does any of your bloggers have a photo journal?
Thanks for your help!
Just when I was beginning to like this place.
I am not a contributor nor a blogger but I have been following this blog. On the whole I agree with muscati; some moderation is needed but a community is a community. One can not pick and choose what a community is and one certainly needs to have a very cool head for moderation; not quite what balqis said but it is my interpretation of it.
Lights out ... regrettably.
correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of spamming is
a) the crap emails that flood my inbox constantly selling me viagra, porn, and stocks.
b) A spam bot, which visits a blog or forum and posts nonsense in an effort to increase traffic to an unrelated website.
I'm not sure what he did wrong here, and since the offending comments have been deleted, I'm denied the oppertunity to make up my own mind.
All this is a bit rich coming from you SIM, given the amount of complaining you do when times of oman edits or refuses to print your articles.
I've gotta say, I signed up to be part of a community blog, and not part of someone's personal internet fifedom. It's a blog, People post stuff, other people post comments, sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. It's not like the fate of the free world rests in our hands. I am by no means the best writer here, and so if I chose to take down my posts and write no further, no big loss to you guys.
how about "NO CENSORSHIP ALLOWED" instead?
....Here i thought we have finally found a common ground
Fine.
You guys want to moderate it?
I'll leave it to you guys to do the job.
I'm leaving the job to Amjad & Muscati.
you all take care
been nice working with you all..
Oh Sleepless, don't be churlish - debate and free speech means people may often disagree with you, or even criticise you; that shouldn't mean you run away. Stand up for your principals! But it highlights the problem of you exercising arbitrary power without a clear mandate.
Can the 'community' not simply agree a very simple and basic constitution of what's acceptable, and what's not? So the administrators have an agreed mandate for their moderating?
The issue of 'censorship' will certainly raise itself again otherwise.
There may already be something out there to use as a starting point... but I can see [as with any constitution] it ain't easy, but then something worthwhile seldom is.
A good start might be:
Article 1: 'To not knowingly break the laws of the Sultanate of Oman'.
JP
I didn't expect that from you, SIM. I am sorry to say that this is very unexpectedly foolish of you.
I wont judge you, maybe you have some things going on in your life now.
Take a break, breath, take a couple of days off and then look at this again and make the right decision.
I have faith in you, man. Take it easy...
Is that how you ponder the situation, Sleepless in Muscat? You say and I quote you " I still stand by what I believe despite all the negative impact it has resulted in from the members."
Then how do you reply us in here, not by standing up with what you believe but rather receding back and giving away your authority of the blog which is a boorish act.
Frankly, they all summed it up and I’ll add my voice to theirs.
SIM, you are being such a drama queen. You should either admit that you screwed up or stand your ground and at least attempt to prove that what you did was right.
I never wanted to be the admin of this blog.
Ladies. Take it easy.
If this spammer person was really spamming then I'm glad someone dealt with him. It takes effort to uphold a certain atmosphere, and if SIM felt it was necessary to delete posts (or more) to protect what he thankfully worked very hard on.
Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but if it's going to be an opposing one rather than a defying one then it should be done in their own space (blog) with their own terms.
There's no need over stimulate situations. The admins should talk this through with SIM again, because this is not the way things should be.
And I hope everyone not forget the amount of effort SIM put into this blog. He did this for everyone because it was good from him, not because it's his duty to.
Good luck to all.
the prblem with 'SIM' is that he thinks way too much of himself and can't accept any criticism
also a hypocrite because always promotes freedom of speech while practices censorship like they can coexist..funny man
I don't think that last comment was from PYR. It Doesn't sound like him at all. A quick check of the sitemeter stats would likely resolve that with certainty.
SIM, It's too bad that you feel that you need to remove yourself from the blog, but... whatever floats your boat.
Thanks, for your work to start this blog. In time, it will prove to be a great community resource.
Oman Community, Thank you for being unbiased. I have been a member of UAE community blog, Oman Forum and many other public forms and never got banned.
I never use profanity; defame a person’s character when I write, so I was shocked when I was banned! I thought I would get a thank you for publicizing Oman Community blog and giving me credit for making them known in the UAE, but instead I got banned.
Thank you all for being neutral and honest. Sleepless in Muscat, I hope you come and contribute to the blog.
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