@Al_Kafir welcome back brother 
You have been missed.
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Welcome back @Al_Kafir letâs just be happy to have so many other cool folk to talk to 
this is the least hostile place on the internet imo and we all want the same things! Privacy, security, and freedom
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Sometimes itâs good to just answer the question in the title. The answer for me is hell no
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lolâŚfrom your perspective perhaps - I have been banned for around 13 of the last 16 months! Forgive me if I donât share your opinion⌠I also find the benevolent dictators argument to be extremely weak myself.[quote=âNigel, post:103, topic:12159â]
Welcome back @Al_Kafir
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Thanks but Iâm not really back, I was just correcting a wrong impression. Conflict and debate are what engage people and attract users on forumsâŚso I wonât be doing that here anymore⌠lol. (Btw, I notice @polpolrene quietly stopped posting forum user stats some time ago for some reasonâŚhmmmâŚ).
Personally I much prefer the Steemit idea where the person you are debating canât just shoot you when they are losing. If I do engage anybody anytime, I shall move the argument to there for a fairer debate I think.
Cheers
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I agree and had a long argument saying the same thing over a year ago. It was pushed into âmetaâ and the debate was squashed with the same arguments and pov that justifies our ridiculous social order in the outside world.
Yeah, there are a few people who will still only talk in PM.
Completely agree again. I think this community would and could have been bigger and more compelling, active/inclusive, even though it would also have been more chaotic, more complicated to manage, and less friendly as a consequence.
Folks like tonda and yourself were valuable creators of content for the community. I think there has been too much focus on keeping things clean and neat for the thousands of lurkers, without really recognising what it is that draws them back every day and builds the community⌠passion, argument etc. Things can get quite sterile and expensive in terms of losing content makers if moderation tolerance is too low. Or if people feel dis-empowered and that they donât have a voice: like when debates are shifted into off topic or meta, or they get banned without any form of accountability for them to turn to.
The only reason I shut up about this debate was because Decorum came along and I saw the light.
If we try to fix this forum weâll be sticking plasters all over it. It will be messy. It will take time to get right. And it is unnecessary because Harmen is working on the right kind of design to remove these issues, rather than trying to patch them.
Besides, thereâs only something âwrongâ with the forum in the eyes of those who want it to be managed differently.
It is more than that and the moderators do a good job of making the forum into what they think it ought to be. I donât want this to come across as an attack on the mods even though I agree with you. The forum is friendly and well-managed. It is just managed by people who want and need it to be manageable. They give up a lot of their time to it and it is a thankless job.
Weâll get a whole different kind of vibe on Decorum and thatâs great. This place will still have itâs uses. And Decorum will open the door to a whole new kind of community⌠and at just the right time as it begins to really explode.
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But it is only like that because the hostility is squashed. And arguments are very compelling. The BCT threads Iâve visited most have been the big and passionate arguments. Itâs like slowing down to see that car crash. Compelling is more important than useful, friendly and functional if your aim is to grow the community, in my experience anyway.
You canât blame the mods though. Itâs huge job for them as it is, and they do it in the spare time and for free. They donât really have the resources to do it differently. We owe them a lot more thanks than we do criticism ofc. Although I can imagine after a 12 month ban Iâd be as annoyed as Al-Kafir, whatever my offence was
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Thanks for that, I had all the same experiences you mentioned too.
This was the crux of the problem for me. Trying to sell the forum as run by the community for the community, when in fact it is a private enterprise is mis-selling. A âCommunity forumâ for the âSafenet communityâ should be run and self directed by the community itself, particularly given the total raison dâetre of the software, Maidsafeâs vision and the general philosophy with these crypto projects. All of the problems that this whole crypto movement tries to address are demonstrated in the structure/governance of this forum.
PS, I hope youâre right about Decorum.
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I was under the impression the forum was set up by maidsafe and moderated by community members. Is that correct?
I get and have sympathy with the views on over-sanitisation, but Iâm more interested in the âprivate enterpriseâ comment.
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@frabrunelle is admin and heâs working for Maidsafe as well. Maidsafe is also paying the bill and owning the domain (Maidsafe Foundation) since we went to the new (this) one. So overall, Maidsafe is âowningâ this place but itâs driven by community members. All mods help out voluntarily and except from @frabrunelle no one from Maidsafe is directing/modding or anything like that.
It was started by a community member in 2014 though. So if someone feels the need for a 100% community owned forum again they should start one as this one is paid for and âownedâ by the Maidsafe Foundation.
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This was not the case at the time of my last ban. After numerous attempts to establish who owned the forum, I learned it was Dallyshalla. Given this information I argued that this should not be the case and that it should be community or Maidsafe owned. I came up against a brick wall until eventually âsomebodyâ saw the light and created the new forum. I was banned just prior to saying âI told you soââŚlol
So what you are saying is that Maidsafe âinheritedâ the group of mods that neither they nor the community chose and that now these mods volunteer for Maidsafe?
So who is directing then if neither the community nor Maidsafe?
I see that this is all still as transparent as ever and it seems that those running it do not want to hand over the decision making to the larger community.
So let me get this straight, Maidsafe would prefer to pay for and support a centralised âcommunity forumâ with no accountability to the community whatsoever,rather than something that had the democratic consensus of the community?
OK, I believe Steemit will be introducing âcommunity groupsâ this year. I think Iâll start a âSafeNetwork communityâ over there. I would fully expect Maidsafe to have no issues with posting their dev updates there too and for the Maidsafe Foundation to be supportive?
This way the members of the community that were originally attracted by the whole de-centralising thing can debate whatever they want without fear of being ousted, where the ethos is more akin to the whole general crypto thing.
.
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Iâm sure youâll be willing to do that copy/paste for them. No need for them to scour the internet for forums to post to.
Yes of course I would be prepared to do that. However, scouring the internet will not be necessary as it will be the âSafeNetwork Community forumâ on Steemit, so shouldnât be any more âscouringâ involved than scouring for this forum.
The only problem with Maidsafe not doing it and leaving to me, is that it might send a message to the larger community that Maidsafe have a preference for centralised forums that are unaccountable to their users/communityâŚclaims of hypocrisy may ensue which would be bad publicity imo.
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Whatever dude.
What happens when I also create a forum? What happens when Jabba also creates a forum? What happens when thereâs also a reddit or two devoted to it? Why do you imagine that your forum will be the blessed one that maidsafe must post to, or face charges of hypocrisy?
Full of yourself much?
Create your forum, and copy/paste till your fingers bleed. Donât be saddling others with contributing to your project or face âclaims of hypocrisyâ.threats, which Iâm sure it would be you, yourself who would make.
Remember there are no bad guys or malicious actors here though Al-Kafir. Everyone is trying to do the right thing, even when we disagree. Itâs just the usual broken organisational structure and conflicting perspectives.
From the mods pov they are the community and they have been here since the start, volunteering tirelessly and developing their own sense of ownership for the forum. All quite understandable.
From the perspective of anyone who butts heads with them they are a clique of quite moderate and like-minded folks in a sea of radical, passionate, political people - from demanarchist to anarcho-marxists and anarcho-capitalist. Many of us are pretty keen on the âan archosâ, âwithout rulersâ bit though ;).
Thereâs been no accountability (frab is quite new), so members who differ in opinion have felt sidelined and weighed down by the like-minded consensus of mods. As Al-Kafir says, you face a brick wall. Theyâll listen, but you wonât change their minds and you have no avenue to find community consensus because they dump stuff in unseen sections like meta or off-topic rather than have full blown rows full of aggressive stuff hogging the front page.
All the mods are really good guys. I respect all of them. I do differ in opinion on matters of politics and community to most of them though. And it is frustrating, so I can see why so many have been banned for getting aggressive when they felt powerless and ganged up on.
Maybe in name, but really that isnât the case in practice when it comes to governance.
Anyway, itâs all moot now isnât it. Alpha 3 and MD are just around the corner and Harmen has been working hard to build the infrastructure that will free us from this conflict. Then we can all just be equals and equally empowered, we can have as much swearing or arguing as we want, choose whose style of moderation suits us and add their edit lists, and we will all have better relationships with each other as a consequence (imo).
Itâs just the same in here as out there. A whole load of people with different priorities and different ideas trying to do whatâs right. The problem is not the people or the range of opinion, the problem is finding ways to manage things without dominion and the inevitable harm caused by any centralisation of power. Thatâs a pretty tough ask of this forum given the setup and technology weâre using, with part-time volunteer mods. Itâll be inevitable on decorum though. /bringiton I love me some drama and a good row 
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And just as a quick thought experimentâŚ
On decorum, if I make my edit list strictly spam âI delete spam and NOTHING elseâ
Then another person declares that they will delete âall spam, swearing, racism and aggressive threatsâ
Which of the two lists do you think will get more subscribers and why?
People love drama and even though most agree and about when weâre all offended, in actual fact we get drawn to offensive stuff like a moth to a flame.
Thatâs one of the reasons Iâm always happy to have a row and say my piece. Iâm of the opinion that it is almost always a good thing. Arguments can be a very positive force, itâs stale and dull when everyone agrees. 
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âŚand as soon as I agree to do this:[quote=âTom_Carlson, post:116, topic:12159â]
What happens when I also create a forum? What happens when Jabba also creates a forum? What happens when thereâs also a reddit or two devoted to it? Why do you imagine that your forum will be the blessed one that maidsafe must post to
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The mods POV is clearly both arrogant and incorrect then. I and others have also been here from the start and tirelessly arguing against the unaccountable nature of the set up most of this time. I agree with the rest of your post, however didnât mention bad guys/malicious actors. The problem is though that neither you, I or anyone else knows whether those running the forum are bad actors or not - because none of us assessed them for their modding ability/character or chose them. Private, non accountable entities are generally acting in their own interests and if they actually were acting in the communityâs interests, then they would be accountable to them - not fight tooth and nail for the continuance of the community being accountable to the private interests. There is a basic conflict of interest that wouldnât exist if the larger community chose the mods.
PS
It wouldnât be âmyâ forum, it would be a community run forum. The only privately âownedâ forum is the one you are currently posting on.[quote=âTom_Carlson, post:116, topic:12159â]
Full of yourself much?
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eh?
âŚand what makes you so sure of that if I may ask? Do you honestly think Iâd be the only person to notice the glaring hypocrisy?
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Well, we kinda do and Maidsafe chose them, which Iâm cool with, it is their forum and their project after all.
To me the problem was really not having an involved maidsafe rep like frabrunelle from the start. It would have been more tolerable for people to have been told that this is a private website run by a private company with its own rules, so live by them or shut up. It was much harder to swallow with community-mods calling the shots and no effective route to accountability or conflict resolution with any justified authority.
I donât think this forum really needs to be democratically self-moderated anyway, it just needed to be clearly maidsafeâs, not the mod clique who were calling the shots. If it is a private company and they have staff running it then who is anyone to tell them what to put on their forum?!
If it describes itself as community managed then it is a problem because the expectation is that the community itself has some say. The people feel rightly frustrated, because it isnât the private company that owns it making the decisions, itâs just a clique of a few people who share the same pov. I have no issue with it being a private, maidsafe forum with staff like frabs making the final call. I did take issue with it being a âcommunityâ forum that was neither run by the community nor the company and was therefore run from mod pov, not community management pov.
They are good guys though. Your suggestions that they might operate beyond what they believe are the best interests of the community is a little insulting considering how much work they put in; I will distance myself from that comment despite agreeing with the general thrust of your argument.
Ok, enough from my big mouth. My arm is getting tired from all this pot-stirring.
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Just going back to your point that the mods pov is that they are the community - do you not find this insulting? The point I was making is that whether or not they believe they are acting in the communityâs interests is irrelevant. It pre-supposes that the community is unable to decide whats in its own interest for itself. It dictates to the community rather than defers to it. I find this condescending.I do not think I said anything insulting btw. Insulting is more like the @Tom_Carlson postâŚlol