Everyone has their right to their own opinion, and their opinion can be heard in appropriate threads. Remember, one’s opinion doesn’t outwit another.
Both sides, even though you might not agree with them bring valuable and insightful Information to the discussion. But we all have a role in preventing the discussion from becoming argumentive.
As @Bort said we (staff) are currently discussing this - the intention is to give a response to @firetorch questions later today
In the interim I ask that everyone takes a step back at this point before the thread descends into further needless argument.
Ok…
Let’s start with @Firetorch original post:
As far as I’m concerned, as long as you’re not talking about something that either is off-topic (ie about an unrelated outlet), breaks a law or is considered a ‘verboten’ topic by staff, there is no restriction on what you can discuss in a thread.
What this might mean (and something that we may need to consider) is splitting some threads into multiple discussions, similar to what we’ve done in the Television News section - how this would work is not something I have any concrete ideas on (and may not be necessary in some cases).
This is a difficult one and is not something that can be summed up in some kind of catch-all ruling - it may need to depend on the circumstance. My initial reaction is as long as it contributes something meaningful to the discussion and is not an attempt to derail the thread then it shouldnt matter how many times it is raised
Again this can be difficult to establish some kind of hard-and-fast rule and requires those participating in the conversation (regardless of what side of the debate they take) to take some responsibility for ensuring this won’t happen. I favour self-moderation over staff intervention, but there will be times where staff will issue what is in effect a ‘move on’ order.
Posting for the sole purpose of baiting others is not acceptable - I would have thought that this goes without saying.
I’d like to think we shouldn’t need to clarify a position on this issue, but clearly, we need to (and hopefully above does this)
There can be a fine line between debate (and banter) and trolling and flaming and drawing the line between the two can be very subjective - someone who has a different opinion to you isn’t instantly a troll.
In the main this is true, however we allow all-encompassing discussion about matters related to the media and current affairs, which by their nature are often political - where we can, these have been separated out into “The Spectrum” to move them away from the core theme (for want of a better term) of the site.
Participating in these threads (and the forum in general) is by choice - I would suggest that anybody wanting to participate in some of the more political aspects of discussion need to consider whether they are willing to discuss matters with others who may share diametrically opposed views to you and are willing to debate them in a potentially vociferous manner. I’d like to think that if you’re willing to wade your way into the political discussion, you’d be willing to accept this.
Time for some honesty - the way some have carried on about this issue is disappointing, particularly given that in the main you are intelligent people. There is no need for discussions to get derailed to such a point that it becomes something you’d see in the schoolyard.
People have different opinions and they may look at the same as you slightly differently. This doesn’t automatically make them a worse person than you.
I strongly believe that debating is a healthy and important skill that you can have - even if you only ever use it bashing the keys on your keyboard, but you also need to know where debating starts and stops (and escalates to something else)
I’d prefer not to have to take drastic action - penalty boxing, removing posting privileges to certain areas, restricting discussion of certain issues etc, however, this is guided by the conduct of the member-base.
Now in closing, I will envisage some of you will believe that I’m taking one side over the another - this simply isn’t true. I have responded to the direct questions that @Firetorch has posted as a clarification - if this doesn’t offer sufficient clarification or you have subsequent questions, please ask them here - from here out for this discussion, any attempt to snipe another member or to continue the bickering will be simply deleted.
If you have an issue with anything else I’ve raised here (other than what I’ve said directly above), please let me know (preferably by PM, there is no need for this thread to be further clogged up with the continuance of this discussion)
No further issue; thanks for addressing my three specific points.
Youtube videos are failing to be embedded.
yes, we’re aware - appears to be a bug in the latest version
Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but how come there seems to be a temporary outage pretty much every day around 1.40pm or so (Sydney time)?
yeah, we have backup issues atm - I’ve been trying to resolve it, hopefully today’s fix works
Testing youtube embedded.
Looks like all polls have being reset.
Yes, it’s blank.
What’s happened to embedded images? I used to be able to only change one listed dimension and it would auto-correct the remaining dimension (to list smaller images side-by-side). Now, it doesn’t do that, and the embedding HTML has changed. Please help!
Who is playing around with my Badges?
I seem to be getting notifications that I earned ‘Media Spy Veteran’ about every day…
probably no one but because you’re dipping in and out of the threshold of the percentage of posts/posters for the vet. badge.
^ that
I’ll have y’all know that @LukeMovieMan is in charge of deciding who is and who is not a veteran. This determination also extends to doyens, stalwarts, and Masterchefs.
Ta
Looks like the Youtube Embedding has not been fixed.
