Website issues and improvements.

[GrooveWindow]

Nor sure if anyone else has noticed this, but when I click "I understand" on the banner about cookies, it takes me to viewtopic.php?acceptCookies, which doesn't exist. Going back or opening the link in a new tab don't get rid of the banner. Not really a huge complaint, but I figured someone might want to know!

[Binky The Rabbit]

Oh yeah, I've had that too. Forgot to mention it!

[ThePest179]

Unless you are outright being a jerk to someone for their opinion, stating your own opinion is NOT banworthy.

 

No, no, no. Several examples I listed were outright bigoted, and the ones I think should be met with bans were direct calls for real world violence.

 

I will report things I find offensive and such from now on, but I think we should make it clear that bigotry, murder fantasies, and calls for violence should be met with a harsh response.

[K4_Kydure]

I will report things I find offensive and such from now on, but I think we should make it clear that bigotry, murder fantasies, and calls for violence should be met with a harsh response.

 

I'm sorry for having an opinion. Wait, I'm not.

 

 

 

In other news, the UCP is still not fixed.

[Blightmare]

Clear bigotry is already against the rules.

 

"4. This kind of falls under #1, but don't say overtly racist or sexist things that would probably be classified in a court as hate speech."

 

It should also be noted that while they aren't stated in the rules, murder fantasies and calls for violence will be met with the same response that any breach in the rules would be: issue will be dealt with based on the severity. For example, saying "I wish that would just die" while it COULD be an example of a minor murder fantasy, and while morally debatable, probably wouldn't earn you much more than a raised eyebrow and a subject change. However, stating how you want to kill someone and going into detail about how you'd do it would probably land you a temp ban if not permanent.

 

Edit: Everyone should take a minute to read up on the rules. viewtopic.php?f=20&t=13

[Lord Sinister]

Nor sure if anyone else has noticed this, but when I click "I understand" on the banner about cookies, it takes me to http://accursedfarms.com/forums/viewtopic.php?acceptCookies, which doesn't exist. Going back or opening the link in a new tab don't get rid of the banner. Not really a huge complaint, but I figured someone might want to know!

 

Oh yeah, I've had that too. Forgot to mention it!

 

Thanks, this has now been fixed.

 

I'm sorry for having an opinion. Wait, I'm not.

 

You can have whatever opinion you want. You do NOT always have to share it. This is directed at everyone.

 

Important note: Someone 'may' have the opinion that "All *insert social group* are evil and should be killed, brutally, in front of their families/with their families." A statement along the lines of that may also include a fair amount of swearing to emphasise the 'strength' of their opinion.

 

A statement along those lines could well be the opinion of that someone, but it would also generally be considered offensive to the reasonable majority and does not need to be said. Now you may argue over technicalities, maybe it's not phrased exactly like that, maybe it's about something that 'most' people will hate, but if you can't phrase it in a 'reasonable manner', ie something that doesn't violate the forum rules, then it doesn't need to be said here.

 

The maintenance of free-speech whilst at the same time trying to ensure that the environment is pleasant for the majority is a fine-line, just like in real-life! It will never be perfect, there will be mistakes, things may get overlooked, there will always be room for improvement. Just like real-life.

 

As a general rule-of-thumb, if you have a particular thing you wish to say on this forum, think about whether or not you would go out onto some random street and state what you would have said on the forum to several complete strangers (having gotten their attention), and try to imagine their reaction. Maybe the intended reaction IS to cause offence (although if that's the case, then you already know you're going to be violating the rules anyway).

 

Now people may well try to invoke 'technicalities' in the above ("I have no streets like that where I live" or "No one on my street would be offended by the stuff I'm saying"), however those who do invoke those perceived technicalities would merely be trying to sidestep the rather obvious points I've made above, and no amount of further explaining from me will help.

 

Too-Long-Did-Not-Read?: You really should, but the bottom-line is, be a reasonable person.

 

In other news, the UCP is still not fixed.

 

I'm still looking into this. I haven't been able to replicate the problem locally, bizarrely enough, which has made the task of investigating this issue particularly troublesome.

[Alyxx Thorne]

I'm glad we can be clear on what is tolerated and not. Hate speech is not.

[Binky The Rabbit]

You can have whatever opinion you want. You do NOT always have to share it. This is directed at everyone.

 

Gonna need this on a banner please. With flashing LEDs around it.

[K4_Kydure]

In other news, the UCP is still not fixed.

 

I'm still looking into this. I haven't been able to replicate the problem locally, bizarrely enough, which has made the task of investigating this issue particularly troublesome.

Have you looked into this? My husband has coded forums from scratch before so there's a very good chance this could be an issue.

From my experience, what I can tell is a fucked up installation of phpbb, or a messed up attempt to update it, or the FTP server at one point ate some important php tables/pages.

 

Probably would need a clean install, should be okay with the forum Mysql database as long as the sql tables are left intact.

[Binky The Rabbit]

Would it be worth having downtime to fix it? Not that I want the forum offline, but if it makes fixing it easier/quicker...

(I know not how these things work)

[Alyxx Thorne]

Would it be worth having downtime to fix it? Not that I want the forum offline, but if it makes fixing it easier/quicker...

(I know not how these things work)

The reason he's doing his work offline is to keep that from happening cause THAT could take a long time...

[Lord Sinister]

Have you looked into this? My husband has coded forums from scratch before so there's a very good chance this could be an issue.

From my experience, what I can tell is a fucked up installation of phpbb, or a messed up attempt to update it, or the FTP server at one point ate some important php tables/pages.

 

I believe it's an issue with how it's been merged with Wordpress. There's a plugin being used called WP-United that has had its way with PHPBB's stuff.

 

I made a complete copy of the web-pages and the databases and set them up in a local VM. Without making any changes. The issues didn't present themselves (the UCP pages worked, you can log out, etc). This suggests to me that there may be some global server setting, service, etc, that is interfering, but I've not been able to find any helpful logs on just what the problem could be. It may be something that I can't access.

 

Probably would need a clean install, should be okay with the forum Mysql database as long as the sql tables are left intact.

 

I don't know how 'intact' the forum's database is following the WP-United stuff.

 

Would it be worth having downtime to fix it? Not that I want the forum offline, but if it makes fixing it easier/quicker...

(I know not how these things work)

 

It might. I'd want to enable the forum's debug mode and try to enable every possible way of displaying error messages (not a good idea to leave stuff like that enabled as there may be security implications). I need the error messages as a baseline in order to identify what exactly's going wrong. My whole reason for having an offline copy was to avoid the risk of potentially breaking the Live site further during my attempts to fix it.

 

I AM working on the overall problem, but there won't be a quick solution I'm afraid.

[ThePest179]

I'm glad we can be clear on what is tolerated and not. Hate speech is not.

 

I think the real problem here is "what constitutes hate speech?", because for me, this is a clear example of hate speech, and should have been met with disciplinary action:

 

a white heretosexual male to have the same worth as said male.

So less worth for almost everyone else in the USA, (currently being a white male means that you will not get a high paying job anywhere, if you don't already have one) stay the exact same in most of the European countries, lose most value in the middle east and asia, and gain a small amount of worth in the top 1% of earners world wide.

 

Discrimination is very common against the white male, simply because of the quotas to hire the minorities. (these quotas are so that companies can get massive amounts of government money for free, at least in the USA) Females and minorities in the USA are given better initial pay offerings and benefits to entice them, and it all revolves around getting paid by the government to not hire white men. (a white man and a black man apply for the same job, the white man is perfectly qualified and experienced for the position and the black man has no qualifications or experience at all, the company will hire the black man, same goes for any woman)

 

The problem isn't that minorities are underrepresented, it's that everyone overreacts when they hear about any form of 'discrimination' when it involves a minority. Hire based on qualifications, not based on gender or skin color. (and quit hiring H1-B visas for $30k/yr for jobs that should pay $150+k/yr)

[Alyxx Thorne]

In my opinion it is formulated in a way that doesn't come off as hate speech, just his opinion.

[ThePest179]

In my opinion it is formulated in a way that doesn't come off as hate speech, just his opinion.

 

Sorry, but I could not disagree more. As you're a mod I can't really do anything about it, but I'm just saying that I think this kind of sentiment allows bigotry to be aired without consequence.

[Binky The Rabbit]

Discrimination is very common against the white male, simply because of the quotas to hire the minorities. (these quotas are so that companies can get massive amounts of government money for free, at least in the USA) Females and minorities in the USA are given better initial pay offerings and benefits to entice them, and it all revolves around getting paid by the government to not hire white men. (a white man and a black man apply for the same job, the white man is perfectly qualified and experienced for the position and the black man has no qualifications or experience at all, the company will hire the black man, same goes for any woman)

 

One can interpret a prejudiced sentiment in this, but it is not explicitly promoting discrimination against minorities. It's tricky and a fine line, as Lord Sinister says. What I see here is a rather controversial opinion, and is more a criticism of employment methods than a dig at actual ethnic minorities.

 

The "'gay-rights' assholes" comment is closer to what you're getting at, Pest179.

[rliant1864]

This is why a lot of countries go with the 'call to action' rule. There's no line between 'hate speech' and 'an opinion' because hate speech is expressing an opinion others find hateful. Therefore the only thing that can be fairly judged is whether the speaker is calling others to harm against someone else over those beliefs, which in itself is troubling because acceptable beliefs call others to action (even violent action, such war hawks in Congress) all the time without punishment.

 

It's very hard to avoid active censorship in this matter.

[GrooveWindow]

I feel like this thread is now becoming a debate platform instead of just a place to list issues in the forums. I'm no mod, but can we try to bring this thread back to its original intent? I'm sure there are other places to discuss the line between free speech and hate speech.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Indeed. Let's not get sidetracked. If you wanna debate these issues, keep it to the debate forum.

[zach]

Have you looked into this? My husband has coded forums from scratch before so there's a very good chance this could be an issue.

From my experience, what I can tell is a fucked up installation of phpbb, or a messed up attempt to update it, or the FTP server at one point ate some important php tables/pages.

 

I believe it's an issue with how it's been merged with Wordpress. There's a plugin being used called WP-United that has had its way with PHPBB's stuff.

 

I made a complete copy of the web-pages and the databases and set them up in a local VM. Without making any changes. The issues didn't present themselves (the UCP pages worked, you can log out, etc). This suggests to me that there may be some global server setting, service, etc, that is interfering, but I've not been able to find any helpful logs on just what the problem could be. It may be something that I can't access.

 

Probably would need a clean install, should be okay with the forum Mysql database as long as the sql tables are left intact.

 

I don't know how 'intact' the forum's database is following the WP-United stuff.

 

Would it be worth having downtime to fix it? Not that I want the forum offline, but if it makes fixing it easier/quicker...

(I know not how these things work)

 

It might. I'd want to enable the forum's debug mode and try to enable every possible way of displaying error messages (not a good idea to leave stuff like that enabled as there may be security implications). I need the error messages as a baseline in order to identify what exactly's going wrong. My whole reason for having an offline copy was to avoid the risk of potentially breaking the Live site further during my attempts to fix it.

 

I AM working on the overall problem, but there won't be a quick solution I'm afraid.

 

Ah yes,

 

A few months ago, I grabbed the mysql database and threw it on a fresh installation of phpbb and there were no issues at all. That's probably the best possible option going forward, but we'd need to change themes, as this one hasn't been updated in /ages/.