• Anything ‘published’ on the web is viewed as intellectual property and, regardless of whether it displays a copyright symbol or not, is therefore copyrighted by the originator. The only exception to this is if there is a “free and unrestricted reuse” statement associated with the work.

    In order to protect our members and TFL from possible litigation, all members must abide by the following new rules:

    1. Copying and pasting entire articles from another site to TFL is strictly prohibited. The same applies to articles from print or other media, and to posting photographs taken of copyrighted pages or other media.

    2. Copyright law provides for “fair use” of portions of a copyrighted work. You can copy no more than a SINGLE paragraph from the article to your post (3 or 4 sentences at most).

    3. You must provide a link to the article along with the name of website. For example: ww.xxx.yyy/zzz (The Lower Thumbsuck Daily News).

    4. You must provide, in your own words, a brief summary of the article AND your reasons for believing it will be of interest to TFL members. Failure to do so may result in the thread being closed or your post being deleted as a “cut and paste drive by.”

    5. Photographs and other images are also copyrighted. "Hotlinking" of images (so that it appears in your message) from other sites is also prohibited unless you own rights to the image. If you wish to share an image, provide a clickable link to it.

    Posts that do not follow these new guidelines will be altered or deleted by staff. Members who continue to violate this policy may lose their posting privileges at TFL.

    Thank you for your cooperation and your participation in TFL, the leading online forum for firearms enthusiasts.

Moderators recusal from infracting members

Status
Not open for further replies.
W

Willie Sutton

Moderator
Gents (Moderators),

As a Moderator myself on another forum (not firearms related) with as large a membership as you have here, I am confronted personally with the difficulties in moderation. One of the hardest things to do is to both participate in the give and take of a discussion (as an ordinary member) and interpose upon that the duties of a moderator. On the forum that I moderate, our rule is that we do not infract a member in any conversation that we are personally engaged in, and as a more abolute rule we NEVER issue an infraction if we believe that we *ourselves* are the subject of any off TOS or infractable offense. It is a conflict of interest for a Moderator to infract a member for a discussion that a Moderator is taking part in personally. Generally if we feel that a look is indicated, we ask another moderator to take a look, and then that moderator in discussion with other staff members takes action.

I find myself with an infraction given by a moderator with whom I have been having a friendly exchange, which is the point of the forum. Tit for tat, he ridiculed me, and I exchanged back a good natured and well intended bit of ridicule myself in the friendly spirit of camaraderie. His responce instead of a smile and a "OK.. ya got me" was to (1) Issue an immediate infraction, (2): delete the posting, and (3) Lock the thread to prevent retort.

I believe that this response by the staff member is a serious conflict of interest, and is not in the best keeping of the traditions that we all expect. I am agrieved, and have so indicated to the moderator in question. I asked him to privately consider the ramifications of conflict of interest and let me know his thoughts, he has not responded, and thus I put it to the staff.

Would you please take up this subject privately, and come to a concensus opinion regarding conflict of interest and moderation? The general rules of most forums are that moderators either participate in a thread, or they moderate it, but that they do not do both.

I would appreciate a private response to this so that I know that it has been addressed, and what the policy might be.


Respectfully,

Willie

.
 
Last edited:
Point of order... If you wanted a private response, you should have sent this privately instead of lecturing our staff about what other forums do.

Additionally, complaints about moderator actions taken against you are also not to be aired in the public forums, but taken up with the moderator who took the action.

For those two reasons, I am closing this thread.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top