10/13 Now that we're making a user-tracking, totalitarian motd in the
future, I want to use all the remaining freedom to insult people.
Whoever proposed this idea, fuck you. Paolo is an ass and
all heil German John. Viva la libertarian-style motd!!!
\_ What is wrong with root having a way to track who posted what when
someone complains about inappropriate behavior on the motd? Why is
everyone complaining? The fact that Politburo has had to make the
decision to put a system in place to keep a log is not a symptom of
a "totalitarian regime," but rather a forum where people's blatant
disrespect for each other caused a problem that had to be addressed.
You will still have your anonymity so you can troll away at each
other, but root will finally have the ability to look at a private
log IF AND WHEN the need arises to take care of issues that get out
of hand. No one will be monitoring the log, lording over you with
the wiggling finger. Life will continue on as normal. But finally,
those anonymous cowards who use unconventional motd posting means to
threaten others will have to check themselves knowing that if they
make a real threat and someone complains, that there will be
judgment on their not-so-anonymous self. The only people
complaining about root having logs are those who are the people
doing the threatening and are worried that they cannot continue to
do so anonymously. Get a life, grow up, and be civil to each other
(insult each other all you want, we don't care. Just don't cross
the line and make real threats.). Sheesh. - jvarga
\_ The problem as I see it isn't so much the tracking mechanism,
but the vagueness of the standard for breaking anonymity in a
forum where some pretty hot-topic issues are often addressed.
I'm rather uncomfortable knowing that we are giving power to
tantrumy admins without any real limitations or clear standards
of application. Honestly, don't our stewards have more important
things to do than chase after lackwit trolls? -mice
\_ If all they're really doing is logging this shit somewhere, I don't
think it will matter. What the cowards who like censorship fail
to understand is how many of the trolls have the personality that
tends to tell people to go fuck themselves straight to their face.
Overall, I don't think the level of debate is really that much
lower here than at the national level anyway. Don't forget we
recently had the Vice President of the United States tell a
senator to go fuck himself, on record, in the senate.
\_ It isn't about trolls. Trolling is one of the 'fun' things about
anonymity. If you're going to get ballistic when someone posts a
random link you deserve what you get. I see the problem being
with people who instead of saying "fuck you" (which is just
stupid), make threats to life, limb, reputation, etc. At that
point there needs to be recourse, otherwise the CSUA is just
providing a means to attempt to ruin another person with no way
for the victim to even know who is doing it much less have a
chance of stopping it. Trolling is posting random stupid links.
Going after someone in a personal way is not trolling. That is
harassment at a minimum and shouldn't be tolerated. This comes
back to the question raised several weeks ago about fresh blood
on the motd. Why would any new person want to step into such an
environment? And why can't we have an environment better than
the rest of the net or the Senate floor, or where ever? Just
because another place sucks is no reason we have to emulate that.
\_ I think you summarised the reasoning (if not improved upon
it) during the meeting. We were thinking that it really
wasn't a constructive thing for people to be abusing the
anonimity to threaten others. This is absolutely not intended
to be a "politburo intends to be the thought police" system.
The logs will also be root-only accessible and we're toying
with putting in a system such that you need two members of
root to access them. -mrauser
\_ Just out of silly curiosity, has this happened to any serious
extent, has anyone been affected physically by this, or is
it a case of "won't someone think of the children"? -John
\_ What benefit is it to the CSUA to have the MOTD anonymous?
(Unlike pretty much every other form of electronic
communication). Is having wall logs "thinking of the
children"?
People should be accountable for what they say. -tom
\_ Do you mean, "Has anyone not gotten involved with the
motd because it is overly caustic?" If so, Yes.
\- non-anon wont solve the causticity problem
\_ Sure, but what was pp asking?
\_ No, has anyone been attacked/gotten in a fight/whatever,
because of what was said on the motd and complained, or
or has the CSUA been told off by a roving gang of UC
lawyers, or is this just a case of "well no, but it
_could_ happen"? Is there a binding definition of
"harassment" from any authority that governs the CSUA?
I'm just curious... -John
\_ People no longer post here. Isn't that enough? How
many more have to be chased off? Just because they
didn't file some sort of 'official' complaint with
politburo, it is ok they left after enough abuse?
Why does someone have to be beaten with a bat for
it to matter?
\_ I seem to recall people complaining about and
leaving the wall too.
There can never be enough chasing. We must
chase unto the hundreds, the thousands, the
hundreds of thousands. They shall all run before
the mighty motd. Kneel before motd.
(anyway, isn't it ironic that in the jblack case,
the only reason he became a "threat target" is
that other people de-anonymized him in the first
place?)
\_ From the minutes:
"Some people want to make [motd] semi-non-anymonous.
We don't want to be in trouble with libel, slander,
threats, etc. ... the people whoa re being attacked
are not complaining about it, it's not really a
problem! the message was just a troll ... we are
sorta sanctioning this simply by keeping it there
and not responding to these kind of threats"
I read this to mean Politburo (4 out of 5) got
freaked out about the GUN DUEL references, even
though it was a troll. Could be wrong.
\_ BUD DAY doesn't like your tone.
\_ Not the gun duel, jblack hater guy
threatening anonymous harrassment and abuse.
/--/
http://csua.com/?entry=39902
I suppose it's good they haven't heard about GUN DUEL
yet ...
\_ Man, can't two consenting adults even talk about
organizing GUN DUEL without everyone getting all
freaky about it? If it was jblack hater being
a weenie, and jblack complaining, that's one thing,
but I don't seem to recall either of the parties
involved in GUN DUEL raising a stink. -John
\_ "the people whoa re being attacked are not
complaining about it ... we are sorta
sanctioning this simply by keeping it there
[etc.]"
\_ So the people who are being attacked are
not complaining. Perhaps they get the joke?
It's the freakin' motd. I barely take the
news links seriously.
\_ They complained. They up and left, duh.
Just because they didn't file an official
complaint and fill out some paper work,
you think it's ok they're not here any
more? The motd is enriched by them
leaving? Sheesh.
\_ And that benefits the CSUA...how? -tom
\_ Allows those who have a minority,
maginalized, or unpopular opinion to
speak out. Allows people to judge the
opinion separately from judging the
person. And allows yermom to accept
all the action she can take without
you feeling bad about it.
\_ We can have an anonymous motd
without the assault and abuse.
I'm totally in favor of what you're
saying right here, but I'm totally
opposed to allowing people to abuse
their anonymous privs to attack
other people. Post your troll
links, post your minority opinion,
but don't expect to get away with
direct personal threats and
assault be it virtual or physical.
\_ I don't care about user tracking as long as our stupid
libertarian stops trolling and nuking the motd.
\- anonymity enables discussion of certain topics that may not
be discussed non-anonymously. non-anonymity, as the wall
very nicely proves, will not make things warm and fuzzy. --psb
\_ The Delaware S. Ct. just ruled on the issue of anon speech
on the internet. If anyone is interested the opinion is at:
http://www.internetcases.com/library/cases/2005-10-05-doe_v_cahill.pdf
Of interest may be the cts assertion that the constitutional
rights of Internet users to speak anonymously must be
"carefully safeguarded."
\- this is about whether the sloda motd should be anonymous
or not. you can support the possibility of anon speech without
being obligated to provide a particular channel. although it
is certainly true there are blurry areas ... like can a town
deny a speech permit to somebody because it will cost thousands
of dollars in police overtime [stipulating that this isnt a
sham excuse]. does it matter whether it is an anti-BUSHCO
parade or a neo-nazi parade [see skokie case] or say a parade
to laude the virtues of IKEA or INNNOUT BURGER. i think one of
the more interesting free speech cases is PRUNEYARD v. ROBBINS.
i am not suggesting you are sugesting a legal obligation here,
but i think it is clear "the csua" can do what it wants with
the motd, just as i think it is clear it is clownheaded to
put these restrictions on the motd. now if somebody else wanted
to created /foo/bar/non-clownlike-motd-for-non-softheaded-adults
which was anonymous and "the CSUA" smacked that down without
a pretty compelling interest ... that would seem to be to be
pretty suspect.
\_ Is the politburo committed to monitoring just motd or any
world writable file which may be used for motd-like purposes?
\- i think they are committed to being clownlike. and to
AssOS 2.6, apparently.
\_ To be fair, these are a bunch of 20-year olds making
political and technical decisions. How high should
our expectations be?
\_ They are 20 yr olds at Cal; we should expect
a bit more than latest 1337est.
\_ I would guess that almost all of us were once
20-year old students at Cal. I was one too. I
think I calibrated my expectations appropriately.
And we are not moving to linux because it's the
latest l337est; we're linux because the vp
couldn't get bsd running. I calibrated my
expectations based on that too (not so much that
he couldn't get it up but rather he's unable to
determine root cause).
\_ The current VP, being completely inept in all
ways, shape, and form, did not try to get
freebsd running. He came in, did nothing, got
chastized for doing nothing, then suddenly
embarked on some sort of religious crusade of
"I'm going to try and get people to stop
calling me inept so I'm going to try and get
new soda working." I have had new soda, for
the most part, working since February. I've
had logins up, home directories mounted, and
about 90% of the other stuff working. Brett
and seidl were great and got apache and list
stuff working, and there was/is only a small
list of stuff left to do. However, despite
my monthly "this is is an explicit list of
all there is left to do that I don't know how
to do," Politburo, and the VP especially,
claim that I don't tell anyone anything.
C'mon! I explicitly said "anyone that can
help, please email me and I'll enable your
login." Instead I get amckee telling
everyone that nothing works because he cannot
log in (I never enabled his login because he
threw a temper tantrum and refused to help).
Anyway, to get back to the point, we tried
loading up new soda with Freebsd 6 this last
weekend to see if the new kernel fixes the
issues we had installing 5.3, but
unfortunately it did not. Mbh decided to load
Gentoo onto the system just to play around and
when it booted decided that he was going to
push to make Gentoo the new OS for soda since
the current system was "unusable" to him. So,
despite the page-long list of reasons that I
provided as to why changing soda to Gentoo
would be a Very Bad Thing(tm), he still wants
to go forward with it because he thinks it is
cool to compile the OS from scratch. The
\_ So it is latest 1337est! Anyway
if he really wants to do this,
why doesn't he try OpenSolaris?
At least it is meant for adults.
-curmudgeon
\_ You can compile freebsd from scratch too.
guy wants to change soda's OS and claims that
he is willing to deal with all the fun that
comes from that, when he had to ask a few
days ago how to find out when someone logged
on last. Sorry about the ventness of this
post, but I have been getting jerked around
by the inept politburo for the past 2 months,
dealing with lie after lie about me and am
trying to fight for some semblence of
rationality, but am getting tired of doing
so. - jvarga
\_ GO JVARGA GO! W00T! -John
\_ From the meeting minutes I couldn't
really figure out what the problem
was other than it won't boot.
BTW, any reason Linux was picked
instead of say OpenSolaris? A
friend of mine works on OpenSolaris,
I could probably get him to help w/
installing it, &c. over winter break.
The zones stuff could be useful on
soda.
\_ Why? They don't want your advice, and if
you are there to help, you are expected to
blindly execute their wishes. Do you
really want to be their house nigger?
\_ um? wow.
\_ If you want to create ~wierdo/sleezepit.motd in your
homedir, where you can slander, insult, and threaten
anyone your welcome to do so according to me. The
CSUA motd should be a place where new students won't
instantly be scared off by the sheer immaturity and
low level of dialogue which occurs there. -mrauser
\_ I am not suggesting that the csua will be violating any
fundamental right by monitoring the motd; the politburo
can implement whatever policy it desires. However, I
think that perhaps they should consider the fact that
some very smart people feel that anon speech is impt.
Re the suggestion that the motd scares people off - this
isn't kindergarten; students admitted to cal ought to
have sufficient critical thinking skills to identify
inanity and ignore it (including perhaps this post).
Some of us were ugs when the motd was far less civilized
AND showed up by default; if we managed to survive viewing
it on a daily basis, the current crop of kids can too.
\- on reflection it is kind of interesting that the CSUA
has not passed a policy decision that "we will be nice
on the motd" but has directly gone to considering
de-anonymizing the motd ... which should make you all
particularly nervous ... since it seems like you are
essentially relying on the "chilling effect" of being
found out to condition behavior. ok say i call somebody
a dumbass and now that can be conclusively tracked back
to me ... am i in violation of csua policy? what policy
am i in violation of? does it matter if the person i am
calling a dumbass is not offended enough to "press charges"?
what if i dont call him a dumbass but give a detail point
by point discussion why he is wrong and this ends up
being far more humiliating than a "mere" ad hominem?
are only point-to-point insults of other sloda people
fair game? what if somebody discusses outsourcing of
programmers or back office stuff and suggests (all)
indians are incompetent programmers or out to use your
private tax info for identify theft type reasons?
is that grounds to piece the veil of anonymity and
smack somebody down? if youa re not even going to entertain
the notion of the smackdown, what is the point of the
ability to deanonymize? and if the smack down is on the
table, what are the grounds. the solitary grounds i can
think possibly for a smackdown is forging a post as
the danhimal iff the danimal complains. say you call
the poliburo "clowns", how many of the pburo would it
take to mount a prosecution? 1? plurality? is it not ok
to call them clowns in the motd, but ok on the wall?
--psb
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\_ Please don't un-anonymous the motd, my burgeoning troll farm will
wither. :( -John |
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