Why Jefe has punished many of us.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

That's such a load of crap. It's not what you think as much as it is how you go about expressing it.

Maybe Indy can give us a seminar. Indy, how do you say, "Boy, that Sister Beck's talk was a load of crap" on CB and not get banned?

[Lost Student]

Originally Posted by Tim

Viper:

I'm not a moderator. I'm actually an anti-moderator. I'm on the "Rules Committee," which El Jefe put together as a means of making sure the moderators don't have too much power. We read appeals and then offer recommendations on the appeals.

To be honest, I read your initial appeal, and it sucked. All you did was play the victim -- you went on and on about how unfair you felt it was, how El Jefe must have it out for you, etc. You called El Jefe "stupid" and "so ridiculous." Not exactly what I would consider a reasonable appeal worth paying attention to.

And the fact remains that El Jefe suspended you for advertising your business on the site, which he does to everyone who advertises their business on the site. I don't necessarily agree with all of Jefe's rules, but they are what they are (Paging Dennis Green: "They are [what] we that they were."), and you and I and everyone else on the board agreed to them at signup time.

Next time I'd recommend a more reserved and respectful appeal. I would actually encourage you to try it now, even.

Tim

I would like to post the appeal that I wrote a few weeks ago after receiving a 14 day ban for posting information about copyright violation. My appeal was semi-successfull (my sentence was abated to what I asked).

Originally Posted by me

Jefe: May it please the court, my boardname is lawcoug and I represent myself in this matter.

I think that 14 days is excessive punishment for my infraction. Jefe stated that there would be a minimum punishment of 7 days. I should get no more than the minimum prescribed punishment because my post only minimally passed the threshold of breaking the rule--I only suggested that BitTorrent was an available means of downloading videos of games while giving no specifics of file location. I did not explicitly state that there was a BYU game available for download (even though there is in fact such a BitTorrent available at http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3816052/BYU_v s._AFA_9_22_07 if your honor is so inclined to access it). I also specifically discouraged copyright violation in the post in question.

Because BitTorrent is a general file sharing protocol with many substantial noninfringing uses (See, e.g. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)), merely discussing using BitTorrent does not necessarily amount to a discussion of copyright subversion.

It is understood that a mod may "read between the lines" of my post, as the guiding authority in a post "Slingbox clarification" (by Jefe, posted on Sep 21, 2007 - 09:58pm PST, hereinafter "Clarification Post") stated that posters which a mod "deem[s] to be discussing ways to violate copyright" will be penalized. It is because of this lattitude to interpret and infer given to mods by Clarification Post that I do not argue against a penalty per se. However, if one were to take my post at face value and not ascribe any secondary meaning to it, there was no infraction at all.

I argue that to make such an inference from my post, by "reading between the lines," that leads to a punishment that is double the stated minimum is unduly excessive. If I had more explicitly broken the rules found in Clarification Post, I would agree that 14 days would be a just punishment. Here, because my actions only barely reached the threshhold of an infraction, and required a mod to "read between the lines" to find an infraction, 14 days is unjust.

Thus, for the foregoing reasons, I respectfully ask this appeal tribunal to reverse the earlier decision of, uh.. yourself and reduce my sentence to 7 days. Thank you for your time.

Jefe reduced my sentence to 7 days for "the laughs" (not sure what was so funny; I actually was half-attempting to do a serious appeal, even applying some stuff that I may have learned a few years ago in my oral advocacy class--but please note that I didn't get a good grade in that class).

Anywho, my whole point is that I can be VV's ghost appeal writer in the future in exchange for very modest payment including short test drives of his car.

[BYUruss]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

That's all you said and that's how you said it? Doubtful.

Here's the exact post that got me a 7 day ban:

"Come back tomorrow and pose all of your questions to the board mullahs. You'll get some good debate then. As for now, they're all following the mullah handbook which states you have to be in bed by 9 p.m.
Nothing good happens after dark, you see. That's when most folks copulate."

Jefe told me he also didn't like the word copulate. LOL.

[BYU71]

Originally Posted by YardTime

Why do I find myself gravitating to BYU71's posts? I guess he's just a very good writer, regardless of where his head may or may not be.

I vote we skip all the formalities and place Yard Time on the "intellectuals on the board" list.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Maybe Indy can give us a seminar. Indy, how do you say, "Boy, that Sister Beck's talk was a load of crap" on CB and not get banned?

Something something something, I disagree with such and such a point because of such and such a reason.

Where "something something something" and "such and such" does not amount to mean or derogatory language directed towards Sis. Beck.

[Lost Student]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

I'm still laughing out loud that a "rules committee" even exists. For the love of Pete, it's just a message board.

I agree with this post. Except I just chuckled, not really lol'd.

[Tim]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

I'm still laughing out loud that a "rules committee" even exists. For the love of Pete, it's just a message board.

Normally I would agree with you, but as you can tell by the way some people treat it (I'm speaking of venemous viper), clearly it's not "just" a message board to them. Look at John Haddow, for crying out loud. I'm sure he's a nice guy in real life -- we've had a couple of nice boardmails about Washington, DC -- but he takes the slightest jab on the board as an affront to his personal sense of honor. I agree with you, Steel, that's it's just a stupid web board. What was happening, though, was that people were breaking the rules (and, again, every site has rules, and whether I agree with them or not, they are what they are, and every member of CougarBoard agreed to abide by them), then would become destructive to the board after they were penalized. They became antagonistic and childish over time, so after a while El Jefe thought he would have a user community that would read appeals and recommend changes to penalties based on the appeals. Much of what the rules committee has done has been to encourage the penalized members of the board to breathe in, relax, and not forget that it's just a stupid web board.

Hope that's a good enough explanation.

Tim

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

That's such a load of crap. It's not what you think as much as it is how you go about expressing it.

Exactly. As long as you don't express anything that Jefe disagrees with, you will be fine.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by BYUruss

Here's the exact post that got me a 7 day ban:

"Come back tomorrow and pose all of your questions to the board mullahs. You'll get some good debate then. As for now, they're all following the mullah handbook which states you have to be in bed by 9 p.m.
Nothing good happens after dark, you see. That's when most folks copulate."

Jefe told me he also didn't like the word copulate. LOL.

Yeah, that was real benign. Again, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. Good luck learning to be a little more tactful next time.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

I'm still laughing out loud that a "rules committee" even exists. For the love of Pete, it's just a message board.

That fact is currently under consideration by the message board committee.