What happened to freedom of speach/thought???

by jterfehr 46 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  D wiltshire

  Simon,

  With reguards to your illustration:

  For instance, if I came over to your house and constantly shouted my opinions through your letter-box would you want to shut me up? Of course ... would you be restricting my right of freespeech and expresssion? No - because I was excercising my right in an innappropriate way and abusing the priveledge (a much better word than 'right' IMHO)

  I don't think the illustration fits our discusion this is not your house but a Public forum.
  And when something become public we rightly feel that treament should not be partial, but fair to all.., so if we allow so and so to do something,..then in all fairness we should allow other the same concideration.

  If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
• 

  jterfehr

  Thank you Wilshire. You stated it perfectly, Nothing need to be added, as the veil has been removed, and all can see red herring Simon used. On tap for his next post, circular reasoning!!

  Good Day.
• 

  Utopian Reformist

  Look JT:

  It is an understood practice, or "lex non scripta" that spamming and message flooding are frowned upon on the web. Everyone with at least marginal web communication skills is aware of that custom.

  While public surfers enjoy joining free communities, and registering for free services, someone or some group is financing the cost of electricity, domain hosting, server operations and maintenance.

  While you may "assume" a posture of defense of free speech, nothing in life is free, especially freedom itself.

  Simon and others have assumed the responsibilities for this venture and occupy the positions with authority and decision making. You may express your disagreement, your displeasure, your opinion and your written emotions, and that's where it ends. When you pay the bills and manage the workload, you can affect policies.

  Until then, enjoy the free service, express yourself and do not become a pest. There are enough of them lurking here already;

  FredHall / NYTeleDumb / JWMAN / You Know / etc........

  Get the point?
• 

  mommy

  Here Here Simon well said!

  There is no reason to have to "listen" to another poster if they refuse to "discuss" anything. There are many here who will make accusations, and throw out their opinions and never back them up, they do not get deleted. To use more than one personna(which it has been requested we do not)and throw out one liners and never come back to discuss them is not only waste of space, but it serves no purpose.

  BTW DW, this is Simon's home, he created it, he provided it, and he allows us to be here. He even allows us to disagree with him. But what it boils down to is he is the final law, don't like? Well as he put it so eloquently, feel free to request a full refund of your membership fee.
  wendy

  When I leave, you will know I have been here
• 

  D wiltshire

  Mommy,

  I beleive in fairness, and then why not make others, who have done the same thing why not make their acconts inactive too.

  And as Utop. has intamated why not get rid of those on his list of pest or trolls.

  One thing I like about this place is that people can be people here and while it may not be what you or I concider right,.. at least we get a truer picture of real life and its problems we face with people being different.

  Do we just deactivate those who don't tow the Party Line.
  Look for those that agree with us and shun those that may disagree or maybe upset our little fantasy world by bringing up opposing ideas.

  Its freedom of expression that has a lot to do with making us grow.
  If you don't agree and you feel you have a good point for not agreeing and want to express it this is good.

  I beleive when freedom of expression is exercized in a fair way we all benifit even though we may be annoyed at times, call it growing pain if you want.

  If you don't like a thread because it is shallow don't keep responding to it and like all threads it will get buried that much sooner.

  If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
• 

  NameWithheld

  You guys are blowing this way out of proportion. Simon has allowed a very liberal grouping of people here. All opinions/discussions are fine, but when you have people creating multiple accounts and posting meaningless drivel then that becomes an annoyance. And you will notice that people did indeed stop responding to the 'trolls' like slave, JW***, etc. But that doesn't stop them from being annoying.

  There are plenty of disenting views on this board - look at some of the evolution vrs creation stuff recently.
• 

  mommy

  Do we just deactivate those who don't tow the Party Line.

  Well you answered that yourself in your post, he does not. There are many dissenting views here, and everyone has the ability to give thier opinion on a subject. I myself have not always agreed with what Simon has decided to get involved in and what he chooses to ignore...but who am I and who are you to demand who stays and who goes? We are but a piece of thread on this board and we should just enjoy the time we have here.

  DW, say you have a maid, and she is awful at cleaning, you fire her. She then comes back in disguise and has the same habits, you research find out it is the same maid you fired. What would you do? I am sure you would not keep her, because she is not only being deceitful, but she is going against your initial wish of not having her in your house anymore.

  I understand what you are trying to say, but you must look at the whole picture and not concentrate on one person. This board is a wonderful place to share ideas, and even (((((hugs)))) In order for it to remain a place like that, some order must be established.
  wendy

  When I leave, you will know I have been here
• 

  rem

  D Wiltshire,

  It looks like you still don't understand the point. These rude individuals can behave any way they want, but just not on this board. As the owner of this board, Simon has the authority to determine acceptable use. Spamming is not acceptable use. If they want to spam, then they can put up their own web site and foot the bill.

  No one is denying them free speech. It's not WHAT they say, it's HOW they say it. If they don't observe generally accepted 'netiquette' and spam the board, then they are just being rude and it disrupts the board. Any nuggets of insight they might be able to contribute are lost through their masterbatory behavior. They can pretty much express any views they want without disrupting the board by spamming. People's views are not being silenced, spamming is being controlled. Perhaps you are new to the Internet and you do not understand how rude spamming is.

  The policy is fair. Spamming is not tolerated. Almost anything else, save porn (shucks!), is allowed here. Opinions can be expressed without spamming the board, so there is no denying anyone free speech.

  I beleive in fairness, and then why not make others, who have done the same thing why not make their acconts inactive tooI beleive in fairness, and then why not make others, who have done the same thing why not make their acconts inactive too

  Who else has behaved in the same manner on this board and not been deactivated? Perhaps someone has slipped through the cracks, but this behavior has never been acceptable as long as I've been on this board, or on the Internet in general.

  Notice that no one deleted your unpopular or divergent views in this thread or any others because you do not spam.

  rem

  "We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain
• 

  Simon

  I think calling it a "public forum" is not 100% true. It would be more accurate to call it a privately owned and run forum which is accessible and useable by the public if they follow the terms of use.

  I do not believe I have been particularly unfair to anyone. Trying to use the excuse that I have not treated others in the same way is a red herring because if other people with mutiple accounts started spamming then I would delete them too. Also, if one person 'gets away' with something, it does not excuse someone else of the same 'crime'.

  You keep trying to make out that I have removed people for disagreeing with me when I have done nothing of the sort!

  Why not go and discuss your freedom of speech concerns at http://www.watchtower.org/ or http://www.greatcrowd.net/ (or http://www.witnessesonline.com/ before it closes) and let us know how you get on?
• 

  seven006

  jterfehr,

  Your concerns are understood but I think you are missing some very important points. If you look at the general makeup of this board you will see exactly what it is. To have someone ignore the obvious and pop on with no significant discussion objective but only a drive by shooting approach to conversation is purely childish. What JWman did was no different from a white supremos skin head popping into a discussion board for the NAACP and saying things just to stir up trouble. It was not the content of his message that got him booted but his childish and self serving way in which he did it.

  Freedom of speech is one thing, freedom of harassment is another. This board is not a democracy, it is privately owned. I think the owner is one of the fairest people I have met in any of the discussion boards I have visited and he handles things like this much better than I would. I am a moderator on another exJW board and I would have deactivated JWmans account and blocked his ISP the first day. I have seen where Simon has blocked other peoples accounts before and has offered the offender to email him privately to discuss the matter. You can't get any more fair than that.

  The elder comment was unfair and if you have problems with the elder arrangement and disfellowshipped practices I suggest you take that up with your local congregation. If you want to associate deactivating someones account with disfellowshipping that is a simple thing to do and dosen't take much real thought. If you want to expand your mind beyond the controlling practices of the JW religion and try to understand the actions taken for what they are, you just might gain some insight and understanding about real life. There is a big difference between what Simon did and what the JW's do. If you can't see that then you have a long way to go in your journey of understanding.

  Dave