Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Enrico Palazzo]

Originally Posted March 20th 11:42 p.m. 2008

Reposted on May 13th, 2009 10:51 and will revise more for clarity.

Observations:

Most posters are generally civil or engage in decent discourse. What is written below is based on observations. They are not conclusive, completely comprehensive, not set in stone, generally go with what moderators and many posters would concur with. Consider this akin to a Crown Commission or a report for the Dave's members and moderators to look at. It was produced from the work of a previous Mod, the Dude, the feedback of three other current Mods, and roughly 4 posters, two who have been cited.

On the bottom are old guidelines posted past Mods, to ensure people can see the new guidelines, rather than ignore them. Old guidelines by the other mods from the past are below for the archives, but removed so people can pay attention to the new guidelines and clean up the forums.


Here are the rules and guidelines, thank you for reading:

1)Most of the posters do know how to engage each other properly without being rude. However, flaming and excessive name-calling have gone out of hand. You are expected to police each other, avoid such debates whenever you can. A moderator's goal is not to step in and moderate and prevent abuse on the forum.
If things get out of hand, a moderator may make some comments, offer feedback, constructive criticism. Using foul language is another story. It goes beyond simple talk.

2)It is difficult to enforce civility, to go against rudeness. If several CE members take issue with a behavior of a poster, they are free to bring that up or moderators as posters may collectively observe and comment and ask the poster to refrain. Abusive behavior, habitual rudeness are problematic.

3) Don't abuse the forum, promote civility. Promote moderation on the forum through your own activity. Several people can report to the particular moderator observing the forum the most and that can be conveyed to the rest of the team.

4)When it comes to bigotry, avoid bigotry that touches on any group whether they are Koreans,
Americans, African Americans, Africans, Jews, or Muslims. Some posters on the forum get into this thing where stereotyping in a wanton fashion or massive generalizations are acceptable, because they happen to be on a certain side. Rather, try to use facts. There is nothing wrong with mentioning a race or a culture and tying into an ideology, just be balanced, not bigoted.

5)Calling a certain ethnic group nazis, labeling African Americans as African type savages of Obama's election will make America Zimbabwe are things that have been seen on the forum. They go too far. Bigotry against Jews, Muslims, and African Americans have been observed in the past week.

6)Stating the majority of a people are this or that way without any statistics should be avoided. For example, stating that the majority of Jews who believe the TORAH, or Muslims following the Quran, Christians following the Bible as a holy book are violent people would be crossing a line would be charges that can't be substantiated against an identifiable group. It's bigotry. If you have statistics based on some poll, questionnaire trying to that, that may hold water. Basically, avoid prejudice. The examples above are the best way to see what is appropriate and what is not. Exercise your best judgement.

7)When posting an article, do not post the whole article. It is something members and moderators alike discourage. Post some of the article and place a link at the bottom. Also, hit the URL button on top. The bold button is the first button, the URL is the last one.

If you post an article, do not use a propagandistic thread title. It is normal to find propaganda on a political forum, however do not disregard an author's title for a news story. It is one thing to
use an article when you first make some commentary and then you quote from an article and give a link. That's proper citing and not just idle propaganda. (If you need clarification asks).

Here is an example of a problem: Chinese fascists smash pure Tibetans. (Title)
Then you have an article where an author has the title �Tibetan protesters beaten in a crackdown, many dead and wounded�.

9)Refrain from posts that would only invite flames such as gay sex and Obama and drugs. If you want to discuss things regarding a politician or what have you, have such things within a thread. This one is hard to touch, but some posters and Mods had a problem with a thread with such an example. Also, avoid titles in general that can cause threads to degenerate such as so and so is a house negro.

10)EIGHT)Refrain from ad-hominem attacks. Calling someone an idiot, UFO believing Lefty or a fascist Republican says that you cannot listen to that person, because they are without logical faculties because of their political affiliation, and it involves personal attacks. Calling someone a moron and then attaching a political label doesn't promote political discussion.

11)Some posters hide behind patriotism, human rights and use such things as personal hammers to shut down the �devilish� other side. That can be a problem. It is recommended to refrain from that. Do not preach to one another, brow beat one another calling each other fascists, unpatritotic. Discuss the issues, avoid discussing the person.

12)Do not post personal e-mails. It's unacceptable and a major red line.


13)Conspiracy theories exist in all forums. If you have a view that does not fit the established view, please do provide evidence, try to be empirical. *This is just a recommendation*
Spamming the board with several conspiracy theory threads , however, is considered abuse. It is against the guidelines for the forum and would be looked at. Refrain from dong so. It does not exclude a poster from posting the occasional conspiracy theory.

14)Do not refer to countries in a disparaging way such as writing America thus � Amerikka or Amerika.
It adds nothing to a debate, doesn't have the other party listening to you at all and is offensive. It could be pulled, but using it inside a thread for a political point one is trying to make in a certain context may be another matter. Use good judgement, try not to be outrageous in a political manner to just attract attention.


15)"Play the ball, not the player. Try to imagine you've never heard of Nowhere Man or Gopher or yata boy or Bramble or Pocariboy or whomever - The Bobster, for instance - and just look at the ideas being posted, and see if they have merit. If they have none, it doesn't matter who said it, and maybe nobody cares that you don't like that person because you argued with them last week and they disrespected you." ----- From the Bobster


16)"Connected to the above, avoid responding to the same people over and over, no matter how much you are still smarting from your last encounter or how much you'd like to stick it to them this time. From the outside, it's entertaining, but only for a while. Generally, it makes other people feel unwelcome to join the convo."

17) "Avoid calling people stupid or crazy, no matter how much they seem so. If an idea or a fact is wrong, explain why or post some evidence to demonstrate the error. In the same vein, using words like "liberal" or "rightwing" as insults don't matter much if the person readily identifies with such labels." -Bobster's Conrtribution

1 "If you feel harassed, either hit the little red exclamation mark and tell the mods or just ignore the person. When a discussion devolves into exactly two people calling each other names and little else, it's not a discussion anymore. When you don't respond to someone's bullying, there's not much more they can do except declare victory and retreat."----- Bobster's contribution

19)Moderators cannot be perfectly impartial just as a referee may not see a foul done by a player which may incense you. They cannot have eyes everywhere. You help with this �officiating� by alerting the Mods to what is happening to reduce any egregious impartiality. We do what we can and make decisions, and that's that.

20)A moderator should not moderate a thread if the said moderator has posted in that thread using a regular ID if the mod has one. Essentially, a Mod should avoid bias as much as possible. A mod cannot ask members to go along with guidelines he or she won't observe as a mod." --(Two Mods)

21)A mod should recuse himself from dealing with a thread if he or she feels he cannot be impartial or at least solicit the opinions of other members of a forum and/or mods in some cases to deal with a particular issue based on consensus with someone other than that lone mod.

22)Generally, a mod is free to exercise his good judgement in helping maintain civility, order, a free flow of diverse ideas on the forum without having the forum abused.

23)�Note that we cannot catch all of the racist or demeaning threads that are posted. We will however act on those we see and on those that are reported through the post report function. Authors of such threads will get warnings and if those are ignored, these users will be banned from the site. In short, racism is not acceptable on this site.� ---The Dude

24)�Comments that include profanity, or personal attacks, or antisocial behavior such as "spamming" or "trolling," or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our terms of use. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.� -------The Dude

25)The mods' presence shall be more visible in the CE forum -- not as posters who get in the fray, but as mods who want to keep the peace. Also, not reactive, just more visible. Start directly engaging posters and threads that you think cross one or another line. Posters are to be engaged-- diplomatically, reasonably, professionally. Instead of censuring them, cite whichever forum rule might apply and ask them. Gopher's Contribution.
*Mod's additional note, if that fails abuse has set in from the poster and the Mods must take further action. ,

26) bigoted, extremely inflammatory posts can potentially be deleted. Abusive posters would receive warnings for their behaviour. The consequences would relate to the severity, how the poster is disturbing the forum, how repetitive such abusive behaviour and if there were complaints about the poster.

27)You may not agree with all of the above, but mods and posters follow guidelines, and these are the guidelines.

2Using other forums, in addition to the CE, to blatantly spread a particular agenda is abuse of the other forums. The occasional post in off-topic forums of a political nature are fine, but a pattern of such behavior involves being abusive by insisting people hear your political agenda.



Here are old guidelines posted by the Dude in November 2007, thank you the Dude....

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:56 am Post subject: Rules of conduct (To be updated) and expanded upon....

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This is a discussion forum for Teachers who live and work in South Korea. As such, it is a useful tool for teachers currently in Korea and for people thinking of coming over to teach.

What this forum is not is your personal playground. It is not an anything goes forum where you can voice any opinion you may have. It is also not a place where racism , personal attacks and bashing will be tolerated. Threads that only seek to demean people will also be deleted without warning.

As such, threads or posts that contain racist comments or that aim only to bash a group or person will be deleted without warning or explanation. This includes threads that are racist but that try to be passed off as �healthy venting�. It is acceptable to vent. It is not acceptable to use your frustrations to bash an entire group or nation of people (any group).

Each user agreed to a certain code of conduct when they joined this forum. This code contains rules that limit what can and cannot be said. This code includes the following rules:

For users:

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any applicable laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned (and your service provider being informed). The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. You agree that the webmaster, administrator and moderators of this forum have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or post at any time should they see fit. As a user you agree to any information you have entered above being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent the webmaster, administrator and moderators cannot be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised.

If the thread is inappropriate for the board, it will be locked or removed without notice, but if it belongs in another forum it might just be moved. In other words, if an off-topic thread is found in the job-related forum it may be moved.

Note that we cannot catch all of the racist or demeaning threads that are posted. We will however act on those we see and on those that are reported through the post report function. Authors of such threads will get warnings and if those are ignored, these users will be banned from the site. In short, racism is not acceptable on this site.

Comments that include profanity, or personal attacks, or antisocial behavior such as "spamming" or "trolling," or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our terms of use. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

If you want a place where you can post whatever you wish, it would be preferable to start a personal blog or to find an un-moderated forum that better suits your needs. This is not a free-speech board. When you register here you agree to a certain code of conduct (this is clearly outlined in the TOS you agreed to).

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Here are old guidelines post in 2004 by Raoul Duke.

As most regular readers/contributors of the Current Events Forum are already aware, the level of personal attacks and flames in political-related threads here is quickly reaching an intolerable level.


And so it's time to remind users here of a few things:



The rule regarding flamming and personal attacks has not been strictly enforced on this forum, in part due to the difficulty in separating political views from flames/attacks in many instances coupled with a reluctance to over-moderate what is largely a political forum in the face of the upcoming US election.


This will now change and everyone is now on notice that personal attacks will no longer be tolerated. Users will treat each other with civility and respect regardless of the political chasms that may exist.


We're not asking people to refrain from giving their views on political parties, public figures, and events, but calling another user (for example) a crypto-fascist because they don't like Kerry or a terrorist-sympathizer because they don't agree with the war in Iraq will no longer be tolerated.


We all want the same things in life: safety/security, freedom, prosperity, and equality; Our arguments do not stem from whether or not these are our goals but rather how best to acheive them, and our political arguments here should bear this in mind. Let's have spirited debate over our differences rather than hateful personal attacks.


With the US election in sight people want to voice their political opinions more than ever; While we need to turn down the level of invective here before it completely boils over, at the same time we don't want to have to start temp-banning users left, right and center (pun intended) so let's try to keep it clean.


And because of the looming election this forum has become quite lively and consequently hard to moderate, and so we ask for your cooperation:
if you see a post or thread which you feel requires moderation please send a PM with a link to one of the moderators, and if you are the subject of a personal attack please do not respond in kind but again send a PM with a link to one of the moderators;
In both cases please be patient and give us some time to look into the matter and rectify the situation.


Remember: "Play the ball, not the player".