How to Use Our Comments, and Not Get Banned

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[citation][nom]zak_mckraken[/nom]You know, I've never actually thought about it before, but how many women visit this site? You should do a survey.[/citation]

Of our 7,200 fans on facebook, 2% are female.
 
"Why would we need to run anything by legal? We reserve the right to allow who gets to post. Simple. Simply: be nice, or you're not welcomed. It's really not difficult."

You should run it by Legal exactly because of your response.

Whether or not you agree (and personally, I don't) the law says that once you engage in CONTROL over your message boards you assume liability for what is posted there. Toms policy thus creates liability. Any halfway decent IP lawyer will know what the limits are and what liability is created. Then it may just be a matter of talking to your insurance carrier, I dunno.

Toms has an interesting approach given that NBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, PBS, and many others have gone from control to no control over message boards for liability reasons.
 
This just seems amaturish. Lousy comments are par for the course on any news site, be it BBC or a more esoteric tech-related one. Delete the blatantly offensive ones (ones making racist remarks, attacking other members etc.) discreetly, and ban repeat offenders. Wading into the comments yourself and telling members to behave is asking for trouble and then banning someone because they attacked you personally (let alone then writing the incident into an article) reflects badly on the entire site.
 
Ok, I guess. But just keep an eye on insulting comments. Leave the stupid comments, trolls, can it play crysis, and the like. We like ripping on people and trolls.... that's just part of the fun. I mean feel free to kick people abusing the system, but heck, who doesn't like to instigate with a little trolling once in a while? No biggie...

I think you should ban people who make a big deal of spelling mistakes. That's just annoying, this isn't a literay site (note mispelling there). We get you are probably mostly in Germany and English is not primary language. Fine to point out spelling mistakes, but don't call author names and say Tom's sucks because of it. That's really not called for and I see it a LOT.
 
[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]It is not a violation of free speech because you gave up that right by agreeing to the Terms of Use. Maybe you should be more careful about what you do on the Internet.TV and radio are both regulated. That is nothing different to what is happening here.[/citation]

Americans should be used to censorship by now... Try watching any of Gordon Ramsey's shows on American TV! All of the bleeps makes it almost unwatchable. OTOH, they DO have an 18+ certification for games, seldom ban games or books, and have no current plans to make ISP's liable for their users actions... With the bad comes some good, I guess.
 
Whether or not you agree (and personally, I don't) the law says that once you engage in CONTROL over your message boards you assume liability for what is posted there.
Click to expand...
The comments are part of the forum. The forum has been moderated and has been done so according to the Terms of Service for years, including news and review comments (the latter two extremely lightly though, and usually only in extreme cases). The ToS has been run by, and as far as I know made by, Legal.

The only change here is the extent and frequency of moderation. Nothing needs to be run by Legal because it already has been.
 
Just read this today. That new ruleset could be potentially dangerous!
For starters, Many of my comments could be regarded as flaming from an ignorant point of view, and there are many ignorant users.
Also I was wondering if the rules apply only to readers, or all users? Crashman can hardly post any feedback without insulting for instance, and quite frequently I've observed as much off topic stuff comming from jane as from your average user.
In fact I'd say more than half the feedback comments could be clasified as offtopic, and general idiocy is quite commonplace all over the forums really.

Bottom line - you'd ban half your article writers for repeated offenses and remove some two third of the forum contents by sticking to your admittedly simple rules.

I acknowledge your right to play China, I merely disagree with it.
 
[citation][nom]mousemonkey[/nom]It's always been "Comments" which is why this section has the title " News comments".[/citation]

Incorrect. There exists a video where chris explains the 'new talkback feature' - which technically is a part of the forum, but labelled as talkback (and sadly later reduced in functionality ; I want my avatar icon back)
 

I've always read it from the forum side and don't recall a time when it was called talkback.
 
well it's still called talkback in serveral places - anyway while trying to locate the video I found that they've used the term for more stuff. Soon after second take got canned chris introduced a talkback video feature that appearently isn't in use anymore either. In fact I couldn't even see the link to the video on the page I found it...

anyway it's called talkback from the news pieces of old:
example : http://www.tomshardware.com/talkback-overclocking,video-317.html
 

And under TALKBACK it says Read the comments on the forums which takes you to the Video COMMENTS section.
 
Now that this very public policy of "trangressions will result in a ban" will we know the statistics/benchmarks of these bans, like public records of criminals being sentenced. Or will it be secret and we'll just miss certain avatars that we were accustomed to seeing not ever knowing if they were banned or just found greener pastures that didn't censor or ban?
 
to ban me they'd have to ban 4 complete class C networks, 16 ips of a different range and whatever range my home isp is using - oh and on top of that all the internet cloaker vpn's ... so my avatar you won't get to miss.
 


yes the talkback are comments - we know that..... your point is that it isn't talkback, cause it sais comments somewhere? that's like saying a bmw isn't a car, cause it sais bmw on the front ...
 
This ban thing sounds too arbitrary on who is the moderator of the day. It should be like Cod4 where the players get to vote to kick someone out and there should be gradually increasing penalties, ir banned for a day, a week, a month, for infinity, etc...


I don't plan this to happen but just to let you guys know now, if I disappear, I was banished, excommunicated from TH's inquisition.
 
+1 for getting rid of "but can it play crysis" comments. stick with it, I see the admin got lax in his closing statements on this stance. I find this very unfortunate.
 
I don't know why everyone thinks that going off-topic or insulting others will get them banned. They seem to have ignored the part where it says your post may be deleted. Repeated insults may get you banned, yes, but it's unlikely to occur for a one-off offense. It's no different in this regard to the rest of the forum.

If you don't like the way this is being done, why didn't you leave the forum years ago? The same ToS applies there.
 
Other tech sites noted it first, and changed their stance. Toms I think has a harder core reader base, and sometimes I feel the IQ is a few points higher in here, so Tom's remained immune for a bit longer to some of the riff-raff, but it's been getting pretty rough in here too lately. Thanks Tom's for taking this stand along with the others.

I enjoy spirited conversation, and am prone to argue as much as other people, but at least some of us do it without direct insult (though we may drop a few bombs occasionally), and we strive to actually link sources and cite good backing data and slap it in the face of FUD. Those who spread FUD (and its becoming a bigger pool), generally don't take kindly to being shown the truth, and I think that's a lot of the hate flowing in here and other forums. I'd live to see not only a "report this post" button, but something like a FUD alert, where we could cite a source counter so someone's flamebait statement and alert you to remove their erroneous posting for the betterment of the post thread and to help stem the tide of BS information floating around.
 
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