Rami Rustom
2013-02-24 14:24:48 UTC
On 2/13 a poster on a forum I was on emailed me suggesting that I join
intjforum.com. She did this partly because she saw that I wasn't a
good fit for her forum -- apparently I analyzed and disagreed too
much.
So I started on the intj forum (username rombomb), specifically in the
Philosophy and Ethics section, and I started slow (relative to me on
other forums). I started posting on a few threads trying to get a feel
for the culture of the forum. I was pleased to see that there were
lots of people willing to analyze and disagree a lot.
Within 2 days I was posting 30-40 posts a day.
In some of the threads some major ideas became a bottleneck, e.g. how
to judge ideas. So in these cases what I did was one of two things:
(1) link to an essay from me or Elliot, or (2) I started a new thread
which was a repost of an essay from me or Elliot.
This went on for 10 days and then I was banned for spamming. No one
contacted me. I was just banned, for ever, according to the automated
message that pops up when I login.
So I looked up the rules under spamming and I didn't break any of the rules.
Had someone told me that they consider what I'm doing spamming, and
specifically explained to me what I shouldn't be doing, I'd stop. The
forum is private property and the moral choice is to follow the rules
of the owner, even if they created a new rule in light of my "new"
posting style. But no one contacted me to explain.
So I have been judged unfairly. I've been branded a bad person,
without opportunity for appeal (I can't contact them). This conflicts
with the tradition "innocent until proven guilty".
I checked my member page (without logging in) and noticed that 30 to
50 of my posts had been deleted. All of my OP's that had no replies
and that were reposts of essays were deleted. And some of my posts in
other threads were deleted (I think because I posted too many links in
them).
Something I found ironic is that one of the posts that was deleted was
in response to an OP where the poster said that he's a philosophy
student whose professor said that he's a (Platonic) idealist, and he
wanted to know what that means. So I explained, and then I went
further explaining that I expect that his professor is a
justificationist and that the rival epistemology is CR, and I linked
to my OP on Jism vs CRism (which was a repost from my blog). At the
end of the post I said that he should decide for himself which
epistemology he agrees with. Maybe he didn't read my post in time
(before it was deleted). That sucks!
Another thing I find interesting is that on this forum I had more
success than on any other non-Popperian forum. By "success" I mean
having discussions that reached conclusions (e.g. on abortion) instead
of dying as soon as I disagreed with a poster.
So why was I banned? Maybe a computer algorythm did it automatically.
Or maybe a person decided.
Should I have been banned? Was I spamming? I don't think so. Ever link
I posted was relevant to the topic. And each link I provided is an
opportunity to learn more. You'd think that a philosophy forum would
like that.
-- Rami Rustom
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com
intjforum.com. She did this partly because she saw that I wasn't a
good fit for her forum -- apparently I analyzed and disagreed too
much.
So I started on the intj forum (username rombomb), specifically in the
Philosophy and Ethics section, and I started slow (relative to me on
other forums). I started posting on a few threads trying to get a feel
for the culture of the forum. I was pleased to see that there were
lots of people willing to analyze and disagree a lot.
Within 2 days I was posting 30-40 posts a day.
In some of the threads some major ideas became a bottleneck, e.g. how
to judge ideas. So in these cases what I did was one of two things:
(1) link to an essay from me or Elliot, or (2) I started a new thread
which was a repost of an essay from me or Elliot.
This went on for 10 days and then I was banned for spamming. No one
contacted me. I was just banned, for ever, according to the automated
message that pops up when I login.
So I looked up the rules under spamming and I didn't break any of the rules.
Had someone told me that they consider what I'm doing spamming, and
specifically explained to me what I shouldn't be doing, I'd stop. The
forum is private property and the moral choice is to follow the rules
of the owner, even if they created a new rule in light of my "new"
posting style. But no one contacted me to explain.
So I have been judged unfairly. I've been branded a bad person,
without opportunity for appeal (I can't contact them). This conflicts
with the tradition "innocent until proven guilty".
I checked my member page (without logging in) and noticed that 30 to
50 of my posts had been deleted. All of my OP's that had no replies
and that were reposts of essays were deleted. And some of my posts in
other threads were deleted (I think because I posted too many links in
them).
Something I found ironic is that one of the posts that was deleted was
in response to an OP where the poster said that he's a philosophy
student whose professor said that he's a (Platonic) idealist, and he
wanted to know what that means. So I explained, and then I went
further explaining that I expect that his professor is a
justificationist and that the rival epistemology is CR, and I linked
to my OP on Jism vs CRism (which was a repost from my blog). At the
end of the post I said that he should decide for himself which
epistemology he agrees with. Maybe he didn't read my post in time
(before it was deleted). That sucks!
Another thing I find interesting is that on this forum I had more
success than on any other non-Popperian forum. By "success" I mean
having discussions that reached conclusions (e.g. on abortion) instead
of dying as soon as I disagreed with a poster.
So why was I banned? Maybe a computer algorythm did it automatically.
Or maybe a person decided.
Should I have been banned? Was I spamming? I don't think so. Ever link
I posted was relevant to the topic. And each link I provided is an
opportunity to learn more. You'd think that a philosophy forum would
like that.
-- Rami Rustom
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com