The German initiative was long overdue. Facebook and other social media platforms were kindly asked to remove all kinds of hate by themselves for years – and only when they did not oblige the German government decided that enough is enough. Hate against minorities, awful jokes, open discrimination and threatening have zero to do with “free speech”.
I think Facebook is a great platform when used right – e.g. when you have the right friends. Nobody has to visit any FB page with stupid stuff on it, and “friends” can be easily removed if not friendly.
My 5 c
The German initiative was long overdue. Facebook and other social media platforms were kindly asked to remove all kinds of hate by themselves for years – and only when they did not oblige the German government decided that enough is enough. Hate against minorities, awful jokes, open discrimination and threatening have zero to do with “free speech”.
It is deeply ironic that the biggest “blow-ups” we have had here, Alexis being one of them back in 2014, were concerning demands for “free speech”. There was a double irony there since he was driven out of a German site before that – one which claims free speech (it is covertly moderated to keep a lid on actually illegal material).
Then one German pilot demanded we modify the software so he can block postings by another German pilot (neither being mentioned in this thread, BTW). We didn’t do that…
This just goes round and round….
As Adam says, full names is a dangerous thing in aviation. All you need is somebody to dislike something you wrote and they will send it to the FAA. I have already been subjected to that myself, and had to spend a whole day preparing a document package for the FAA Chief Counsel office and the UK CAA. Hence I take a dim view of Alexis’ attempts to out me on COPA – a site with its fair share of trolls and revenge-seekers.
Things are never what they seem, to the casual forum reader who probably thinks I personally dislike some posters! And the story of the “other person” is always believed at face value, due to the simple psychology where the mod is the enemy, your enemy’s enemy is your friend, and you always take a friend’s story (of having been wronged) at face value and without wondering if there is another side to it.
Peter wrote:
Jason – do you really want what we had here, with Prince Alexis pretending to be these different people? The story about “Dylan” being an American pilot is utter rubbish, BTW. And all the derogatory crap being emailed to people here in the background? I recall you were on the circulation list… Where do you want to draw the line on bogus posters?
Peter, my comment wasn’t suggesting you were the tired and emotional one. It was a general comment about stupid things many of us have written over the years. I think if this site continues to focus on flying and doesn’t become more about personalities it will continue to be very successful.
I think it is just fine the way it is – I wish it was less work for Peter becasue I can only imagine what goes on behind the scenes, but for me as an occasional visitor everything seems in very good order and totally different from most other aviation forums in the past which were totally ruined. If there was an easier way for Peter to spend less time that would be even better, but I doubt there is, moderation comes with human intervention and if you try and automate the process it will not take long before people take advantage of the automation just because by definition it is predictable in how it works.
I only really visit one other forum in another area these days which is operated in much the same way – unfortunately aviation does seem to attract some really “weird” types and although I suspect all forums experience bad behaviour to a degree, aviation forums may well be the worst. It has of course been discussed many times before why this should be so.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
If there was an easier way for Peter to spend less time that would be even better, but I doubt there is, moderation comes with human intervention and if you try and automate the process it will not take long before people take advantage of the automation just because by definition it is predictable in how it works.
Peter could appoint more moderators. Having a single moderator for a forum this size is unusual.
We have two mods, but I do most of it.
However the mod workload is incredibly low 99% of the time. What we get is the same 1 or 2 characters doing the same stuff over and over.
Then, as I wrote above, they are good at stirring up a bunch of contacts which they had been busy cultivating.
Then if eg a post gets deleted, some associate of the person pops up and posts some dirt, like happened last night.
And the whole thing very cleverly gets blown out of all proportion – which was the objective all along.
The thing which these posters really object to is a mod who flies a plane and participates in the forum and has opinions which are not bland / aligned with everyone else’s, but they don’t want to say that openly. But, as I said before, we have no choice.
There are other factors but basically this is how it goes. Welcome to the world of pilot forums. But actually all other forums have same issues, because the Internet is full of people with too much time.
Most of the time nothing is happening.
I have no idea who the guy is who posted here last night. I do not know him.
It is quite annoying I keep missing out on these “posts”! 
Peter wrote:
like happened last night.
According to the internet, his name is Manfred and he is an airline pilot based at Friedrichshafen. He claimed to be running three identities here
I do not know him.
