I feel sorry!

[LazY Puppy]

Hi.

lately I found some members of this forum had changed their avatars - now using some topless female body parts as for their new avatar (April, nic007, more?).

Hopefully they don't felt being forced by T.O.P.L.E.S.S. to change their avatar to the new topless female body parts used.

Would be somehow annoying to me...

[starhawk]

I believe the practice originated with april, but I'm honestly not sure. It is a rather disagreeable practice (which, given that this forum seems to tolerate trolls, probably is indicative of exactly that).

I don't think it's anything to do with your work, though...

You know, when I joined this forum, it was a nice place. For the most part, it still is, I think -- but that's starting to falter. I really hope it doesn't all (pardon the phrase) 'go to the dogs' (for the unfamiliar). It does concern me, though... while I keep meaning to check out Mint a little more -- this is not the sort of encouragement towards that, that I'd like...

[quirkian2new]

when i was viewing members posts recently, i was always worrying about my kids would suddenly come to my back and ask "Daddy, are you watching porn sites ?"

[jlst]

hahahahaha

[Flash]

If boobs were porn we'd all be in jail. April too.

[starhawk]

@Flash -- Well, that doesn't mean I should have to look at it here. I bloody well wish you'd do something about it... I know you can't out-and-out ban people, and I suspect you won't disable accounts (since you've not done that for far worse transgressions) -- but maybe you could at least disable just the avatar privileges of people who decide to push the limits in that manner?

For that matter, I'd love it if you'd bin the trolls as well. At least make it so that anyone who starts trouble routinely can no longer post. It should be fairly obvious who's a troll and who isn't -- and that behavior, at least in my opinion, has no place anywhere. It's also causing self-censoring in here -- I've seen far fewer political discussions started in Off Topic, for example -- not that I'm exactly complaining, at least in that one case, but censoring of any kind in any circumstance is a bad sign indeed.

I may be an odd duck, IRL and otherwise -- but that does not and should not confer on anyone else either right or privilege to give me a bad time for it. Likewise, I have opinions. Everyone does. Just because someone else disagrees with me, does not give them right or privilege to start a fight around it. (And, no, I'm not looking to be an exception. If we have actual rules and enforcement enacted around dealing with trolls -- which we need -- and I start something, I fully expect that I will be held accountable as well as anyone else. That said, I'm totally not interested in fights, which is kind of the point here.)

[ferretgrandpa]

In Seamonkey, and other browsers, there is Image Manager.

This allows me to censor what I see, without that censorship being forced on me.

[James C]

@Flash -- Well, that doesn't mean I should have to look at it here. I bloody well wish you'd do something about it... I know you can't out-and-out ban people, and I suspect you won't disable accounts (since you've not done that for far worse transgressions) -- but maybe you could at least disable just the avatar privileges of people who decide to push the limits in that manner?

For that matter, I'd love it if you'd bin the trolls as well. At least make it so that anyone who starts trouble routinely can no longer post. It should be fairly obvious who's a troll and who isn't -- and that behavior, at least in my opinion, has no place anywhere. It's also causing self-censoring in here -- I've seen far fewer political discussions started in Off Topic, for example -- not that I'm exactly complaining, at least in that one case, but censoring of any kind in any circumstance is a bad sign indeed.

I may be an odd duck, IRL and otherwise -- but that does not and should not confer on anyone else either right or privilege to give me a bad time for it. Likewise, I have opinions. Everyone does. Just because someone else disagrees with me, does not give them right or privilege to start a fight around it. (And, no, I'm not looking to be an exception. If we have actual rules and enforcement enacted around dealing with trolls -- which we need -- and I start something, I fully expect that I will be held accountable as well as anyone else. That said, I'm totally not interested in fights, which is kind of the point here.)

Then don't look.

A question, does the rights of one member (or a few members) mean more than the rights of another member(s)?

Looks like a slippery slope to me.......

[nic007]

@Flash -- Well, that doesn't mean I should have to look at it here. I bloody well wish you'd do something about it... I know you can't out-and-out ban people, and I suspect you won't disable accounts (since you've not done that for far worse transgressions) -- but maybe you could at least disable just the avatar privileges of people who decide to push the limits in that manner?

For that matter, I'd love it if you'd bin the trolls as well. At least make it so that anyone who starts trouble routinely can no longer post. It should be fairly obvious who's a troll and who isn't -- and that behavior, at least in my opinion, has no place anywhere. It's also causing self-censoring in here -- I've seen far fewer political discussions started in Off Topic, for example -- not that I'm exactly complaining, at least in that one case, but censoring of any kind in any circumstance is a bad sign indeed.

I may be an odd duck, IRL and otherwise -- but that does not and should not confer on anyone else either right or privilege to give me a bad time for it. Likewise, I have opinions. Everyone does. Just because someone else disagrees with me, does not give them right or privilege to start a fight around it. (And, no, I'm not looking to be an exception. If we have actual rules and enforcement enacted around dealing with trolls -- which we need -- and I start something, I fully expect that I will be held accountable as well as anyone else. That said, I'm totally not interested in fights, which is kind of the point here.)

Some may be offended by your sig.

[01micko]

lol

Censorship is the bane of the controller.

Zappa anyone?

[starhawk]

@James C. Society has some rules to it. This is no different from that. I would agree with you about the 'slippery slope' bit if this were, say, a proposal to ban peanut butter sandwiches, rather than a problem with somewhat pornographic images on an Internet forum.

To dig into the thorns a little... IIRC this is actually a legal issue. I'm not entirely certain what the hosting country is for this site -- I would assume the US, but I could be very wrong about that indeed! -- but at least in the US, there are applicable laws that require age statements and such about images of naked people, demonstrating that those people are not of minor age (under 18). Someone could very easily shut down this whole forum entirely based just on that one fact. I'm not 100% that the forum has to be based in the US, either -- it may be that if data that constitutes part of the forum passes through the US, that's enough. I don't actually know, and since it's ~10:30pm where I am as I type this, I'm rather less than inclined to go digging.

Further, I suspect that PhBB (from whom the forum software is licensed) has a clause in their license prohibiting the forum from hosting such images in the first place... in which case they can take down the forum without needing to go through a courtroom first.

Aside from that, most people in society find such images, at least in this sort of context, objectionable. That's an unspoken-but-agreed-upon thing en masse -- that photos of naked people, regardless of what they're doing, that that has its place, and that everyday goings-on are not that place -- and as such, I find it something of a wonder that we're even really having to discuss it. On literally every other forum I've been on, the people who did that would have been permanently banned within an hour.

For the record, that last statement includes the forum I was (briefly) on for somewhat-artistically-inclined older teens and young adults, centered (at least in intention) around making lousy Flash animations, that behaved like a group of poorly-raised thirteen year olds -- to the point that it had a management meltdown involving locking out the admin and screwing up the place badly something like twice in as many years... of course that was almost a decade ago. I wonder if they're still around...? Might have to go looking. A few of the animations on their associated website were actually pretty good... not a lot, though...

[nic007]

If a headless torso with a pair of boobs gives you sexual pleasure then I suppose it must be porn to you. However - I don't think that would be a normal reaction.

[starhawk]

As near as I can tell, that's a non-answer. At the very least, it completely ignores the more important legal issues (licensing is a legal issue, because if you violate the license and keep using the software, you are using it illegally).

To respond to your comment, however, even though it does not deserve such any more than the preceding paragraph gives it -- no, it is not arousing, it is offensive. That's exactly the problem. While there's some argument for responsibility here, on both sides -- the bottom line is that, generally speaking, photos of someone's naked body have no place on a forum intended for supporting a Linux distro. Even aside from that -- would you show that picture to your son or daughter, assuming he or she was under 18? I know I probably wouldn't, and I'd say I'm fairly liberal (in the sense of being open, not in the political sense, at least in this context) as far as such things go...

Like I said, society has rules. Everyone's better off when we, as a society, have and obey such rules. Or do you want to, for example, stop running red lights...? While that, technically, would be a slippery-slope situation, the point remains and is, for the most part, entirely valid -- the point being, you can't always do (or get) exactly what you want all the time. Again, yes, that can go both ways -- but, again, most people are not going to want to see that in public in their everyday lives -- and, unless I'm somehow the only one on here (seems unlikely, somehow) -- this is public space.

[nic007]

As near as I can tell, that's a non-answer. At the very least, it completely ignores the more important legal issues (licensing is a legal issue, because if you violate the license and keep using the software, you are using it illegally).

To respond to your comment, however, even though it does not deserve such any more than the preceding paragraph gives it -- no, it is not arousing, it is offensive. That's exactly the problem. While there's some argument for responsibility here, on both sides -- the bottom line is that, generally speaking, photos of someone's naked body have no place on a forum intended for supporting a Linux distro. Even aside from that -- would you show that picture to your son or daughter, assuming he or she was under 18? I know I probably wouldn't, and I'd say I'm fairly liberal (in the sense of being open, not in the political sense, at least in this context) as far as such things go...

Like I said, society has rules. Everyone's better off when we, as a society, have and obey such rules. Or do you want to, for example, stop running red lights...? While that, technically, would be a slippery-slope situation, the point remains and is, for the most part, entirely valid -- the point being, you can't always do (or get) exactly what you want all the time. Again, yes, that can go both ways -- but, again, most people are not going to want to see that in public in their everyday lives -- and, unless I'm somehow the only one on here (seems unlikely, somehow) -- this is public space.

I'm a lawyer. There are no legal issues here. Most people will not find this offensive and it is most definitely not porn. Maybe inappropriate for the forum at best but then they should lay this down in the boared rules.

[Geoffrey]

[nic007]

Hi.

lately I found some members of this forum had changed their avatars - now using some topless female body parts as for their new avatar (April, nic007, more?).

Hopefully they don't felt being forced by T.O.P.L.E.S.S. to change their avatar to the new topless female body parts used.

Would be somehow annoying to me...

I hope you have an appropriate default background (wallpaper) for your TOPLESS Puppy.

[Geoffrey]

lol

Censorship is the bane of the controller.

Zappa anyone?

Hey Mick, I didn't notice you posted Zappa, it was the first thing I thought of reading starhawks post, lol.

( @ )( @ )

[nic007]

I've changed my avatar to something more appropriate

[TyroBGinner]

Hopefully the novelty of all this will wear off and everything will die down naturally. April's choice of avatar (AKA, the boobs that launched a thousand comments) does not seem to me to be that big of a deal. The image in that avatar, however, is an entirely different matter...

At any rate, April seems to have done away with her provocative av, for better or for worse. I liked her before our back-and forth, and I still do. But one of her best qualities, her intensity, was also the very trait that made it so tempting to have some fun with her. I hope this comment is not taken as an attack. On the bright side, she provided the names of some very interesting sites of which I was not aware. The exploration of these sites has become my newest avocation.

This whole issue inspired my awesome comment in a separate sequence. Regrettably, that sequence was locked soon after, preventing me from basking in the glow of the positive responses that surely would have followed. On the other hand, it gave me the last word, immortalized and preserved for posterity...

I do take the action, however, as a chastisement directed at several here, including me...if only a little bit.

[dancytron]

I hope that people would consider that this is an international board with people from many different cultures and values. What seems merely silly in most places of the world is very offensive in some places.

As many people have observed, there is a shortage of people actively participating and testing. It would be a shame to chase some of them off with something as silly as a topless avatar.