-
Shinade's Review on
openforum.mweb.co.za Posted on 10/22/2010
This really sums it all up ...
Re: So, the forum days are numbered?
#1802120352 - 03/01/08 04:56 PM
"Strider,
"You've made a number of replies without saying saying anything at all.
"All I wanted to do was to put this thread in perspective.
"Fact: you wrote this long thread to say the forum is going down because you were removed as moderator and the person appointed to replace you guys has done a poor job hence the level of intolerance and racism.
"We partly agree on that, the level of moderation has certainly gone down and is partly responsible. At the same time it is disingenuous of you to portray yourself as the perfect moderator. You weren't; if anything you developed a sense of entitlement and went too far.
"You suppressed views you did not agree with and the Zionism debate is a perfect example where people like the late-Susieq would run to you every time negative things were said about Israel and you used your powers to suppress these views and your views on the matter were well known."
[To be fair to Strider, most of those remarks were blatantly anti-semitic. If only he had been as vigilant in curbing other forms of racism.]
"Over and above that you abused your power to meet your own objectives the banning of African languages being just one example.
"The current moderator is not perfect but neither were you.
"It is childish of you to say you got rid of me (Strider) and now look what happened without objectively scrutinising your role in the current state of affairs.
"Yours was moderation on steroids hence you couldn't even get the support of other moderators when you were challenged about your actions.
"Fact is the then moderation team could not present a united front and I place all the blame on you plus you were an active contributor so your bias was obvious to all so please spare us the self-righteous drivel you've posted here.
"If you were honest you would admit you weren't perfect either, in fact perfection is not the word I would associate with your performance as a moderator.
"You failed as much as the current moderator has."
http://openforum.mweb.co.za/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1802118378
Strider is back ... with a vengeance ... and in drag! Vide "Moderatrix"!
Not much has changed other than the level of interaction on the forum. At last count only about 26 registered users were still in evidence. Only a handful of the 26 contribute on a regular basis, the usual inanities.
Its quite sad, really ...
-
Hoenir's Review on
openforum.mweb.co.za Posted on 10/19/2010
Transformation in Cyberspace
Social Networking in South Africa: Agent for transformation, or
last refuge of the rabid right?
http://www.heksie.com/Cyberspace/
http://1life.yuku.com/topic/398/t/Evolution-of-an-online-
community.html
http://www.talkreviews.co.za/openforum.mweb.co.za
http://openforum.mweb.co.za/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=221888
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/268699-What-happened-to-
The-Swichboard
The WWW as we know it, and South Africa's fledgling democracy,
evolved almost concurrently during the 1990s. Now, more than a
decade later, what is the significance of the endless conversation
that is social networking in South Africa?
It is common cause that social networks, whether traditional
discussion forums and message boards, or the more evolved
applications like Twitter, Grouply and Facebook, provide a platform
for racists, revisionists, denialists and cranks of every sort.
Given that, relative to the size of South Africa's population, the
internet is accessible to relatively few, does social networking
make a positive contribution to South Africa's ongoing
transformation into a multicultural democracy?
At first glance one might be excused for thinking that South
African cyberspace is largely an albinocracy. The reactionary
opinions expressed by many who spend their time there could serve
to reinforce this impression.
A long, hard look at social networking in the South African context
may well be overdue, not for the purpose of controlling or
mediating what happens there but in order to discover what impact,
if any, this form of communication has on those who engage in it
and on the broader community.
My experience has been that the internet in South Africa is largely
the preserve of 'white', English-speaking, middle class office
workers who do much of their 'surfing' during working hours on week
days. The tone and content of much that is publicly accessble on
discussion forums is not encouraging, being dominated by so-called
'when wees' (apartheid apologists) and 'right whingers' (white
supremacists).
Contempt for the government and dislike of the ANC is almost
universal, even among so-called 'liberals'. There are few examples
of alternative points of view, or any evidence that such websites
are representative of a broad cross-section of South African
society.
Perhaps these foregoing issues are worth further exploration?
-
Wikkelspies's Review on
openforum.mweb.co.za Posted on 09/27/2010
Back to the future?
The genesis of the M&G forums, sometime after 1996, was a forum for expats called Biltong Blues hosted by the online Mail & Guardian. It was a free for all, like RSA-Overseas in its heyday. The software was primitive, and spammers managed to launch what today are known as denial of service attacks. The forum was so clogged with spam that nothing worked.
MWeb came to the rescue with the forums as we know them in mid-1999. Adele Witchell was the orginal administrator. Like Peter Hart-Davis, the technical oke, she worked for MWeb. There were four âvolunteerâ moderators originally, two male and two female. The women never did much and dropped out of the picture, leaving Crow and Strider in charge. Strider also dropped out for a while, and Crow - the dagga smoking ex-convict from Spokane WA, who has never been to South Africa but pretended that he had - was left in charge until 2000 â 2001. At that point the M&G and MWeb were finally forced to address the racism, anti-semitism and islamophobia so prevalent on the forum.
In 2002 Strider (Not his real name) became chief moderator and it appears that he still is. He means well, but is too emotionally involved.
Over the years Strider has been responsible for banning most of the interesting posters, white and black. He is incapable of accepting criticism or of being contradicted in any way. His bannings are based on prejudice, not principle.
Most people can be educated into expressing their views in a constructive way without resorting to personal or racial abuse, but this will not be achieved by confrontation. The problem on the forum was exacerbated by inconsistency on the part of the moderator. People who challenged his authority were banned while others continued to indulge freely in racist propaganda thinly disguised as genetic science and/or legitimate political discourse.
Banning people from forums is just another form of abuse. Doing so only destroys the basis for a rational and mutually informative discussion. Most of the people on South African discussion forums are there purely for the sport, and it can be a blood sport at times ... if you take it seriously. Abusive posts should be deleted without fanfare. Those responsible should be contacted privately to have forum protocol explained to them. Banning should be a last resort for those who persist in reoffending.
Remember that it was MWeb, wholly owned by Naspers, which closed both its own forums and the News24 forums. Why should they now put up with the rump of the M&G?
Forums have, in any event, been largely superseded by other more sophisticated forms of online discourse. Those with a need to socialize on line can do so on the social networks like Facebook. There, at least, everyone is in full control of their own site and can pick and choose their companions.
Perhaps fewer users will mean less racism, and less work for the cerebrally challenged mods? Racism, it seems, has been an ongoing problem for all South African websites which allow reader input without editorial oversight. The only solution, it seems, is to have every contribution scrutinized by an administrator or moderator before it is published to the web.
http://www.journalism.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=51&catid=92&id=1693&view=article
-
Shinade's Review on
openforum.mweb.co.za Posted on 09/08/2010
Not what it was ...
I've not been to this forum:
http://openforum.mweb.co.za/ubbthreads.php?Cat=
for a while but have been a lurker for many years.
I am gobsmacked at how badly it has deteriorated.
The pity is that many of the older posters, while aware of the deterioration and the rightwing slant of the current forum pool, are not aware of how MUCH it has really deteriorated. They know they're in the eye of the storm; they just donât realise its actually a hurricane.
It would be a pity if this forum was shut down. Something went horribly wrong somewhere. I blame the anonymous moderator, if there still is a moderator. The forum was much better when we had a moderating team with personae of their own; people we knew as individuals who could be held accountable for their actions. While all of them had their own preferences and tolerance levels, they managed to maintain order and overwhelmingly fairness dominated.
Perhaps the wheels came off when the editorial staff of the online Mail & Guardian decided to sever their connection with the forum and took no further responsibility for its administration? Their readership is better served by Thoughtleader and the feedback provided on published articles.
Its impossible for one moderator to moderate all these posts. The levels of hate, ignorance and intolerance are shocking. Suddenly someone as smart and funny as SarahB has only two stars and then disappears altogether?? And why are those bigots still allowed to spew their anti-straight, anti-Muslim, anti-African bile?
I wonât even touch on some of the racism towards other groups of people.
Where are those who always brought light and laughter to the forum and were universally (almost) loved?
Where are all these people who used to make this forum worthwhile, who charmed you with their style, their intelligence, their wit, their sense of humour, etc., even when you DID NOT agree with them?
Too many good posters have left. It really is a sad state of affairs.
If this site is going to be shut down, its probably a good thing.
Au revoir ...
http://openforum.mweb.co.za/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1802118378
-
Hoenir's Review on
openforum.mweb.co.za Posted on 08/22/2010
A Dying Breed?
The Mail & Guardian discussion forum carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It inherited the soiled mantle of the unmoderated, and unmanageable, Biltong Blues and all the problems that went with it. Moderation was to be the solution, but the moderators included idle trolls, two of them foreigners with no connection to South Africa and no knowledge or understanding of our country and people.
Since the Mail & Guardian newspaper bowed to the inevitable and disowned the forums they have continued to be hosted by MWeb. Forum members have, however, left in droves and the handful of old lags remaining only serve to concentrate the poison which lead to the Mail & Guardian distancing itself from the forum, its members and ultimately freeing itself from its dependence on MWeb for web hosting.
The MWeb forum seems unable to attract much of a following. It appears that them membership has been frozen and that new registrations are not being processed. At this point it is worth hearkening to the Britten Blog and some of the comments, including the remarks of the then editor of the Mail & Guardian, regarding the likely future of the forum should it continue as it has.
Vincent Maher on November 20th, 2007:
Your observations are very succinct Sarah and much appreciated. I may not be allowed to say this but will say it anyway - the forum is soon going to be laid to rest in a shallow grave with its head pointing downwards.
The reasons for this are both political and practical.
Richard P on November 21st, 2007 :
As someone who posted on the M&G forum on and off for the past seven years, and who finally flounced from the forum a month ago, I can only agree with Sarah.
The M&G forum has become a bolthole for extremists of all hues and persuasions.
What has particularly set my teeth agrind is the increasing number of nasty unreconstructed white South Africans on the forum (expat and resident) who like to pretend that their petty kneejerk racism is "realism". These are the sort of people I would walk a mile (or more) to avoid in real life.
There are a very small (i.e. one or two) handful of liberals who still attempt to hold the light of reason aloft, but their number is fast diminishing in the face of the relentless onslaught of small-minded bigotry and racist pseudo-science. By the time I ceased posting a month ago, I had long since given up any attempt at reasoned debate (which was simply bashing ones head against a very thick wall) and had resorted simply to giving those whose views I despised a verbal kicking.
As someone who did not participate in the forum Coffee Klatsch (which is its main purpose for many) but in order to engage in decent debate with sane individuals, this was all rather dispiriting.
I hardly think that the M&G forum is what the M&G had in mind, and I think that it would be no bad thing if it were consigned to oblivion.
Riaan Wolmarans, Editor of the online edition of South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper, on December 7th, 2007:
The M&G forums have indeed become a problem. We simply don't have the resources to roll out full-time, properly organised moderation for them. Thought Leader is already proving to be a bit of a nightmare in the making in terms of keeping it all together (and keeping out the crazies).
But what to do with the forums? They still get quite a bit of attention, so we'd have a rebellion if we shut them down. On the other hand, as has been pointed out here, what's on the forums doesn't really reflect the M&G's values any more.
Also, we are looking at implementing (moderated) comments below articles on our main site in the next six months or so, which would provide a discussion platform for readers. Maybe we can retire the forums then (and keep them as a static archive so all the content on there is not lost).
So, as Vincent has said, the forums' days may be numbered. Perhaps we'll just have to endure the vitriol that will come our way from the remaining forumites.
http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/britten/2007/11/20/does-the-mail-guardian-forum-undermine-the-mg-brand/
Earlier this year South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper severed all connection with the discussion forums formerly linked to the frontpage of its electronic edition. Thanks to the generosity of an MWeb staffer, the rump of the forum survives ... barely. It can be found here:
http://openforum.mweb.co.za/
-
Wikkelspies's Review on
openforum.mweb.co.za Posted on 06/26/2010
Living in the past?
This forum, currently hosted by MWeb - at least for now - is the rump of the former M&G Discussion forum, dumped by the Mail & Guardian because of the racist, rightwing claptrap posted by too often and moderated too seldom. The forum was more trouble than it was worth. Sarah Britten says it best:
Britten Blog Brands South Africa's Mail & Guardian
Does the Mail & Guardian Forum undermine the M&G brand?
20 November 2007, 16:37 GMT + 2
The M&G is both a newspaper and a website, the M&G Online. Ferial Haffajee is the editor of the newspaper, and Riaan Wolmarans is the editor of the website.
If you have ever visited the Mail & Guardianâs home page, you might notice a link entitled âForumsâ. Click on it, and it will take you through to a strange little club of which I have been a member for some seven years.
I first signed up for the Forum back in the early days of my career in advertising, when I would occasionally have to stay at the office until midnight waiting for my boss to finish with a document, and there was nothing else to keep crushing boredom at bay. Part of my attraction to the Forum in the first place was the Mail & Guardian brand. Its left-of-centre viewpoint appealed to me for the most part, and back in those days, there was a wide enough range of viewpoints to keep debates interesting and fresh.
The Forum is now a shadow of its former self. Most of the less extremist participants have left; its active regulars are now heavily skewed to right wingers who rant on about liberals, the ANC and people of low IQ (which, as some of them see it, are one and the same thing). Of course they have a right to express their views, but without much in the way of a counterweight, the Mail & Guardian Forum has inevitably become a rather stuffy little bolt-hole for the bitter and the alienated. The occasional purge - participants are banned and generally return under other nicknames - has done little to improve the standard of interaction.
Frankly, itâs all rather boring.
http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/britten/2007/11/20/does-the-mail-guardian-forum-undermine-the-mg-brand/
-
featured site: open forum
Complete statistics for: openforum.mweb.co.za
Twitter
Facebook
