- Its funny, not political as i see it. Describing stupidity without given a weight on either side is just well... funny.
All goverments have fuck ups. Mine , yours theirs..
And yes i read
Official Forum Rules on Politics.
This topic really is a can of worms. Maybe it needs to become a separate thread.
I think most will agree with Snautzer on this but unfortunately it seems equally possible to interpret a post and say it falls foul of the highlighted parts of proviso 2 in the discussion below. A massive problem is what does the AVERAGE member consider political.
- If someone is partisan they consider anything "bad" written about their party, true or otherwise, to be partisan.
- For most people it is only partisan if it is for or against any identified partly or
liar politician but not if it applies to all politicians and/or all parties
- For most people I doubt it includes idiocy by the public "servants".
I suspect the vast majority of people on the forum think regarding proviso 2
- parts of that proviso should not be there; and/or
- is far too vague in what it means and therefore many post honestly believing that they are not breaking the rule because
- the proviso does not apply to discussion of the actions of public servants; and/or
- their post applies to all politicians and/or parties; and/or
-
Describing stupidity without given a weight on either side is just well... funny.
As examples:
- bi-partisan bills are definitely not political AND may well affect many of the members.
- Many decisions are made, not by the politicians but by the bureaucrats (and are sometimes overridden by the politicians). Again that can be bi-partisan)
- bi-partisan or long standing laws also may well affect many of our members -- see my example at the end of this post.
Should every one of these be banned if the discussion remains civil
? I am glad that is not my decision.
Posts that include insults (proviso #3) are again an area of great ambiguity. For example the Photoshopped aircraft carrier USAF-1 with a golf course and luxury club house on the deck is definitely insulting to some people but to the vast majority, including probably the vast majority of USAF members past and present, consider it purely humour and the majority of those USAF people may well have had a good chuckle and may even have given it a positive reaction.
Again many of the posts showing the two screaming angry women and a cat or other respondent are highly insulting to certain people but not the majority.
This is one of those beauty is in the eye of the beholder situations
The rules as they stand at this time are:
Political discussion that directly pertains to:
- WW2 or other historical conflicts can be discussed as long as it remains civil and does not deviate from topic.
- Ongoing conflicts such as the war in Ukraine can be discussed as long as it remains civil and does not deviate from topic.
No other types of political discussion are allowed, to include but not limited to:
- Partisan posts (left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, etc…)
- Posts about modern political news, parties, candidates, politicians, bills, debates, decisions, elections, or laws.
- Posts that contain insults or attacks.
- Posts that contain conspiracy theory rabbit holes.
- If it has nothing to do with the two allowable types of political discourse than it is not allowed.
Given there is so much confusion on the meaning on that proviso maybe the admin team should rewrite it with several different wordings and have the members vote on which they believe is the least confusing version
given that a significant percentage of members have English as a second language and/or speak non-American English.
An example of a law that affects all our members who post or download manuals.
It is not partisan as this law has existed since
1968 and been amended countless times including as recently as 2019. This is something that more than annoys me and if I had to blame politicians for it I would need to blame the whole $%^&* lot for not reading what they were passing. Obviously not one of them, and not one of their staff,
understood what they passed, or what was tabled and became law by their inactions.
As many know I have posted some 1920s British manuals to the forum.
It is absurd it that:
- if I personally create a duplicate of page from a manual:
- on which copyright has expired, or been released,
- using a scanner, photocopier, camera or any other device,
- in any library or archive,
- in Australia, and probably anywhere else in the world,
- this duplicate page is free of all restrictions, because the original material is out of copyright;
- if I request a duplicate of an out of copyright page from any library or archive,
- probably anywhere in the world except Australia,
- this duplicate page will also be free of all restrictions. Again, because the original material is out of copyright.
However:
- In Australia, and almost certainly only in Australia,
- all duplicate pages,
- but not the originals of those pages,
- instantly gain a whole new 70 year copyright, owned by an unknown and unspecified entity, from the moment that the duplicate is created by a library or archive.
In the specific cases that affects all forum members who want to see these and other manuals posted in their entirety, the fact that the actual creator/printer/copyright holder of the documents, the UK National Archives, HMSO section, has
additionally classified these specific documents as what is commonly called "open source" so those pages are not only free of copyright but free of almost every other restriction, is completely and totally irrelevant under the Australian Copyright Act
Despite the original documents being out of copyright
and further covered by the UK Open Government Licence I cannot use any page scanned on my behalf by any Australian library or archive for anything except private personal use.
Although the Australian copyright Act has many pages detailing
Acts (meaning actions)
not constituting infringements of copyright there are no such allowances for any library of archives copying material that is no longer covered by copyright for a member of the public.
Absurd but true.
I think that few if any forum members would consider this a political post as no single party is responsible. Just an accumulated 55 years worth of incompetents based in Canberra.