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Post by writeway on Apr 9, 2019 16:32:54 GMT
This is regarding all the criticism some (including me) threw at Kboards concerning them not wanting to out scammers, etc. Most authors were in agreement that others should be warned. I am still in agreement but it's not until you are in someone else's shoes that you get what they were dealing with. I saw on Timothy's board that he has been threatened with being sued due to him allowing people to "out" scammers. He is obviously concerned and I don't blame him. No one wants to be sued or threatened to be sued. It got me to thinking about how so many folks piled on about how Kboards was protecting scammers or doing authors a disservice. It burned me too how they shied away from anything to do with RH or others who we knew were doing terrible things. But, the struggle is real. I think Timothy and others are seeing how dangerous outing people can be if you don't have evidence. Sure, we can know the person is doing wrong but if you don't have evidence or even if you do it's a slippery slope. The RH and Christina lawsuit was painful to watch because it proved that just because someone is right, that doesn't mean they won't have to go through a tough fight. My point is, many probably see now why Kboards acted the way they did. It's easy to judge their actions (I did myself) but until you are on the other side with the threat of lawsuits in your face, you have no idea how you will react. I still believe bad actors should be outed if there is proof of their actions. I also find that at times people fly off the handle and accuse people of doing wrong who might be misguided, etc. Does that excuse them? No. Wrong is wrong but still, every situation is not the same. You do have noobies or people who do things believing it's the right thing to do then they find out it's not. That's why it's important that authors keep helping each other grow and share information. I commend K'Sierra and Timothy for starting their forums. It's not an easy thing to do and a lot of decisions comes with that. I also hope the forums stick around for years to come for authors to share and learn. The last thing I want is the fear of being sued to stop people from providing a space for authors. Just thinking out loud. LOL!
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 9, 2019 17:47:59 GMT
And of course with Kboards money was involved. Harvey started the site to try and make adsense money, and then the writers came along and started buying ads, so there was always that fear of losing revenue, in addition to fearing lawsuits and scammers.
A lot of scammers will go around threatening lawsuits cos they know it scares people, some of them make a pretty nice living from it. If you're smart you'll just ignore any emails or messages you get like that. The vast majority are just scare tactics or idiots ejaculating. Can some turn into actual lawsuits? Sure, some can. If you have no money like me then you continue to ignore them anyway. It's not as scary as people make it out to be. If you do have money, then you hire a good lawyer and let them handle it for you. Make sure you always have a backup of your site, in case you get shut down, and keep on trucking.
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Post by writeway on Apr 9, 2019 23:09:53 GMT
I agree, K. It all comes with the territory. When you run a forum you gotta expect that some might not always agree with what is posted and might threaten to sue. It doesn't have to be about scammers or anything either. Anyone can threaten to sue someone for any reason. Part of me was kind of shocked at Timothy's post because after his run-ins with some of these scammers it's a wonder he wasn't expecting to at least be threatened.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 9, 2019 23:29:35 GMT
I looked, but I didn't see the post you're commenting on, but yeah, we live in a sue-happy society, and there's blood in them waters, especially when money and online reputations are at stake. You gotta hang tough if you're gonna put yourself out there and accept any responsibility. Be prepared as the scouts are said to say. (Somebody says it anyway, and it's an excellent motto for life!)
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Post by writeway on Apr 10, 2019 5:35:32 GMT
K, it's in one of the secret forums. He has a bunch of secret ones and this one was in the one where he allows the naming of scammers.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 10, 2019 6:36:45 GMT
Ohhh okay. I'm not allowed in that one. *teehee* And I'm afraid to ask.
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Post by davidvandyke on Apr 10, 2019 21:57:07 GMT
There's no way they would lose a suit in the US. Hosts of content are by law immune to mosts suits. The suits would never even get to first base. That's why you see thousands of horrible, nasty comments on those Yahoo articles or Quora threads or Facebook posts that are never removed. The purported libel must be 1) false and 2) malicious as well--thus the defense "absence of malice" that newspapers always use. As long as they believe something to be true, and there is no demonstrable malice, it's legally impregnable.
That said, it might take money to defend yourself against even spurious suits.
Still, the controllers of the hosts have to be willing to stand up to the bullies. Me, I have no fear--and others should not either, IMO. The community would rally and provide funds, I'm convinced. if someone were to be sued unjustly.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 11, 2019 10:47:00 GMT
I think there were a number of related issues on kBoards. One was that they seemed to be facilitating and giving a platform to bad actors without allowing any warnings from other posters. Another was not allowing names, even if only through links to pages on other sites. Fundamentally I believe it came down to ownership. It requires an interested owner to decide when issues required a stand to be made and to have the power to decide the level of risk they were willing to take. Properly managed there would be no risk but there was no sign that the moderators had ever received any relevant training in that area; or had made it their job to self-train.
I was very surprised to find Tim only getting concerned about the legal position after receiving threats. It's one of the things he should have done before setting it up.
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Post by possiblyderanged on Apr 22, 2019 7:43:02 GMT
The issue I had with kboards was that they wouldn't allow anyone with any proof to warn others. Christina had screenshots and emails. It's one thing to not want people to just accuse someone and be able to say what they want, but another to not let people with proof post it.
It made no sense, since they allowed people with the experiences to post on threads about other vendors, like Books Butterfly. Those threads would go on for pages, with little mod intervention, FFS. But let someone try to say that RH was doing all sorts of shady stuff, threatening people, and here's how it was known, and bam. Better not!
I mean, crap, I got invited into a private forum so I could find out! They had an epic thread, with links and stuff. That's how I found the old web site with screen caps and the Scamilton twitter. Man, those were some days.
It's understandable that folks are worried about being sued. Most of us don't have any money for lawyers, even if it's only to get a consult or an initial appearance to get a suit dismissed. That's why these people get away with threatening stuff, even stuff that's clearly not illegal. WC's owners (Harvey's wife and daughter) were afraid, they didn't understand self publishing and depended on the mods to handle the forums, and the mods I think were threatened with suits as well. That's how RH rolls. Well, that and running endless fund mes to pay for anything and everything, because grifter.
But there has to be a middle ground where folks can give evidence and warn us about the ones who aren't doing things the nice way, where we can be told about the scummy shit like RH pulled. Not name-calling without proof, which is Tim's rule. You got screenshots, emails, whatever? Then you can talk about it.
The Internet has been a curse and a blessing, in a way. Without it, we wouldn't be talking about publishing our own books, and we also wouldn't be subject to scams and seeing how others run over the rules and get all butt-hurt when they got caught. Sure, this sort of crap has always happened, but it's a different world now. We see a lot of it in real time.
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Post by possiblyderanged on Apr 22, 2019 7:46:34 GMT
Also wanted to mention that anyone can sign up for the "secret" forums at Tim's. It's just a matter of triggering them to be visible. I forget how it's found, but it's explained on the forum somewhere.
Edited to add: First post in this thread:
You were the first reply on that thread, K!
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 22, 2019 18:18:28 GMT
Also wanted to mention that anyone can sign up for the "secret" forums at Tim's. It's just a matter of triggering them to be visible. I forget how it's found, but it's explained on the forum somewhere. Edited to add: First post in this thread: You were the first reply on that thread, K! Still haven't found that thread, but I did manage to join all the secret groups, I think. Back when I joined the erotica authors one you had to give an explanation for why you wanted to join and wait to be approved, and I thought that maybe I wouldn't be approved if I tried for the others. But now you just click and you're auto-added. So hopefully if I look around long enough I'll find it. I still find the place way too confusing, but it's where all the people go, and it's fun reading forums with peoples in it. Tim is definitely good at giving people what they want, and that's what is most important. If you can't make people happy then you'll be penniless and alone.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 22, 2019 20:36:16 GMT
I'm quite enjoying the asteroid section, it's like the off topic forum of my dreams! And David makes some terrific posts. Oh, and Joe is over there, too. Hiiiiii Joe. And hey, Dormouse, heeey, Cora!!!!!! I had not heard about Chuck Wendig getting fired from Star Wars. His Aftermath books were really good. Oh, and hello Anarchist. I saw your like there!
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Post by dormouse on Apr 22, 2019 22:09:05 GMT
it's where all the people go, ... Tim is definitely good at giving people what they want, and that's what is most important. I'm not really convinced. Post numbers are down and seems to me that there's possibly more activity on Kboards now, despite all the advertising threads &etc there. We'll see what it's like in a year. It takes a while for a forum to build up a sense of community and an identity and harder when it has a lot of members & especially when they have been mainly drawn by its not being the other place.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 23, 2019 5:54:33 GMT
it's where all the people go, ... Tim is definitely good at giving people what they want, and that's what is most important. I'm not really convinced. Post numbers are down and seems to me that there's possibly more activity on Kboards now, despite all the advertising threads &etc there. We'll see what it's like in a year. It takes a while for a forum to build up a sense of community and an identity and harder when it has a lot of members & especially when they have been mainly drawn by its not being the other place. Yes, only time will tell. I haven't been on WS enough to know how active it is on the daily. It just seems like there are tons of posters there. Kboards is still fairy active, too. Though it seems to be mostly newer people. It will be very interesting to see where everyone is posting a year from now. (nods head)
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Post by davidvandyke on Apr 24, 2019 6:26:49 GMT
You're too kind.
The way to make sense of WS is to opt into all the locked groups you want, and then just use the "show all unread posts" function. Then you don't have to navigate anywhere.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 24, 2019 17:10:19 GMT
Briefly browsing KBoards whilst eating, I noticed this thread where Gavroche pointed out over a week ago that someone had quoted him and then added a link in the quote to a site selling term papers. That post and link were still there - seems that moderation isn't doing that well. I reported it (again?) as the unwary could easily be caught. Hopefully that post will be down by the time anyone reads this.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 24, 2019 22:06:08 GMT
Still there, I just read it.
I don't really blame Betsy and the rest of the mods for not being up to the full moderator spirit. They have faraway corporate bosses who are prolly very hard to communicate with, some of their power has been stripped away, plus, they had to weather through the "buyout tsunami." They're prolly exhausted and demoralized and the cattle prods have all lost some of their spark. Who knows, the mods could all start disappearing one-by-one and Kboards could turn into an unmoderated free-for-all. At which point pretty much everyone but newbies and scammers would jump ship and swim for the islands.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 26, 2019 3:10:09 GMT
And I finally found the WS thread. Woot, woot. Yeah, Tim knew that Kboards was sued over the RH stuff, so he should have considered the same could happen to him on WS, too. But at least he's thinking about it now.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 26, 2019 7:39:15 GMT
Still there, I just read it. But gone now (with Gavroche's denial); maybe no-one reported it? Moderators certainly shouldn't be reading everything just to find problems.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 26, 2019 18:03:52 GMT
I read everything, but here that's pretty easy. On kboards keeping up with everything without reports, or even just keeping up with all the reports is probably not easy. Especially if you're given limited authority to make decisions.
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