On the surface, the MSE site has this year taken a major step in a positive direction by informing fans what they will be banned for.
These published zero tolerance offenses are fair enough:
• swearing, foul, offensive, overtly sexual or inappropriate language and images, including images depicting any form of illegal activity, and including any attempt to hide words using symbols or acronyms
• vilification of a person, company or any other entity (to make vicious and defamatory statements about or to speak rudely with the intention to offend or hurt).
• Any form of sexual, racial or religious harassment whatsoever.
But these ones are undefined:
• repeated advertising of URLs or the listing of competing website URLs in posts, avatars and signatures.
• Fake personal details.
• Any behaviour that is deemed not to be in the best interests of the club.
What is a "competing website URL?". e.g. Is the Silvertails website competing or complementary? Are newspapers competing or complementary? Is there ANY website that someone couldn't consider to be competing? Or complementary? To be safe from immediate banning, no link to any site could ever be posted, nor could you copy and paste any article, or any part of any article, because of breach of intellectual property according to MSE standards. And why be so narrow-minded and fearful that other sites might be doing a better job than them? Why not embrace competition? It is extremely ironic that a football club would be afraid of competition. What message does this send?
Fake personal details - how would MSE possibly know true or fake IDs? They can't even tell from an ISP address because it has been known that more than one Manly fan have used the same ISP address. Best practice on the internet is to NOT reveal true identities. Sites attempting to force people to do this would be exactly what paedophiles would want and what parents and responsible citizens would abhore. Of course, no-one who has access to true identities could possibly be a paedophile, could they? Manly requiring true IDs to be revealed on MSE is an endorsement of youth revealing IDs elsewhere on the NET, especially for young inexperienced web-surfers, who may or may not reveal true ages. Manly is on very dangerous territory here.
"Any behaviour that is deemed not to be in the best interests of the club" - What does this mean? Any form of criticism or comment could be deemed or misinterpreted by someone to breach this rule. In the extreme, can a fan even say Manly played poorly without some zealot, partisan or self-motivated individual potentially deeming this to not be in Manly's best interests? If this catch-all were applied solely by people acting reasonably then it may work - but this was certainly not the case last year when this was effectively the only posting rule for MSE.
The other issue is that there is no appeal process, no advice given of reasons for banning, no correspondence entered into and decisions are final, and permanent. This absolute power and denial of natural justice simplifies administration, but at what cost? In the hands of the wrong person this absolute power makes a mockery of all rules and could alienate loyal fans.
So what is the outcome? Are MSE rules being applied in a heavy-handed or a reasonable way? Are people being banned unreasonably or fairly? Are the rules applied without fear or favour to everyone or do there continue to be a group of destructive untouchables who can do anything they want?
These published zero tolerance offenses are fair enough:
• swearing, foul, offensive, overtly sexual or inappropriate language and images, including images depicting any form of illegal activity, and including any attempt to hide words using symbols or acronyms
• vilification of a person, company or any other entity (to make vicious and defamatory statements about or to speak rudely with the intention to offend or hurt).
• Any form of sexual, racial or religious harassment whatsoever.
But these ones are undefined:
• repeated advertising of URLs or the listing of competing website URLs in posts, avatars and signatures.
• Fake personal details.
• Any behaviour that is deemed not to be in the best interests of the club.
What is a "competing website URL?". e.g. Is the Silvertails website competing or complementary? Are newspapers competing or complementary? Is there ANY website that someone couldn't consider to be competing? Or complementary? To be safe from immediate banning, no link to any site could ever be posted, nor could you copy and paste any article, or any part of any article, because of breach of intellectual property according to MSE standards. And why be so narrow-minded and fearful that other sites might be doing a better job than them? Why not embrace competition? It is extremely ironic that a football club would be afraid of competition. What message does this send?
Fake personal details - how would MSE possibly know true or fake IDs? They can't even tell from an ISP address because it has been known that more than one Manly fan have used the same ISP address. Best practice on the internet is to NOT reveal true identities. Sites attempting to force people to do this would be exactly what paedophiles would want and what parents and responsible citizens would abhore. Of course, no-one who has access to true identities could possibly be a paedophile, could they? Manly requiring true IDs to be revealed on MSE is an endorsement of youth revealing IDs elsewhere on the NET, especially for young inexperienced web-surfers, who may or may not reveal true ages. Manly is on very dangerous territory here.
"Any behaviour that is deemed not to be in the best interests of the club" - What does this mean? Any form of criticism or comment could be deemed or misinterpreted by someone to breach this rule. In the extreme, can a fan even say Manly played poorly without some zealot, partisan or self-motivated individual potentially deeming this to not be in Manly's best interests? If this catch-all were applied solely by people acting reasonably then it may work - but this was certainly not the case last year when this was effectively the only posting rule for MSE.
The other issue is that there is no appeal process, no advice given of reasons for banning, no correspondence entered into and decisions are final, and permanent. This absolute power and denial of natural justice simplifies administration, but at what cost? In the hands of the wrong person this absolute power makes a mockery of all rules and could alienate loyal fans.
So what is the outcome? Are MSE rules being applied in a heavy-handed or a reasonable way? Are people being banned unreasonably or fairly? Are the rules applied without fear or favour to everyone or do there continue to be a group of destructive untouchables who can do anything they want?