Ethics of dumping an abusive forum administrator by duplicating their forum
 

In some forums, thankfully not here, administrators abuse their ability to remove members. In principle removing a member from your space is fine because no one has the right to force you to talk with people you do not want to talk with.

However, people build friendships in forums and a third person arbitrarily severing such friendships before they have a chance to grow into email and telephone exchange, may well be abusive.

Normally if people have swapped emails they often set up another forum and begin to invite people there. Possibly from the original forum too, if it allows new registrations and if it allows, effectively, advertising in PM's.

What if software is written that duplicates the entire original forum (minus the abusive admin's posts), invites all members to the new forum, and effectively attempts to dump the abusive administrator?

After all, the posts belong to the people that made them, it is for them to decide if they want to debate elsewhere, or even debate on both forums automatically with a little help from software.

Here's a revolutionary idea: what if the new forum has no administrator so no such abuse is possible, but instead it allows members to hide their posts from people they do not want to debate with? And hides any replies too that quote these hidden posts?

If a forum is poorly managed, it would not be a surprise if some of the members start their own forum. After all, most people do not participate on fora they do not like. If a new forum starts that suits their personalities, they will migrate to it.

That would be unethical, and if it is not it should be, illegal. It would be stealing a forum's "property". And why bother importing threads from another forum? Build the new forum the way members want it to be.

No. They belong to the board they are posted on. The people posting do not own the board.

Is that not what private messages are for?

i agree, i would concider that as unethical.

So if the person who wrote some of the best posts in a forum begins to delete them or duplicate them, they would be stealing the forum's property?

I think the copyright belongs to the creator, like songs and books, we do not have an employee-employer contract here that would allow the employer to file patents out of the employee's work.

well, my personal view of this is = i dont care if u duplicate the forum or whatever, hell, maybe even i would do something like that if given a reason.

but i dont see that as an ethical way(even tho in some circumstances i would do it my self) personally im fine with unethical ways but dont use em (usually|mostly).

A forum is a place where people can post [whatever]. It is nothing more than an electronic bulletin board. It is also a service. Of course the posts "belong" to the board. They are part of that "community's" publicly displayed record. Someone is providing the site, paying for the server and paying for the hosting.

Importing threads would import all the posts, including those made by people who are not members of the new board. Do they not have the right to restrict their posts only to the place they posted them? According to what you describe, one forum would be able to copy threads from any other forum. How would you like it if you started a forum and another forum copied all of your threads?

No, but there is a set of rules. Take a look through the fine print, there may be something about this matter. If not, it makes no difference. Whether it is called theft, piracy or plagiarism, it is taking from someone else. Furthermore, what you propose has nothing to do with the thread's title. "Ethics of dumping an abusive forum administrator by duplicating their forum." The people managing the forum are not being dumped. They are still there. What you are taking about is copying the board's content.

Great idea...is'nt that the ignore list? I just put someone on that list today...I love that feature. Wish life had one like that. Imagine...everyone putting everyone else they cannot get along with on an ignore list. After all, it's not possible to get along with everyone...like my mom demanded of me...
Peace by the ignore list...lovely :)
@ OP - you made my day, thanks :)
Thor
(excusing himself from this thread)

The copyright belongs to the person who wrote the post, but many forums require you to license your posts under some CC or other license in the TOS. At least in Sweden copyright is definitely not implicitly transferred to anyone else (however the content also needs to meet the threshold of originality to be protected by copyright).

Let's not forget that the law does not always do a good job of defining ethical and unethical - ever heard of patent trolls?

Most people want their posts to be valued by others and quoted elsewhere - as long as they take credit for them.

Copying all posts is different of course, so the new forum could give members the option to remove all their posts.

No, it's the opposite, you don't hide other people's posts, you hide YOUR posts. From select members that you dislike. And you could make public posts too, that everyone can see.

Plagiarism is when you present other people's writings as your own, but the new forum would give the due credit to the original posters, their names would appear.

I would dislike that and I would also dislike it if people left my forum en masse. Do I have the right to keep them in my forum forever?

People are not in the forum to talk with the administrator, they are in it to talk with other members.

The community can dump them and move elsewhere, the administrators won't be members of the community any more. Administrators would have to attract new members to make a new community, especially if the abuse they had committed was severe.

No one has a right to decide who will talk with who. But this is exactly what current forum technology encourages, when people are banned before they have exchanged emails with people who want to talk with them.

Current forum technology is broken, we need something more like social media but that still looks like a forum.

The owner of the site would pay for the hosting and even make money from adverts.

For the record, all my posts are GPL'd :D

lol

What if someone makes illegal posts, when there is no admin to remove them?

Easy. Anyone can report it to the police, the police contacts the site owner, and the site owner deletes the post and gives the IP and date to the police, saying "this post was removed following a police investigation". Isn't this what blogger.com does?

I never checked whether my posts here are property of the site, copyleft or remain my own. I tend to post assuming everything is absolutely free for anybody to use anyhow.

wiseman

I did read the first 2-3 large posts fully, but then saw legalese being brought into the discussion ...

I agree with the thoughts towards "who cares" "public posting means it's non-owned" or some middle ground alternative. I find it idiotic if someone posted something to a forum such as this and then at some future point tried to say "That was my original ideas, people can't reuse them!" In fact we reuse person's content all the time when we "quote" them.

To the original topic: To me the very first answer by Randicus Draco Albus as well as those along the same lines. (1) I agree with RDA's thoughts pretty much 100% and (2) I'm sitting here wondering what the impetus is for the post. Seems to me that @Ulysses you experienced something unprofessional first-hand or witnessed it. So I wonder why persist in participating in that forum? Just move elsewhere. Not sure if the unspoken intent here is to "make a point" at the forum administrator, either consciously or unconsciously. Ultimately I've found it's too wasteful of one's time to go to that point and instead just move on in my humble opinion. But that's my two cents. I understand that people's dander (for lack of a better term) gets up sometimes when they're displeased about things.

My advice summarizes too: "Turn the other cheek".