EDIT: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT THE ORIGINAL FIRST POST IN THIS THREAD. THE ORIGINAL WAS BY A DIFFERENT AUTHOR WHO WAS REQUESTING HIS ACCOUNT BE DELETED, RESPONSE TO DEVELOPMENTS IN A SEPARATE THREAD. AN ADMIN HAS SINCE DELETED THE ACCOUNT, WHICH APPEARS TO HAVE HAD THE UNFORTUNATE SIDE EFFECT OF PRODUCING AN INACCURATE RECORD.

The post that occasioned this action has apparently disappeared, without notice. It was first answered, in an emollient but firm way, by Kirby, who is (or was) an admin, I believe. It was then locked by admin Joaz B simply on the grounds that he believed it transgressed the T&C.

Maybe it did, though I can't find the T&C to check. But the way it looks to me is that two admins disagree, and the one who "believes" it was a transgression has not explained why. The locking has apparently led to self "cancellation" of a valued contributor, who seems to have deserved an explanation.

FWIW I thought it was just a silly rant of someone who had had a bad day at the travel agents, and I'm sure we can all empathise with that. Pointing out (and proving with a picture) discriminatory behaviour in Japan or elsewhere is hardly cause for cancellation. I can recall a thread here where somebody ranted on about the Japanese giving fewer places in their international tournaments than they do to foreign players. I don't recall that thread being locked. I note too that the poster here did not hide behind a pseudonym, and seems to have no history of bad behaviour here.

I already find L19 too "woke," and suspect American standards are being assumed to be the gold standard. They are not. I also "believe" this has contributed to the necrosis of L19.

Subject to seeing the T&C, my view is that Kirby's response was the correct one, if indeed any answer needed to be made. Ignoring, and giving people enough rope to hang themselves, is often a good option.

Totally agree here.

Did you read the link you posted?

” if one of a number of conditions applies. “Undue delay” is considered to be about a month.

Presumably a moderator will come and delete your account within about a month.

You could PM a moderator if you want to be sure.

By the way, this is mentioned in the FAQ:

Who do I contact about abusive and/or legal matters related to this board?
Any of the administrators listed on the “The team” page should be an appropriate point of contact for your complaints. If this still gets no response then you should contact the owner of the domain (do a whois lookup) or, if this is running on a free service (e.g. Yahoo!, free.fr, f2s.com, etc.), the management or abuse department of that servic

I agree with the conclusion, over-reactions by multiple people.

However I do think I know where this is coming from. Especially deeding on where you are, judgements about actions in response to the COVID pandemic are often political as opposed to scientific.

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Admins can lock or delete content that does not violate the terms without comment.

The mod didn't delete the post, they prevented other people from discussing it in that thread. Preventing others from commenting is hardly "cancellation". In the worse places of the Internet such discussions often devolve quickly (though maybe not here on L19). Deleting posts like this is common practice. So locking was a gentle response. I agree with the lock.

I haven't read the term woke enough to be an expert but I pretty sure L19 is one of the least woke places on the Internet. The slow speed of discussion here is a result of people preferring short form communication and ease of posting pictures. Though even OGS seems more active despite.

I'm not sure I completely understand what's going on here, but it would be sad if a disagreement with a moderator led to a contributor wanting to delete his account immediately. I understand that opening a new thread and seeing it locked quickly is unpleasant, but this happens on every forum. Moderators make imperfect decisions, however imperfect moderators are better than no moderators at all.

What a toxic rant.

When a rather established member of the community posts something that could be violating the terms and conditions, I think the proper thing is to contact him by PM. That being said, just like any user, an admin can have a bad day at the office too.

So I would give everybody a break here, not rush to conclusions and return to normal, usual go related, activity.

On the tangent, of course L19 is not going downhill because of it being woke. There are other reasons for that.

Ending a reasonable and thoughtful post on something of a cliffhanger!

0-Joaz has the full right to do whatever he wants (I assume it's a he) to make any subjective decision he wants, with very specific exceptions to this rule, maybe such as; regular donaters should probably perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt, since there is and it's less likely they'll be reckless or in general do anything to harm the forum intentionally. Yet those are the exceptions to what I think should be the rule and the expected rule. In other words, whining and complaining about how Joaz runs the site would definitely not befit me. I'd rather spend those paragraphs thanking him and all those who donate, and f we all decided to spend 90% of our time saying positive things about each other, we'd show that we're emotionally responsible enough to have more leeway in speech). That being said, I'm happy to provide some suggestions on how we can improve the site and make it easier to use. For example, wonder if the sub-forums for game analysis and study journals should be merged--at least I'm not sure it should be separate. Having too many sub-forums on the site might intimidate those who are new to it. I may be wrong in my opinion that Joaz Banbeck has the right to do whatever he wants, L19's not the size of twitter or facebook with worldwide ramifications but it's just my humble opinion, don't hang me for it.

1-CDavis7M, I really like the noodle pics but it's the Nogshim CUP, so it has to be a picture of their CUP noodles! I'm so glad to get that of my chest. By the way, they're genuinely delicious. I don't mean to break the TOS, although it's a go tournament sponsor so it should be fine, as I'm just noting the point. And they're committed to not using MSG's, probably because it would be difficult to sponsor a Baduk tournament while using a neurotoxin in your main food product.

2-I way was way more intellectually competent, intelligent and mature when I was 14-15, counting age from birth, 8 years ago in 2014, than now in 2022. I am a pebble, for real.

3-I consider myself, especially recently, to have an ability for being able to naturally vanquish vicious behavior online in the least authoritarian way possible. Even without intending to. This is probably because I have a syncretic personality. It's difficult for me to get offended because I'm always more concerned about empathising how the 'offender' may be thinking, to kindly and lovingly guide them on the right track. When I was young, 6, 7 or so (by age measured from birth), and someone asked me if the window was open, I'd look at the open window and say I think the window. Years later I thought of the fact that technically, there is no way to know anything for sure outside of the mathematical field. Indeed, of course, I've always believed this. We know about

Known Knowns
Known Unkowns

Scientists will often tell you that what they are most wary of are

Unkown Unkowns

However I think that we should be most wary of all of

Unkown Knowns

Or at least unknown beliefs we subconsciously hold that bias our thinking and shape our perspective, and of course, perspective is everything in life. Baduk proves that. Although degree of doubting my perceptions is probably an inherent cause of my schizophrenia from 2017ish, haha.

Law =/= the end of arbitrarism. The idea that the existence of laws in certain. For example, how do you write the law that determines the definitions of words in the law? The TOS doesn't remove arbitrarism, but rather reduces arbitrarism. People have unrealistic expectations of how thorough and un-arbitrary the law will be and then start throwing tantrums when it doesn't turn out to be the case. WE are in denial. We want to believe that it's laws that we're putting our faith in when it's really people we're putting our faith in. And that's the way it should be. We easily accuse or get upset with people because we don't see people, but rather some 'law' they should be following, when actually if we saw people instead we'll have a lot more empathy and be a lot more forgiving. In my view. I believe that in very ancient and small communities of 10,000 or less, we were a lot more like bonobos, raising children in a very forgiving manner and then as adults those children would be more forgiving and less likely to pander to authoritarianism. This is due to humans limits on our ability to form intimate connections since most people can have more than 100 friends and those friend groups can have good relations with only 100 other friend groups. But in populations of a million or more, we become cold, viscous, and easily offended, seeing others as criminals more easily. By the way, Bonobos are the only primate that doesn't kill. I'd sacrifice myself for a bonobo easier than a human, perhaps.

In my view, I essentially do not have any problem with Joaz locking threads whenever he deems it fit, and while I think constructive critism is a good thing, I do not understand the whiney nature of maybe a few of these complaints. So I might give an example of how If it was up to ME, I can see a hundred ways to reduce the temperature of those debates and divert them back to the civilised plane without resorting to locking. In general, all one has to do is empathise with opions one may not necessarily agree with, and I very often do empathise with opinions I don't agree with. But let us reduce the whining, otherwise I'll belt out my half-correctly remembered lyrics to my go song I sang to the tune of the cat returns them.

And just as I know (probably not the right lyric)

I'm not in the americas but I think it would make a good edition to the AGA songbook, although it doesn't quite fit the rules

I'm like timothy in the famous five. I sleep with one eye open so I can empathise with both--or rather all--sides. Let's do that more often. And as I've said before, be more concerned about the quality of the go community rather than its size. One doesn't want bad quality to get so big that it's difficult to change. Small size is good. Small size is an opportunity to correct mistakes before they get out of control. Appreciate small size. And appreciate expertise. And I daresay appreciate novelty too. Appreciate the elements of harmony required for friendship; kindness, genorousity, laughter, loyalty, honesty, and magic/science. And, in my case, aprreciate those who are left-of-field, and can help you see a different perspective, since perspective, is everything*.

I don't think that merging two empty sections will ever produce a nonempty section.

Well, they are not completely empty but my impression is that when I joined this forum 5 years ago, several people maintained a regular study journal, people asked for game reviews, and this is no longer the case. Did AI kill the need for human reviews? Where are the DDKs? Are they intimidated?

Where are the beginners? The last post in the "Beginners" section is from November 9

Some kyu players still frequent this forum, but several of them mainly discuss pro games. Very few talk about their games, their everyday life. When I post positions from my kyu games, I get answers from dan players (which is very good since my analysis is sometimes wrong despite using AI) but almost never from other kyu players.

A cup... like with a handle?

You're welcome.

I'm going way off-topic (though I think there's not much on-topic left to say at this point).

I'm another kyu player, perhaps slightly weaker than you. I always enjoy your posts, even if I don't often take the time to comment. Thanks for posting, and please keep it up!

Thanks for the feedback. I see in the archives that you did comment at least once on my posts, and besides we played 3 correspondence games in December and January on OGS, so I wouldn't say you belong to the "silent majority".

I'm not aware of what's going on with your comment. I don't typically act as a moderator on the forum (just available for technical help, when necessary), however, I can probably help with whatever you want to get done if you send me a PM.

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be immersed

I just noticed the account is no longer around and thought this was an appropriate video for this occasion.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

For transparency, I deleted his account, per his request.

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be immersed

Unless I am having a senior moment, it seems transparency has been the very opposite of this action. I gather deleting an account also deletes all the account holder's posts, without leaving any place holders to show something was once there. The result here is that I now appear to be the instigator of this thread. I was not, and prefer not to be shown as such.

I have inserted an edit to my own post, but presumably the same sort of hiccup now occurs right across the forum.

This may be a design flaw in the software, but I think it needs flagging up.

There's a forum function to delete a user's posts. The OP requested that, citing GDPR. I don't know much about the applicability of GDPR to a forum like this, but whatever the case, I did as he asked.

I am calling this transparent, simply because I am indicating what was asked and what was done.

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be immersed