Cyprus-Forum.com

[brother]

Recently i complained to the forum moderator Aris about a post which was enticing racial hatred towards TC after i noticed the post was still there 2 days later and the moderator allowed it and the reply i got was:

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Hello Brother,

Thanks for notifying me about this post.
What he said is "We are coming and we are thousands" and he gave some links. We all disagree with this person's beliefs, but I don't think we should close our eyes and pretend that such people do not exist.

As you see I don't participate often in the heated discussions and I erase posts very rarely (manly posts by people spamming the forums with ads)

This is not because I don't have an opinion but because I don't want this forum to become a forum only for certain type of people (for example only TCs, only GCs, only leftists, only nationalists etc). I want it to be a forum for all Cypriots and everybody else that lives in Cyprus or is interested for our island.

Such posts are a great chance to express your beliefs about this organization and similar ones.
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So i thought o.k , today i posted on the forum in turkish and its about the the TRNC celebrations and how GC papers reported about it and there opinions but to my shock within an hour or so i got this reply from the moderator Aris:

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Hello brother,

You posted something in Turkish and I had to delete it.
This was done for two reasons:
1)English is encouraged in this forum so more people can understand what you say.
2)I don't speak Turkish so I am not able to moderate such kind of posts.

If you necessarily have to write something in Turkish, then provide a translation in the same post so everybody can understand it.

Thanks,
Aris

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Now to me that is a double standard and i wrote back and told him so but i find it distasteful that he thinks that this forum can have racial hatred in greek with no translation but its o.k because he understands it but just a report in turkish is not and he did not even ask can you translate this or i will delete it, nothing at all this i find strange in its self.

So i say treat as you would like to be treated or declare this a GC forum only and i will go to another forum where everyone is treated equally and not just on the basis of what language the moderator understands.

i.e Aris have you considered having a TC as a moderator who can read turkish or would you find that too much of a burden or god forbid you share the authority with a turk.

[Aris]

Brother,

I run this forum in a way that I believe is fair. I try to keep the balance between the forum rules ( http://www.cyprus-forum.com/rules.html ) and freedom of speech. As I told you already I erase posts extremely rarely (an exception is spam).

Cyprus-Forum does not belong to any community. It is privately owned and not part of the public domain. Your suggestions and criticism are always taken into consideration but this doesn’t mean I will always agree with all members (such thing would be impossible).

Your contribution to the forum is valuable and I do hope you will continue to express your views here. However, if you believe that this forum is not good enough for you then you can find another one that would meet your expectations better.

Regards,
Aris

[Piratis]

but to my shock within an hour or so i got this reply from the moderator Aris:

Whats shocking for me is that you are posting private messages.

[metecyp]

Now to me that is a double standard and i wrote back and told him so but i find it distasteful that he thinks that this forum can have racial hatred in greek with no translation but its o.k because he understands it but just a report in turkish is not and he did not even ask can you translate this or i will delete it, nothing at all this i find strange in its self.

I think brother has a point in here. Nobody agrees with these 2 posts because one is in Greek and it's racist, the other one is in Turkish and it contains material that might upset some forum members. So why was one taken out of the forum but the other wasn't?

I'm not saying that the operator did this on purpose. I do believe that he tries to run this forum in a fair way but I think he should be more careful in the future and it's ok to make mistakes.

[Aris]

Hello Metecyp,

There was no mistake. Brother's post was locked not because of it's content but because of my inability to review it. If the same post was in Greek I would have either delete or translate it (if this was not done already by the author or another member). The 5 words post in Greek has been accurately translated by other members and this is why my intervention was not necessary.

You should consider this forum as an English language forum only. The fact that I speak Greek is just an added bonus that can be beneficial under some circumstances and nothing more than that.

Brother's post is still online. A bilingual member can translate it and re-post it in English.

Regards,
Aris

[brother]

It would have been more decent of you if you had given that option before you locked it.

[MicAtCyp]

Here are my views on the matter.
1)If the message of Brother was deleted or locked because it was written in Turkish, then the message of XrysiAvgi should also be deleted or locked for exactly the same reason (because it was written in Greek) otherwise it is double standard.
1b)It is an act of disrespect to post messages in a language that half the members of the forum cannot understand.
2)Despite the above I do not agree with any kind of intereference by the moderators in the discussions. The participants themselves have the ability and the brains to iron down any bad behaviour. I have NEVER seen a case where the moderators are absolutely fair when they interfere.
3)The only interference I accept is deleting of spam, and advertisements.
4)As a matter of principle any forum in which both GCs and TCs participate should have a GC and a TC moderator as well.But like I said I do not agree with their excercise of power other than on spam and ads.
5)I do not agree with labeling of messages as "promoting hate" or "promoting understanding". Every message is welcomed and it is upto the participants to make the right use of it. I think we already proved it by the way we handled the message of Xrysiavgi.
6)Private forums can close down any minute, without any warning. I have seen many private forums closing down, and thousands of hours of work and contribution gone wasted.Should I mention www.Turkey.com that had more than 5000 members with excellent discussions, should I mention the TC forum http://mycyprus.org/forum/ .... It is upto the paricipants to join forums that are guaranteed to stay alive, due to their very nature.
7)Finally like Piratis said, the publicising of private messages is not right. A private message should stay private. Private means we do not expose its contents to everybody. If we want other members to hear what we say we must post publicly right from the start.

I hope my comments are constructive. I did not mean to hurt anyone, and I apoligise in advance if I (unintentionally) did.

[Piratis]

I really don't know how you can really compare the post of Xrysiavgi in Greek and the post of Brother in Turkish. The first one was 5 words, the second one was a whole page.

If you look in this forum you will find many occasions that some members throw in some phrases written in Turkish. The 5 words post of Xrisiavgi should be compared with those posts, and not with a whole page of an article written in Turkish.

[MicAtCyp]

They have 3 things in common:
A)Both constitute a header thread.
B)Both are new discussions inviting others to comment.
C)Both are written in a language that half the members do not understand.

I dont compare the two based on their size. I criticise the action taken on grounds of principle.

[Piratis]

Well, then if this forum had a strict rule like "English only", all those Turkish or Greek phrases that some people throw here and there would have to be erased, right?

So i believe this is indeed a case where "size matters". One thing is to write a phrase or sentence in Greek or Turkish, and a whole another thing to post a whole page.