[Walddk]

Anyway, turn your attention to the other thread now ("We didn't vote for Bush"). USBF minutes (part 1) published.

Roland

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Oct 18 2007, 02:33 PM, said:

Jimmy, I'm just talking about my personal subjective criteria for appropriateness. I do not believe in, let alone care for, objective criteria. If the question was "which signs satisfy objective appropriateness" my answer would not have been "all", "some" or "none". It would have been "the question is meaningless to me".

Anyway, whatever such a committee would be able to decide, that would be just as subjective.

helene, i'm positive that i'd agree with whatever your definition of 'appropriate' might be .. i'm also (fairly) certain that someone somewhere would disagree with us

Echognome, on Oct 18 2007, 03:05 PM, said:

luke warm, on Oct 18 2007, 10:54 AM, said:

it really has nothing to do (in my mind) with what actually happened, i am arguing philosophically... so if you think noone has to define the meaning of 'appropriate' in this context, you must see that the 'some signs' answer and the 'all signs' answer are the same

I think I see the difference here.

What seems to be argued in order to be in the "some" camp, you have to go through the painstaking process of determining exactly what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. However, I don't believe that is to be the case. I brought up earlier how we have a Code of Conduct at work. If you read it, you would see that it contained a lot of questions you have to ask yourself about whether something would be appropriate. We also had to have training on sexual harassment. Do you think that is all black and white? Of course not.

So how does one judge after-the-fact whether something was inappropriate and worthy of some disciplinary action?

but that's the point, matt... it's true that your workplace has CoC and sexual harassment rules, but it's also true that if you were reported for violating either of those then *someone* (or some group) would have to determine whether or not your actions breeched the rules... so you can ask yourself all the questions you want about those things, the fact remains that if another employee disagrees with you, and says so by way of a complaint, someone other than you will say whether or not your understanding was correct... right?

[jonottawa]

blackshoe, on Oct 18 2007, 08:20 PM, said:

"Signs"

We folks from Ottawa have a pretty good track record on this subject.

EDIT: Link added subsequent to officeglen's post.

[Echognome]

luke warm, on Oct 18 2007, 02:13 PM, said:

but that's the point, matt... it's true that your workplace has CoC and sexual harassment rules, but it's also true that if you were reported for violating either of those then *someone* (or some group) would have to determine whether or not your actions breeched the rules... so you can ask yourself all the questions you want about those things, the fact remains that if another employee disagrees with you, and says so by way of a complaint, someone other than you will say whether or not your understanding was correct... right?

Sure. If that *someone* (or some group) didn't exist, then there would be no discussion of sanctions either. This is what I don't understand. Is the concern that we need to have a separate group for a "trial" and for "sentencing"? If the behavior were not signs, but something else, someone would have to get involved. Imagine someone using all kinds of profanities in their speech or punching another player in the face. Why would the group for those offences be any different for this? I think the difference is that I'm bundling all of the behavior into one oversight. I'm not trying to add any extra layers of complexity.

[glen]

jonottawa, on Oct 18 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

blackshoe, on Oct 18 2007, 08:20 PM, said:

"Signs"

We folks from Ottawa have a pretty good track record on this subject.

Jon is noting that the rock group who wrote and recorded the signs track is from Ottawa.

[helene_t]

luke warm, on Oct 19 2007, 12:13 AM, said:

but it's also true that if you were reported for violating either of those then *someone* (or some group) would have to determine whether or not your actions breeched the rules...

Are we talking about the same kind of committee? If your point is that
IF "some" signs are allowed
AND someone shows a disputed sign
AND the incident may warrant a formal reaction from the WBF
THEN some WBF body (committee or whatever) must be given a mandate to interpret the "some" thing,

then I agree with you. But my whole point is that it may not be necessary (FWIW IMHO it is not necessary) to give formal approval of signs before they get disputed. Dealing with conduct issues afterwards on an ad-hoc basis saves a lot of work because even if a sign is shown and it pisses a lot of people off, a formal reaction from WBF may not be elicited.

In general I think having "simple" rules like "no signs" leads to more bureaucracy, not less. This is because it creates an (IMHO completely unnecessary) need for defining if a particular symbol (inscription on clothes, jewelry etc.) counts as a "sign". Even worse, Fred limited the subject to "political signs" so it may even create a need for clarification of whether a particular sign is "political".

Of course there are many situations in which such "simple" rules are really simple (without quotation marks) and helpful. I don't think the issue of political (and similar) displays at the award ceremony of the Venice Cup is such a situation, but if you think it is, fair enough.

[jikl]

As Helene has said, (well very much distilled) it is all about pre-approval. If you take a sign up that is not approved you face a sanction. Simple as that. Even it is of the purest intentions for a sick or dead team mate etc.

Let me put it this way, if someone was about to get up on the stage to accept a medal with a tshirt that said (Insert multiple profanities here or any derogatory comment), would they be stopped? Yes.

Same situation.

Sean

[helene_t]

hu? I thought one of the things we could all agree on is that pre-approval is a ridiculous idea (Fred was sarcastic when he introduced the idea). Do you seriously support pre-approval, or are you being sarcastic as well?

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Oct 18 2007, 11:26 PM, said:

luke warm, on Oct 19 2007, 12:13 AM, said:

but it's also true that if you were reported for violating either of those then *someone* (or some group) would have to determine whether or not your actions breeched the rules...

Are we talking about the same kind of committee? If your point is that
IF "some" signs are allowed
AND someone shows a disputed sign
AND the incident may warrant a formal reaction from the WBF
THEN some WBF body (committee or whatever) must be given a mandate to interpret the "some" thing,

then I agree with you.

that's it, helene... there has to be some group and any action taken has to be after the fact... it would be impossible beforehand, which is why without such a group the "some" voters and the "all signs" voters are saying the same thing (given that there is nobody deciding)

Echognome, on Oct 18 2007, 05:23 PM, said:

luke warm, on Oct 18 2007, 02:13 PM, said:

but that's the point, matt... it's true that your workplace has CoC and sexual harassment rules, but it's also true that if you were reported for violating either of those then *someone* (or some group) would have to determine whether or not your actions breeched the rules... so you can ask yourself all the questions you want about those things, the fact remains that if another employee disagrees with you, and says so by way of a complaint, someone other than you will say whether or not your understanding was correct... right?

Sure. If that *someone* (or some group) didn't exist, then there would be no discussion of sanctions either.

that's it in a nutshell... if that group didn't exist, the appropriateness of any action is left up to the individual's interpretation of the CoC... but that group, luckily, does exist, be it a boss, a committee, whatever

[the hog]

Surely this whole discussion is totally pointless. The decision to display a sign or make a statement or whatever should be totally up to the individual. If your governing body doesn't like it, then fine, they have the option of not selecting you again.

You made the decision, you wear the consequences; it depends how strongly you feel about an issue.

[helene_t]

OK so we were talking about two different comitees.

But you seem to say that "no fomal rules", "no formal rule enformcement" and "no rules" is the same. I voted "no signs" but I'm against a formal ban. I suppose you think I'm saying the same as the two other groups, then ... but I beg to differ.

[geller]

Quote

Surely this whole discussion is totally pointless. The decision to display a sign or make a statement or whatever should be totally up to the individual. If your governing body doesn't like it, then fine, they have the option of not selecting you again.

You made the decision, you wear the consequences; it depends how strongly you feel about an issue.

The problem is the protester is not representing herself, she is representing the USBF (in this case) in a WBF championship being held in China, hosted by the CCBA. So if her holding up the sign is inappropriate (let's say this is the case for the sake of argument) then not only the individual protester but also the USBF can be held accountable. Therefore it behooves the USBF (and all other federations) to exert control over the actions of players who represent them.

[jikl]

Quote

As Helene has said, (well very much distilled) it is all about pre-approval. If you take a sign up that is not approved you face a sanction. Simple as that. Even it is of the purest intentions for a sick or dead team mate etc.

Let me put it this way, if someone was about to get up on the stage to accept a medal with a tshirt that said (Insert multiple profanities here or any derogatory comment), would they be stopped? Yes.

Same situation.

Sean

Quote

hu? I thought one of the things we could all agree on is that pre-approval is a ridiculous idea (Fred was sarcastic when he introduced the idea). Do you seriously support pre-approval, or are you being sarcastic as well?

OK, note to self, do not respond on forums when watching TV, reading the forums, and in the middle of chatting online to someone. It just doesn't work, I have skipped whole sentences and I now understand why I got some strange responses in the chat. Anyway...

I did not mean to mention you Helene in the first sentence at least.

I started off in the "some" camp.

My analogy of the person with a t-shirt saying (Insert anything really bad here to any culture/religion or all of the above etc) is still valid. They would be stopped getting on the stage or forced to change the said piece of clothing. This could range from the mildly offensive (depending on context), to generally offensive. For instance, let's say it was the planets Jupiter and Neptune in the SSBC (Solar System Bridge Championships; Neptune lost, so when they come up for their silver medals they all wear t-shirts (or bodysuits in the strangely universal sci-fi genre) bearing the message "Jupiter only won because ABC and DEF cheated throughout the whole competition", would this be acceptable? No.

Would they be allowed to get onto the stage wearing that? That is an interesting question; who could stop them? Is there some sort of security at a BB/VC/SB (or in my particular case the SSBC) that could stop them? Maybe this is not a relevant point. If they could be stopped with our current measures, they would. As would anyone with a message saying that we should nuke a certain country, ot one that wants to obliterate a certain religion.

So now we have the possibility that even clothing can not be properly pre-approved. Which means, (going back to an earlier example I used), anyone could have decided to wear a "Free Tibet" t-shirt to the award ceremony under a jacket then opened the jacket to display it (if it got through customs in the first place).

Let's get to signs; any sign can be hidden. Any person displaying any sort of sign without some sort of pre-approval after this event knows that there will be probable sanctions. (On a side note here, this gets VERY complicated where a country might overturn a WBF sanction by their local authority, WBF appeals, but loses in the Court of Arbitration for Sport [if we are defined as a sport, or if hobbies fall into this jurisdiction, again more complicated by recent attempts for Olympic accreditation]). So, will pre-approval work? No, it won't. It will only work for those signs that everyone would agree to, the dying or dead team-member etc argument. Would this need a committee? Politically, probably yes. The team captain or country representative at the event, a WBF representative and the hosting country. If it is purely a dying or dead team member, this will always get through, and it will take them 3 seconds to approve it. If it is anything that takes them longer than 3 seconds then it should probably be disapproved (unless this 3 person committee now needs a 6 person committee so that each have independent translators as it is completely politically incorrect to insist all signs be in English [and then it is possible that not all members can read English, but may be able to speak it to a limitted extent]).

Damn, this got very complicated, very quick.

OK, now to where I mentioned Helene, she mentioned this:

Quote

Are we talking about the same kind of committee? If your point is that
IF "some" signs are allowed
AND someone shows a disputed sign
AND the incident may warrant a formal reaction from the WBF
THEN some WBF body (committee or whatever) must be given a mandate to interpret the "some" thing,

then I agree with you. But my whole point is that it may not be necessary (FWIW IMHO it is not necessary) to give formal approval of signs before they get disputed. Dealing with conduct issues afterwards on an ad-hoc basis saves a lot of work because even if a sign is shown and it pisses a lot of people off, a formal reaction from WBF may not be elicited.

Let's use an ambiguous but extreme example that lurks in a weird part of law. "I saw the Chief Tournament Director and the Head of the Appeals Committee spending $1,000 bills last night after the SSBC final"; the silver medallists wear this, but it is actually true, they were. What is the motivation behind this sign? Is it litigious? The sign-bearers can always claim truth, the defendants will always claim defamation. Both are true, but probably untrue in a court of law.

The safest thing is no signs. Otherwise someone will take a sign too far in the future and it will end up in court. (This is even though I would like the "Get well soon" or R.I.P. one for a teammate).

Sorry for the lenghty post.

Sean

[geller]

Quote

Sorry for the lenghty post.

Sean

You can edit it at any time if you want to Just click on "edit."

[hotShot]

jikl, on Oct 19 2007, 02:15 PM, said:

The safest thing is no signs. Otherwise someone will take a sign too far in the future and it will end up in court. (This is even though I would like the "Get well soon" or R.I.P. one for a teammate).

Sorry for the lenghty post.

Sean

It may be safest, but the only the home of the brave can be the land of the free.

Benjamin Franklin said:

"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither"
"People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

[jikl]

Quote

It may be safest, but the only the home of the brave can be the land of the free.

Your quoted land will sue someone for tripping over their own shoe, in fact I had a lawyer come up to me when I lived in the US about that outside a shopping centre, he only became disinterested when I told him I bought the shoes in Australia

So be brave, be free, but make sure you have deep pockets.

Sean

[blackshoe]

Committees. Hm.

"A committee is an organism with three or more stomachs - and no brains." - R.A. Heinlein

[joshs]

Dear Fred,

I voted some. (At least regard to the word appropriate)

First, the word appropriate does not mean
"in accordance with rules" and inapporiate does not mean "sanctionable behavior".
The question if there should be rules that outlawed some signs is a different question. I for one, think its inappropriate to show up at someone's house unannounced at dinner time. Its a far cry from saying that someone should be punished for it. "In Bad taste" is partially a subjective opinion and the community doesn't have to agree on this. I know one restuarant that posts "men must not wear hats inside." I will not go in that resturant, since jews in fact keep there head covered inside, and the custom of taking one's hat off inside (originally just in churchs) in the west (for christians) came from differentiating christians from jews (ok there is some historical debate about the origin of this custom). So to me, the sign (and custom) says "jews not allowed" even though I am sure most people have no idea where any of these customs come from. The point is that not everyone has the same idea of what is appropriate...

Anyway, let me get on to the question about if the position that "some signs should be disallowed" is in itself absurb (I think that was the question you were really interested in). I think your implicit argument is the "slippery slope" argument that its impossible to have rules that cover all cases, and besides where exactly is the boundary between an allowable sign and a non-allowable sign. If you were in fact making a different argument, I am sorry I missed it, so you will have to let me know what it was.

Let me site two examples of slippery slope rules in other contexts:
1. US constitutional law
2. Laws of Contract Bridge

1. One of the key factors in a law being valid is if the law is clear enough so that you know if some action you are doing is illegal. As an example of some supreme court decisions that dealt with such an issue there were a sequence of court decisions Roth vs the US to Jacobellis v. Ohio to Miller vs California from the 50's-70's addressing the constitutionality of obsenity laws. The opinion of the members of the court ranged from the absolutist (everything is speech and protected under the first amendment) to the other camp which felt that despite the lack of a clear boundary between something obscene and something which is protected free speech, it is clear when something went way over the line, and those are the enforcable cases.

No matter which camp you are in, I would not call the other position absurb. Both sides might call the other side absurb, but when there is this significant of a disagreement between a siginificant number of intellegent subject matter experts, I think the word absurb is a major overbid...

2. Rules regading Breaks in tempo in an auction do not have any hard and fast rules. There is not a cut of point which is "if its your 2'rd bid in a competative auction, and the opps bid 3C over 2H then a hesitation of 7.4 seconds is ok, but 7.45 seconds is not." The rules are subjective, but again follow the main principle that its clear when someone had a SIGNIFICANTLY longer hestitation then there was a break in tempo. When its close to the not well defined boundary, it is not classified as a break in tempo.

As to what kind of rules someone might want to put in place regarding signs (or speech in general), the normal rules would be: No libelous (statements that are harmful to the person, as well as blantantly false) insults. Or no libelous insults of someone at the event. Or don't insult our host. Or...

There are lots of possible rules which achieve a social end that at least most of us favour, is narrow in scope, and its clear if someone stepped way over the line.

Josh

[fred]

Hi Josh,

I am not qualified to comment on constitional law, but I think your bridge example is a perfect illustration of why "some" should be avoided if at all possible.

Hestitations in bridge are perhaps the biggest source of controversy and conflict in our game. They cause longtime friends to suspect each other of cheating, create impossible situations for committees and directors to resolve, and not infrequently determine the outcome of important tournaments. This leads to further bad feelings among longtime friends, accusations of bias, and abuse and embarrassment for those who have the thankless task of trying to set things right.

I think all serious bridge players would agree that our game would be better off if there existed some "clean" way to deal with hestitations.

Unfortuantely that is not possible. We cannot outlaw hestitations because bridge is a hard game and people need to think. Nobody would want to play if we either forced them to bid and play every 3 seconds (no hestiations) or forced them to bid and play every 5 minutes (all hesitations).

Nor can we create fair rules that will govern all hesitation situations and lead to an equitable result (or even come close). Human judgment, a slippery slope, is the best we can do.

The best in this case is really awful!

The sign situation is completely different because there is a clean way to solve this problem without involving human judgment and without destroying the fabric of the tournament.

The answer is simple: just say "none"

Sure this creates another slippery slope in terms of "what is a sign" or "what is a political statement", but my sense is that if organizations like the WBF make their wishes clear then, in practice, bridge players will not even think of travelling up this particular slipperly slope. For those who try to test the limits (or simply ignore the WBF's explicit wishes) the penalties should be severe.

Despite how it may sound, I am definitely not one of those people who thinks there needs to be a million rules governing all aspects of life. Before the Shanghai incident I would not have thought that a "no public politicing" rule would be necessary - I would not have thought that any world class players (to say nothing of World Champions) would have such poor judgment as to necessitate such a rule.

But this incident clearly demonstrates that the lack of a clear policy in this area can lead only to trouble. IMO the WBF should be trying to minimize the slipperyness of the slope. Making a clear statement of "no signs" is the best way for them to do this.

I wish this wasn't necessary, but evidently it is.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[joshs]

Hey Fred,

Now I always thought you had a libertarian streak (maybe I misread that). I guess the responsibility of managing a virtual communiity (BBO) changes that.

First, let me dispute your claim that there no rule that can solve the hesitation problem. Here is rule A: All bids and plays must be made in between 7 and 10 seconds (with something like a chess clock used, and time officially starts and ends when the clock button is pressed). This is a uniform rule, where bidding too fast or too slow are equally sanctionable, and involves no discussion of whether the slowness or fastness indicates any action by partner. The point is, that this rule, just as the current rules, or no rules has consequences. Some players will benefit and some will be harmed, and it will make the game worse in some respects (you can't take the time to solve an interesting logic problem), but make it better in some other respects. I am not saying I am in favour of this rule. I am merely saying that there can be "enforcable rules" other then no rules at all in these situations.

Similiarly, on the matter of signs there are enforcable rules. Whether or not people like those rules is another matter.

Now as to the other matter, there seems to be some sentiment that "no signs" is a neutral position (same effect on all). This is not true.

There was recently an incident where a girl was forbidden from playing soccer while wearing an islamic head dress (the league overruled the ref at halftime thankfully). A league's decision that there is no headgear allowed does not have a uniform effect on everyone. There are some people who wears headgear as an expression of who they are. Others do not wear headgear as an expression of who they are. I personally do not think that religious expression is fundamentally different then political expression. Both are personal expressions of who someone is. Perhaps they indicate what group they consider themseleves a part of, perhaps they indicate an idea they believe in, or whatever.

If you pass a dress code, the people who like to dress that way benefit, and people who do not are harmed. Similiarly if you prevent speech or other forms of self expression. Those rules benefit some and harm some. This is not to say there should never be rules or restrictions, but lets not pretend that these are neutral. I don't think my wearing a yamulkah (a jewish head covering) is any different then someone wearing a Fred Thompson for President button or is any different then a I didn't vote for Bush sign. If you outlaw signs, people who do not like to make public statements or those who likes presenting the view that everyone agrees on all issues benefits, and people who have some thing to say are harmed. Its as simple as that.

One of the main things a society struggles with is that values conflict with each other and interests conflict with each other. For instance maybe someone's religious expression involes screaming lord save us at the top of their lungs while burning a dead skunk. This expression harms others, so its up to the society to figure out how to balance those competing harms/interests. There is no one correct answer, and much of political philosophy involes an argument about how should a society make such a decision.

Josh