[glen]

Regarding the (copyrighted) cartoon, the guy not holding the sign has no freedom of speech.

[fred]

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:31 PM, said:

Those rules benefit some and harm some.

I believe a "no signs" rule would harm nobody.

I believe it would be only a matter of time until a "some signs" rule would harm everybody.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[jonottawa]

fred, on Oct 20 2007, 12:41 AM, said:

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:31 PM, said:

Those rules benefit some and harm some.

I believe a "no signs" rule would harm nobody.

I believe it would be only a matter of time until a "some signs" rule would harm everybody.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I agree that a "some signs" rule would harm everybody.

That's why nobody who voted "some signs" argued that there should be a "some signs" rule. They argued that if and when a nutty enough person decided to do something egregious enough to merit sanction, they would be met by the:

No f***ing lunatics allowed! rule.

That trumps the 'some signs' rule, anyway.

[glen]

jonottawa, on Oct 19 2007, 10:26 PM, said:

...That's why nobody who voted "some signs" argued that there should be a "some signs" rule...

I didn't argue but stated there should be a "some signs" guideline, which I provided.

At this point I'm lost whether Fred's 'I believe a "no signs" rule would harm nobody' means no to all types of signs, or just no to political signs, as he redefined the thread question.

[joshs]

fred, on Oct 19 2007, 07:41 PM, said:

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:31 PM, said:

Those rules benefit some and harm some.

I believe a "no signs" rule would harm nobody.

I believe it would be only a matter of time until a "some signs" rule would harm everybody.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Well I completely disagree. I think a no sign policy harms me, harms debby rosenberg, and harms anyone who would normally wear a political button, a yankee cap, an end the genocide in darfur sign, or a get well soon paul soloway sign. I think only people who would not normally have such a sign, who doesn't derive pleasure from having such a sign, thinks that outlawing something that gives someone else pleasure doesn't cause harm. Outlawing something always causes harm. If it didn't, you would not have needed to outlaw it in the first place. This does not mean you shouldn't outlaw it, but you need to recognize that you are causing harm and weigh the costs and benefits (to different people) of such a policy. When we ban smoking at the table we are harming you (or did you give up smoking recently?), and benefiting me. I think there is a good reason to make such a rule, but I would never claim it didn't harm you.

Josh

[blackshoe]

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:40 PM, said:

Well I completely disagree. I think a no sign policy harms me, harms debby rosenberg, and harms anyone who would normally wear a political button, a yankee cap, an end the genocide in darfur sign, or a get well soon paul soloway sign.

Let's not define "harm" ridiculously broadly please.

"I don't like it" is not the same as "I am harmed by it".

[joshs]

blackshoe, on Oct 20 2007, 07:04 AM, said:

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:40 PM, said:

Well I completely disagree. I think a no sign policy harms me, harms debby rosenberg, and harms anyone who would normally wear a political button, a yankee cap,  an end the genocide in darfur sign, or a get well soon paul soloway sign.

Let's not define "harm" ridiculously broadly please.

"I don't like it" is not the same as "I am harmed by it".

So there is a slippery slope of where "I don't like it" ends and "harm" begins?
Who are you to say where harm is, and who is hurt by what? Obviously someone has claimed they were harmed by Debbie holding up her sign (otherwise there would be no ruckus here). They are not claiming they were harmed as badly as if they were run over by a car (at least I don't think the claim about the level of harm is that high). But there is a claim of harm.

While I think being harmed by the sign is silly, certainly a lot of people here feel harmed by it. I think its rediculous to say that the sign (especially a statement of fact!) can harm someone but being told you can't have a sign can't.

[jikl]

In actual fact, I don't think anyone is really claiming to be harmed by this sign. The potential signs are the potential harm if this is not dealt with.

Sean

[fred]

joshs, on Oct 20 2007, 02:40 AM, said:

fred, on Oct 19 2007, 07:41 PM, said:

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:31 PM, said:

Those rules benefit some and harm some.

I believe a "no signs" rule would harm nobody.

I believe it would be only a matter of time until a "some signs" rule would harm everybody.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Well I completely disagree. I think a no sign policy harms me, harms debby rosenberg, and harms anyone who would normally wear a political button, a yankee cap, an end the genocide in darfur sign, or a get well soon paul soloway sign. I think only people who would not normally have such a sign, who doesn't derive pleasure from having such a sign, thinks that outlawing something that gives someone else pleasure doesn't cause harm. Outlawing something always causes harm. If it didn't, you would not have needed to outlaw it in the first place. This does not mean you shouldn't outlaw it, but you need to recognize that you are causing harm and weigh the costs and benefits (to different people) of such a policy. When we ban smoking at the table we are harming you (or did you give up smoking recently?), and benefiting me. I think there is a good reason to make such a rule, but I would never claim it didn't harm you.

Josh

No offense intended, but I find this to be laughable.

Do you honestly believe that poor Debbie Rosenberg would be harmed if the USBF made it clear that they did not want people making overt political statements at THEIR tournaments? How about if the USBF made it clear that they did not want THEIR respresentatives to do the same thing?

Give me a break.

IMO it does zero harm to Debbie to ask her to respect the wishes of her hosts and the organization that chose her team and paid for their trip to Shanghai. If she really feels she needs to tell the world how she feels about politics, there are plenty of ways she can do that when the tournament is over.

And even if you really believe she will have been harmed in the process (which is hard for me to imagine but I will take your word for it), I cannot believe that you think that the degree of harm is even if the same league as the harm that will inevitably result if the WBF/USBF says "some signs are OK" or says nothing at all (which has the same effect).

I am not trying to single out Debbie even though she is the one who was actually holding the sign. You are the one who mentioned her name and I found it convenient to use a specific name in this post.

It turns out that I have liked Debbie very much since the time that we were both Junior players (her USA team beat my Canadian team in the finals of the 1991 World Junior Championships and IMO Debbie was the star of that match). This incident has not changed that. I sincerely hope that the feeling is mutual and that my strong disapproval of her actions will not impact our friendship as far as she is concerned either.

Debbie is a fantastic bridge player. It would be a real shame if, as a result of this incident, she was unwilling or not allowed to play in some future World Championship(s) for the USA.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[helene_t]

Fred, I don't think you realize how much confusion there is about what this thread is about. Maybe those in the "some" camp would not say that WBF should have a some-sign policy, but just say that there are some signs they personally feel offensive, and others they don't. Maybe they say "some" because they think it should depend on the size etc. of the sign, not on the message. Just one of many possible interpretations.

I really don't think you should make any assumptions about who means what, since nobody understands what anybody is saying in this thread. For example, you appear to be using the word "harm" quite differently from the way joshs uses it. There have been a few concrete sentiments put forward by Heddy, Ulven, Jon and Richard, and some such as Arend, Han and Matt have tried to clear up some of the confusion. But most of what has been written here is obscure. At least to me. In particular, I can make no sense of what you, walddk and Jimmy are saying. I may or may not agree with you. You might as well be talking Swahili, as far as I'm concerned.

[Walddk]

helene_t, on Oct 20 2007, 04:26 PM, said:

In particular, I can make no sense of what you, walddk and Jimmy are saying. I may or may not agree with you. You might as well be talking Swahili, as far as I'm concerned.

From the word go I have said "No signs". How can that be so difficult to understand?

Roland

[luke warm]

all i've tried to say is that the 'all signs' and 'some signs' have the same meaning, even if there's someone somewhere who decides... because in that case the 'some signs' simply means 'all signs which i/we agree are appropriate'

[helene_t]

The following is not a joke. As surrealistic as it sounds, it really happened:

I was picked up on the street by a volunteer from "The Movement", who asked if I would participate in a poll. OK. The first question was: "What do you think about society?". When I asked her to be a little more specific she got baffled. I suppose she would have been pleased with a reaction like "I have given it a lot of thought and reached the conclusion that I'm all for it".

Serious bridge players are used to being very specific when they specify problems (for forum polls or otherwise). Therefore I'm disappointed that nobody seems to see a need for clarifying what the question in this thread is. Let me try to translate this thread into a bridge problem:

Fred (refering to a situation with information bordering UI): "When is it acceptable to lead a spade? Always, Sometimes, Never?"

Han: What do you mean by "acceptable"? Can something be bad sportmanship and still "acceptable"?

Fred: "Maybe we should set up a bad-sportmanship sub-comitee.

Helene: "Accetable? To whom? The AC that believes in the law or the players who believe in their own opinions?"

Jimmy: "I'm not talking about this specific case, I'm arguing philosofically"

Matt: "The TD has certain freedom in interpreting the laws. There will always be cases where the law is not explicit and he needs to use his common sense. If necessary, he can elicit expert knowledge. This system works quite well".

Jon: "The real question is if the TD should supervise players and tell them what to lead"

Fred: "I thought it was obvious that a "spade" means "a small spade" in this context".

Helene: "I have no idea if the term "lead" is restricted to "opening lead" or not. We are probably discussing different things at the same time".

But those were just the most obvious ambiguities. Nobody realized that different posters referred to different regulating authorities, some took it for granted that the question concerned equity restoration where it damaged opps to lead a spade while others assumed the discussion to include procedural penalties in non-damaging cases, some assumed that a vote for "never" would impose an obligation to call the TD while other's assumed that the non-offenders might do that only in case they claimed damage, some of the "some" voters thought of the borderline cases being so rare that it would not overload the AC while some of the "Never"-voters thought of a different threshold that would probably lead to almost all cases being forwarded to the AC etc etc etc. Nevertheless, several posters expressed strong sentiments, even to the point of relating the issue to holocaust denial, and making ad hominem attacks.

A well-posed question would focus on a very specifc decision which the posters should imagine themselves facing. "Would you, as a member of a CoC comitee of WBF, vote for an explicit ban on political signs, subject to an automatic fine of SDR 5000 per team member?" is a well-posed question. Therefore I can understand Jon's sentiments.

"Would you, as an attendant of such a ceremony, be negatively influenced with respect to your sympathy for a player, if that player displayed a 25*40 cm sign with some statement unrelated to the event?" is a well-posed question. Therefore I can understand Hetty's, Richard's and Ulven's sentiments.

Most other sentiments I cannot understand. Sound like "Society? I'm all for it!" to me.

[mycroft]

My problem is that a "no signs" rule is using a sledgehammer to hit a thumb^H^H^H^H^Hnail. It is the sign of a litigious society that "OMG, occasionally people do stupid things! We can't allow that! Ban everything that might lead to that!" rather than "We expect you to be reasonable. If you're not, well, actions have consequences. But we assume that 99% of you are reasonable 99% of the time; you might want to just double think things." is even being considered.

If making punishable "get well soon Paul" or "in memory of Mark M." is the price we have to pay to ensure that a joke doesn't get out of hand every 70 years and potentially cause an embarrassment, then it's not worth it - in my estimation.

Frankly, if the sign were less obviously "written on the back of a menu in marker 20 seconds before we went up", I don't think the reaction would be so bad. It wasn't that the message was controversial (well, yeah, it is), it's that it was *ugly*.

Michael.

[joshs]

fred, on Oct 20 2007, 09:15 AM, said:

joshs, on Oct 20 2007, 02:40 AM, said:

fred, on Oct 19 2007, 07:41 PM, said:

joshs, on Oct 19 2007, 09:31 PM, said:

Those rules benefit some and harm some.

I believe a "no signs" rule would harm nobody.

I believe it would be only a matter of time until a "some signs" rule would harm everybody.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Well I completely disagree. I think a no sign policy harms me, harms debby rosenberg, and harms anyone who would normally wear a political button, a yankee cap, an end the genocide in darfur sign, or a get well soon paul soloway sign. I think only people who would not normally have such a sign, who doesn't derive pleasure from having such a sign, thinks that outlawing something that gives someone else pleasure doesn't cause harm. Outlawing something always causes harm. If it didn't, you would not have needed to outlaw it in the first place. This does not mean you shouldn't outlaw it, but you need to recognize that you are causing harm and weigh the costs and benefits (to different people) of such a policy. When we ban smoking at the table we are harming you (or did you give up smoking recently?), and benefiting me. I think there is a good reason to make such a rule, but I would never claim it didn't harm you.

Josh

No offense intended, but I find this to be laughable.

Do you honestly believe that poor Debbie Rosenberg would be harmed if the USBF made it clear that they did not want people making overt political statements at THEIR tournaments? How about if the USBF made it clear that they did not want THEIR respresentatives to do the same thing?

Give me a break.

IMO it does zero harm to Debbie to ask her to respect the wishes of her hosts and the organization that chose her team and paid for their trip to Shanghai. If she really feels she needs to tell the world how she feels about politics, there are plenty of ways she can do that when the tournament is over.

And even if you really believe she will have been harmed in the process (which is hard for me to imagine but I will take your word for it), I cannot believe that you think that the degree of harm is even if the same league as the harm that will inevitably result if the WBF/USBF says "some signs are OK" or says nothing at all (which has the same effect).

I am not trying to single out Debbie even though she is the one who was actually holding the sign. You are the one who mentioned her name and I found it convenient to use a specific name in this post.

It turns out that I have liked Debbie very much since the time that we were both Junior players (her USA team beat my Canadian team in the finals of the 1991 World Junior Championships and IMO Debbie was the star of that match). This incident has not changed that. I sincerely hope that the feeling is mutual and that my strong disapproval of her actions will not impact our friendship as far as she is concerned either.

Debbie is a fantastic bridge player. It would be a real shame if, as a result of this incident, she was unwilling or not allowed to play in some future World Championship(s) for the USA.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Well Fred we will just have to live with finding each others position laughable. I think the position that

a. someone was harmed by the sign
but
b. Censoring signs harms no one

Is completely inane. I can understand the position that neither a or b harms anyone (although I completely disagree with it,) and the position that both policies harm someone so we just have to figure out which harm is most severe (my position is that censorship causes much more harm), but your actual position, well I just think you have no respect for other people having different values then you have. People throughout time have been beaten up, arrested, or even killed in order to speak freely, and such a person, who knows that they may be physically harmed, clearly thinks that the physical harm is not a severe as being silenced. I have no idea how much Debbie cares about her ability to speak out, or about her message, but many people certainly do care a great deal about their political beliefs.

[fred]

This has nothing to do with values.

Consider the rule we have on BBO: players cannot put political statements in the profiles.

Those who break this rule are warned. Those who are warned and who do not change their profiles are barred.

It is necessary for us to make stupid rules like this because .01% of our members have demonstrated that they are not responsible enough to babysit themselves.

I suppose you think we are harming people with this rule. I disagree but I believe you that you think that.

Even so, consider the harm we would do to ourselves (and all of our other members) if our policy were any different. If you can't see this, I will be happy to spell it out for you, but try to use your imagination first.

What would you do if you were running an online bridge site?

The WBF is in exactly the same situation.

This is not about values. It is about existence.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Echognome]

fred, on Oct 22 2007, 01:55 PM, said:

This has nothing to do with values.

Consider the rule we have on BBO: players cannot put political statements in the profiles.

Those who break this rule are warned. Those who are warned and who do not change their profiles are barred.

It is necessary for us to make stupid rules like this because .01% of our members have demonstrated that they are not responsible enough to babysit themselves.

So, in essence, you've had to go down the slippery slope yourself.

What's "political"? If I say "Olof Palme is great." Would that be political? Might that offend someone?

Who is the judge, jury, and executioner?

I applaud that you allow notes in the profile, but you do not currently limit those notes to bridge related items (as far as I am aware). In essence, the BBO policy is in the "some" camp with regards to this medium.

You set out a list of rules and someone or some group is going to have to determine what is acceptable and what is not.

Here the medium is well defined (the text input on the profile box). I think many of us are stating that if you start making up very specific rules like "no signs" for the WBF ceremonies, then the slope is going to be about defining what is a "sign". (does a t-shirt count? does a tattoo count? do the acceptance speeches count?) Rather than just accepting that there is a tough gray area and make more general guidelines on behavior.

Now please don't misinterpret. My view is that I think it's great that there are profiles and that people have some leeway as to what they put in them. The idea I'm promoting is to have general guidelines. The interpretations have to be made by someone. Is it all completely fair? I don't think it should matter as it's our privilege to use the site. So in that sense, it's somewhat different. But I think it's perfectly reasonable for you (collectively the owners of BBO) to have the final say or to delegate who has the final say. Similarly, I think it's fair for the WBF, and the sponsoring organizations to determine who has the final say on all behavior.

[joshs]

Hey Fred,

I was not even aware of BBO's rule about no political statements. I have certainly seen political statements, at least relatively innocuous statements that are basically along the same lines of Debbie's sign. Usually these have led to friendly conversations, sometimes to heated debates, but I certainly have gotten to know others better as a result. I personally think that what someone puts in their profile is analagous to putting something on a sign in a public place (like outside a supermarket) which can be seen by one's community (which is now virtual more than physical) and that message really has nothing what so ever to do with the supermarket or the web site and they are not responsible in any way for the content. In fact the area outside a supermarket is considered a public place in US law, where constitutional free speech guarantees apply. The store owner can't regulate the speech made there. As its been 15 years since I studied constutional law in school (and I do not do this stuff professionally), I have no idea what the status of the law is in terms of defining "virtual public places" and what the implications are for speech on internet sites.

Anyway, as I have said before I do think a society or organization can regulate themselves. I just think there are conflicting goals and values at play. I also think that the goals for the WBF and the USBF may not be the same as for BBO (and as BBO is owned by you and a few other people, the rest of us really get a lot less say in what the policies are). Let me try to explain this by first talking about the olympics.

The stated purpose of the olympics is to promote world peace through the activity of sports. The idea is to get people together with different backgrounds, political ideologies, religions and so on, and let them interact. This lets the athletes learn about each other and learn that despite their differences they all share a common love of sport and sportsmanship (fair play, etc.). Hopefully this will forge friendships, but at the very least it will promote understanding and tolerance for other ways of life, by both understanding that people are different but share commonalities at the same time. Without the ability to express one's self freely, the players can not get to know each others values, and half the purpose of them interacting has disappeared.

My understanding, was that one of the WBF's goals was for bridge to become an olympic sport, and that even if it doesn't become an olympic sport it shared the values that the olympics were trying to promote. That is, lets get to know each other and learn to trust each other, while doing something we all love, and while demonstrating the highest standards of ethics/sportsmanship in the process. I don't think supressing speech builds trust or promotes understanding or aids this goal in any way.

Obviously you disagree on this next point, but I also do not think that public political speech is fundamentally different than public religious expression. Both send a message to the world about who you are and what your values are. They may be motivated by different things, or they may even be motiviated by the same thing ( for instance see The Bible's commandment "Justice, Justice, Shall you Pursue"). This expression of one's self is fundamental to some people's identity. I for instance, would walk through a mob and get myself beaten up to go to Yom Kippur services, and would not take a job for any salary that required me to violate the values and practices that are central to the jewish faith. While I do not wear a Kippah, others do. This is how they express their values and beliefs to the world and would undergo great hardships in order to keep expressing themselves. Some other people feel the same way about expressing their core values, which may come from a religion or may come from a political movement/ideology or wherever. I really think censorship is basically an evil...

Josh

[fred]

Echognome, on Oct 22 2007, 10:31 PM, said:

fred, on Oct 22 2007, 01:55 PM, said:

This has nothing to do with values.

Consider the rule we have on BBO: players cannot put political statements in the profiles.

Those who break this rule are warned. Those who are warned and who do not change their profiles are barred.

It is necessary for us to make stupid rules like this because .01% of our members have demonstrated that they are not responsible enough to babysit themselves.

So, in essence, you've had to go down the slippery slope yourself.

What's "political"? If I say "Olof Palme is great." Would that be political? Might that offend someone?

Who is the judge, jury, and executioner?

I applaud that you allow notes in the profile, but you do not currently limit those notes to bridge related items (as far as I am aware). In essence, the BBO policy is in the "some" camp with regards to this medium.

You set out a list of rules and someone or some group is going to have to determine what is acceptable and what is not.

Here the medium is well defined (the text input on the profile box). I think many of us are stating that if you start making up very specific rules like "no signs" for the WBF ceremonies, then the slope is going to be about defining what is a "sign". (does a t-shirt count? does a tattoo count? do the acceptance speeches count?) Rather than just accepting that there is a tough gray area and make more general guidelines on behavior.

Now please don't misinterpret. My view is that I think it's great that there are profiles and that people have some leeway as to what they put in them. The idea I'm promoting is to have general guidelines. The interpretations have to be made by someone. Is it all completely fair? I don't think it should matter as it's our privilege to use the site. So in that sense, it's somewhat different. But I think it's perfectly reasonable for you (collectively the owners of BBO) to have the final say or to delegate who has the final say. Similarly, I think it's fair for the WBF, and the sponsoring organizations to determine who has the final say on all behavior.

I agree with just about all of this.

Sure we are all in the "some" camp in the sense that, if the question had been "what behavior is appropriate?" almost everyone would have said "some".

My actual (poor) choice of question was more specific: "which signs are appropriate?". As a result, a lot of people left the "some" camp.

Making it even more specific "which overt acts of public political expression are appropriate at the World Bridge Championships?" (or whatever) would have left us with even fewer "somes".

The more specific you get, the less slippery the slope, but the more rules/guidelines/statements you need to try to cover the same ground.

I have no idea what wording or level of specificity is ideal in this case or whether such wording should be presented as a rule, a statement, as part of some larger general guideline or as something else. But I do think it would be very smart for the WBF to try to establish some boundaries (or publicize existing boundaries), even if the edges are necessarily slippery.

They have to come up with the best way they can to deliver the message "please don't do that again".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

joshs, on Oct 23 2007, 01:30 AM, said:

I was not even aware of BBO's rule about no political statements. I have certainly seen political statements, at least relatively innocuous statements that are basically along the same lines of Debbie's sign. Usually these have led to friendly conversations, sometimes to heated debates, but I certainly have gotten to know others better as a result. I personally think that what someone puts in their profile is analagous to putting something on a sign in a public place (like outside a supermarket) which can be seen by one's community (which is now virtual more than physical) and that message really has nothing what so ever to do with the supermarket or the web site and they are not responsible in any way for the content.

I don't feel responsible for the content of profiles.

But not everyone feels the same way about political statements in profiles as you do. We have enough people on BBO such that, regardless of the specific political statement, many will complain.

Then we have to make a choice: deal with the complaints or not. Either way we lose and either way our members lose.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com