What should forum policy be on defamatory posts?

[Laird]

Recently, moderators have made two decisions with respect to defamatory posts:

• Ian (Ninshub) deleted a post by Leuders which made unsubstantiated allegations of sex crimes against a (deceased) public figure in mediumship.
  
• I edited out of two of Max_B's posts defamatory insinuations regarding Dean Radin and IONS after Max refused to retract them.
  

These decisions were basically made on instinct / gut feel. We don't have an official moderation policy on this issue. I'm starting this thread to see whether the community supports these decisions and what, in general should be our policy on defamatory posts.

We apparently in the jurisdiction in which the forum is hosted (the USA) have no legal responsibility for defamatory posts made by members, so "covering ourselves" is not an issue. The issue is more ethical (it's not right to defame people) and practical (public figures in parapsychology might be less willing to join the forum or be interviewed by us if they know that they can be defamed on our forum without consequences).

Sci, too, has raised this issue. I forget which post it was in, but he asked whether, in the potential conspiracy theory forum, members will be free to speculate on supposed crimes by public figures without the need to provide compelling evidence. My thoughts on this are that it appears that the poll will result in us having essentially private forums for both politics and CT, and that we can tolerate if not endorse that sort of thing in private.

Your thoughts on all of this welcome.

My thoughts are that users shouldn't be able to make accusations of fraud/sex crimes without substantive, concrete evidence. If a member does have evidence, they really should be going to the appropriate authorities, instead of just posting about it here.

The reasons for this are moral - we shouldn't just accuse people of fraud for the fun of it and, practical - getting interviews and participants will likely be harder if people can accuse others of fraud/sex crimes etc without evidence and with impunity.

In terms of action, if a member does it they should be warned and asked to remove the offending comment, if they don't then it should be deleted and the member warned again, if they do it again then maybe consider a ban? Or a three strikes and you're out policy?

Just my views - would like to hear from as many members as possible - it's good you guys are trying to be democratic too!

Are you talking about the textbook definition:

Under common law, to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and must have been made to someone other than the person defamed. Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel.

Or something looser?

[Laird]

Are you talking about the textbook definition:

Under common law, to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and must have been made to someone other than the person defamed. Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel.

Or something looser?

The textbook definition, Chuck.

Without know exactly what Max_B said about Radin, it is going to be hard to make a judgement. I didn't see the original post. In what way was the claim false?

I'm just wondering, because if it was clearly false, then I assume Max_B would have retracted it.

[Laird]

Without know exactly what Max_B said about Radin, it is going to be hard to make a judgement. I didn't see the original post. In what way was the claim false?

I'm just wondering, because if it was clearly false, then I assume Max_B would have retracted it.

In two posts, Max_B imputed that Dean Radin deliberately engaged in fraudulent research practices so as to produce positive results which would generate funds for IONS. It was not a flat-out claim, but it did impute that.

Just a FYI: I'm about to run out of laptop battery charge, and won't be able to get to a power point for a few hours, so will have to resume this discussion later.

[Laird]

Can PM you the relevant comments from Max_B's posts so you can decide for yourself.

What I wrote wasn't a problem, you just think it is. Don't send people bits of my posts out of context, that's just editing to suit your own bias.

Not just Laird who thought your post was a problem. Others including myself did too.

Max, you should attempt to leave your self styled moral highground on this issue and consider the perspective of your fellow community members here.

The objective of this community (at least in my interpretation) is to have productive dialogue oriented around seeking as much truth as possible. Insulting Radin certainly decreases the potential for him to engage further with us. This should be avoided as much as possible.

To that end, the inference you made wasn't really material to the discussion as it had nothing to do with the experimental data, set up, etc but was rather an unsubstantiated dig at a potential motivational bias for certain results.

Further, you could have posed questions to either researcher but instead chose to continue littering the thread with your own analysis after admitting you do not have any direct technical expertise on the topic nor have you run similar experiments. I would have been thrilled to see you engage Radin or Guerrer and to have read their thoughts on your concerns.

Sorry for the rant all, but we should be aspiring to make this community a high quality place for folks like Radin to interact. I by no means think we should be uncritical but we should be as congenial and polite as possible. Its the correct ethical approach and will ultimately lead to better content.

My two cents.