Has PH misjudged the Elise vandalism situation?
Discussion
Genuine question, has PH mis-judged the situation and is it too late for PH to get involved and even assist?
With a London daily now carrying the story (see http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_articl... )and affirmation from the Police that they wish to take action, along with countless genuine piston heads on a wide variety of car enthusiast forums expressing disgust at the act of vandalism and support for tracking down the perpertrators, can PH really pretend nothing has happened in all good conscience?
Thoughts please...
With a London daily now carrying the story (see http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_articl... )and affirmation from the Police that they wish to take action, along with countless genuine piston heads on a wide variety of car enthusiast forums expressing disgust at the act of vandalism and support for tracking down the perpertrators, can PH really pretend nothing has happened in all good conscience?
Thoughts please...
No investigation has been launched as the BiB are waiting for the owner to press charges. The owner was tracked down today, so charges will doubtless be forthcoming.
In any event that wasn't the subject of discussion - should PH have played more of a role in helping to identify the suspects?
In any event that wasn't the subject of discussion - should PH have played more of a role in helping to identify the suspects?
Well as far as I can tell, PH has done its best to sweep the whole story under the carpet; moving the original thread to a closed forum along with closing threads questioning this course of action, and then those questioning the moderation that cause the secondary threads to be deleted... (if that's not sufficiently confusing! lol). Any thread attempting to identify suspects has not been given any head.
Anyway what I'm aiming at is this; why has PH not allowed threads attempting to identify the perpertrators from continuing? It is the only forum which has taken this course of action, with the exception of SELOC which only locked the thread once the identities of 3 suspects had been determined, after an incredible display of cooperation by petrolheads of all sorts. Clearly it's up to the Police & authorities to judge the evidence etc... but in an age where ASBOS are being handed out right, left & centre, and people are too scared to stand up to vandals, PH should have stood shoulder to shoulder with all the other forums on this - imho...
I don't post alot on here but I have always seen PH as a major force in online motoring forums, so I am puzzled, hence the question.
Anyway what I'm aiming at is this; why has PH not allowed threads attempting to identify the perpertrators from continuing? It is the only forum which has taken this course of action, with the exception of SELOC which only locked the thread once the identities of 3 suspects had been determined, after an incredible display of cooperation by petrolheads of all sorts. Clearly it's up to the Police & authorities to judge the evidence etc... but in an age where ASBOS are being handed out right, left & centre, and people are too scared to stand up to vandals, PH should have stood shoulder to shoulder with all the other forums on this - imho...
I don't post alot on here but I have always seen PH as a major force in online motoring forums, so I am puzzled, hence the question.
GreenV8S said:
In what sense has PH pretended that nothing happened?
The inference relates to the original thread being moved to the mod's private forum and then the second thread being locked (for a while).Misjudged? Well, I'd have thought that Haymarket would have looked upon the whole affair as journalistic gold.
The fact that PH distanced itself from the story kinda means that they can't really run it in a convincing way.
I see a new sticky in the Elises/Exiges section asking for individuals to send information directly to the Met ... which I don't get (maybe I'm missing something).
Saying all that, I really don't have any strong feelings regarding how PH reacted to the matter. It's not my dad's website.
Cheers,
Eric
Firstly - we are an open forum - with a wide variety of people. Ultimately this means that anyone can read anything on any thread. It also means that Google, etc can pick up the threads and be easily searched for.
So, we have a publicly accessable thread, naming and shaming members of the public, phone numbers, addresses, their employers, etc, etc.
And then people were calling for them to be 'sorted', and taking a vigilante tone.
That's something we cannot support - no matter how much we might personally agree with.
And in turn - it's each member that is responsible for their posting and that opens a legal minefield.
If PH was a 'closed' forum - these issues would not exist as much.
As an example I would refer to the 'Brake' situation a few years ago.
K
So, we have a publicly accessable thread, naming and shaming members of the public, phone numbers, addresses, their employers, etc, etc.
And then people were calling for them to be 'sorted', and taking a vigilante tone.
That's something we cannot support - no matter how much we might personally agree with.
And in turn - it's each member that is responsible for their posting and that opens a legal minefield.
If PH was a 'closed' forum - these issues would not exist as much.
As an example I would refer to the 'Brake' situation a few years ago.
K
I agree with all that Kinky, but surely it would have been more productive to moderate elements of the thread (such as blanking out names, as has been done elsewhere) & mailing those involved in the work to ask them not to post such specific information?
There is no question that vigilanteism & threatening remarks on a forum, especially when coupled with names, numbers etc.. in any situation let alone an unproven one, is unacceptable. But if the other forums found a way to manage the situation, could PH not have followed suit?
The reason I'm asking is that, as a direct result of those forums and the actions taken by the members on those forums, 3 suspects have been identified. They also appear to have committed various other crimes. Assuming they are guilty (and that's a big assumption, granted) that's a great filip to online forums, and evidence of these maturing.
I know moderating is a very difficult job, but I would have wanted to see PH backing this sort of community spirit; as petrol heads we all need to stand together on a wide variety of issues, and (speaking as someone who's car has been vandalised 5 times in 2yrs) this is just one of them.
There is no question that vigilanteism & threatening remarks on a forum, especially when coupled with names, numbers etc.. in any situation let alone an unproven one, is unacceptable. But if the other forums found a way to manage the situation, could PH not have followed suit?
The reason I'm asking is that, as a direct result of those forums and the actions taken by the members on those forums, 3 suspects have been identified. They also appear to have committed various other crimes. Assuming they are guilty (and that's a big assumption, granted) that's a great filip to online forums, and evidence of these maturing.
I know moderating is a very difficult job, but I would have wanted to see PH backing this sort of community spirit; as petrol heads we all need to stand together on a wide variety of issues, and (speaking as someone who's car has been vandalised 5 times in 2yrs) this is just one of them.
Kinky said:
heaps of stuff
Can't argue with any of that and the 'brake' thing was bad. I can see how that's left some people a tad sensitive.It's just that the subject matter was so appealing to the community as a whole, I wonder if the original thread could have been moderated and 'cleaned' as it developed to remove names and daft references to 'vigilante' behaviour.
I understand that mod resources are limited but that was gold dust! ... and it's gone.
Cheers,
Eric
As has been said before... If the original thread was pruned, it would have only been two pages long, and seeing as it was several pages longer than that before it was removed it would have taken forever to do, and then wouldn't have had much relevance at the end of it. As it stands if the police want to view it, it is still available in its entirety within PH.
luvyalizzy said:
But if the other forums found a way to manage the situation, could PH not have followed suit?
I assume all these other forums are closed forums? In which case the issue is not as major as PH - where it's fully open access to all.We don't have moderators on PH 24*7. It's all voluntary, done in our own time. The thread was already developed before it was seen by a moderator. As you can imagine there are thousands of posts made on PH every day - there's no way we can read every single one - so stuff will slip through. We'll find it eventually - but by then it may be too late.
Regards,
K
luvyalizzy said:
I'm entitled to say so!
Of course you are and PH is a better place for its many varied opinions.However does it not strike you as slightly incongruous to chose this medium to discuss your 'complaint'?
Waiter, this soup is cold.
Profound apologies Madame, I'll take it to the chef straight away!
No, not yet, I've not finished.
Plotless, it's not a complaint, it's a genuine question, and frankly I'm bored of trying to explain that to you now. I'm intrigued by this question because the subject was successfully pursued on other forums and not here; I think this is the first time online motoring forums in the UK have produced this kind of result and as said above, it's gold dust.
Ok.. so from what I can gather, the original thread got out of hand before the mods got to it, which is understandable - as on other forums, moderation is done by volunteers, in their own time and not uncommonly while they are trying to do something else at the same time, so that's all fair enough. From the above post I am also getting the impression that the volume of posts on PH is an issue, so there will have been other forums where the momentum was slow & therefore easy to control - not necessarily the case here.
Does that mean if a new thread had been started, but kept within reason (ie not abusive, vigilante, OTT with personal details) it would have been allowed to develop?
Ok.. so from what I can gather, the original thread got out of hand before the mods got to it, which is understandable - as on other forums, moderation is done by volunteers, in their own time and not uncommonly while they are trying to do something else at the same time, so that's all fair enough. From the above post I am also getting the impression that the volume of posts on PH is an issue, so there will have been other forums where the momentum was slow & therefore easy to control - not necessarily the case here.
Does that mean if a new thread had been started, but kept within reason (ie not abusive, vigilante, OTT with personal details) it would have been allowed to develop?
But, after all the effort/keyboard investigation, wasn't the car found and was actually undamaged? Therefore, dare I say it, do the vandals actually have a case to answer?
I'm very late to all of this so forgive me if I've missed something, but seems like an almighty storm in a teacup.
I'm very late to all of this so forgive me if I've missed something, but seems like an almighty storm in a teacup.
I saw the original story but not the subsequent discussions.
However, if the discussions were developing along the lines of identifying and then taking direct action against the people involved then I can't imagine any business with any sense wishing to have themselves associated with that in any way shape or form. Look at the publicity that follows campaigns such as the hamster's helicopter appeal, and then imagine how unbelievably badly things could go wrong for PH if the forum had been used to organise vigilante activity that did eventually result in somebody being assaulted. It's the sort of thing which I can imagine being extremely newsworthy and could have done immense harm to the PH community and business.
However, if the discussions were developing along the lines of identifying and then taking direct action against the people involved then I can't imagine any business with any sense wishing to have themselves associated with that in any way shape or form. Look at the publicity that follows campaigns such as the hamster's helicopter appeal, and then imagine how unbelievably badly things could go wrong for PH if the forum had been used to organise vigilante activity that did eventually result in somebody being assaulted. It's the sort of thing which I can imagine being extremely newsworthy and could have done immense harm to the PH community and business.
Stig said:
But, after all the effort/keyboard investigation, wasn't the car found and was actually undamaged? Therefore, dare I say it, do the vandals actually have a case to answer?
I'm very late to all of this so forgive me if I've missed something, but seems like an almighty storm in a teacup.
Er, no, not quite. You clearly haven't seen the video; damage is very clearly visible (roof caved in with struts broken for starters) and there will be more damage not visible in the video. I still have the circular mark from a football which hit my car & scratched the paintwork so I dread to think what 3 guys jumping on the front & rear clams, in addition to the soft top, would have done.I'm very late to all of this so forgive me if I've missed something, but seems like an almighty storm in a teacup.
There is also a video of what appears to be the same 3 individuals 'car jumping' over 4 cars, and harassing a woman standing alone at a bus stop. So to my mind, no, this is not a storm in a teacup - it's what appears to be video evidence of a very real and serious crime, and not one I don't think anyone on this forum would put up with.
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