Apache Petition to close OOoForum

pitonyak · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 6:29 am Post subject: Apache Petition to close OOoForum

For Your Information

Based on extreme spam content on the OOo Forum, including images of "naughty" content that is claimed to be illegal in some countries, the Apache group was looking at starting a petition to present to the company hosting the OOoForum to have it shut down. The discussion thread is on the OOo Incubator project and it began on 11/20/2011.

The discussion was based around their not wanting the OOoForum around because it sullies the name of OOo and they desire that the forum owner clearly states that the forum has no association with OOo if it will continue to contain obscene content. I believe that based on the obscene content (that I did not see), they are now chatting with the the Apache trademark group off line to see what their options are.

I have no idea what will come of this, but I wanted to give a heads-up that something may be coming down the line.
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Andrew Pitonyak
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DrewJensen · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 7:26 am Post subject:

Hello Andrew,

Noticed your comment to the Apache OpenOffice mailing list and your link to this post.

I just wanted to add some personal comments to what you posted.

First - I did not see the images that sparked this either, but from what I can gather they hit a nerve with a few individuals.

Second - it is true that a couple of individuals, whom I don't believe have any history with any of the forums, made comments on the Apache OpenOffice mailing list along the lines you describe - HOWEVER - there was, to my reading of the list, no uptake to the idea at all.

Also - the Apache OpenOffice group has been dealing with some issues concercning another website, one that has nothing to do with the forum here, and I think everyone was a bit on edge, a bit more rhetoric flying around then is really healthy - so what I think is that the timing on this particular 'event', happening while peoples emotions where already heightened was a large contributing factor to most of the comments.

That all I wanted to add to this particular subject.

Best wishes,

Drew
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pitonyak · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 8:03 am Post subject:

floris_v · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 8:09 am Post subject:

Hey ho, maybe this will put some pressure on a certain person to rethink his strategy.
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DrewJensen · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 8:53 am Post subject:

My reason to post a reply was merely to point out that my interpretation of the conversations reported would not lend itself to worrying about an impending notification.

As for the rest of it - I'm not in the trenches so to speak, so I don't really have an opinion on specifics here.

I would though say, that I've never lost my appreciation for oooForum and Ed for his having maintained it as long as he has.
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floris_v · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:04 am Post subject:

On busy days I may delete over 100 spam messages, so what do you mean with maintain it? The lower admins and mods maintain it, Ed has nothing to do with that.
I'd suggest that we ask him for a dump of the contents of the most relevant forums to host that as static pages somewhere else, then this forum can be closed.
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Corfy · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:29 am Post subject:

I will say that I have seen some pornographic spam posts in the past on this forum, but not recently (probably not for a couple of years at least). And one of the (many) annoying things about this forum software is the post stays on the front page of the site for several minutes after the thread has been deleted, which only prolongs the exposure.
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Robert Tucker · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:37 am Post subject:

I did see the images that appeared this past Sunday and removed them as quickly as I could. They were indeed of a nature likely to be very distasteful to many people involving what I believe is called zoophilia or bestiality. It was a matter of one thread with one post but with quite a large number of the images.

However, I do not see that this forum should be blamed for action which obviously it did not initiate. I thought of noting the IP address but wasn't sure that threads/posts I delete are not held for further vetting when an administrator could have taken action. [The images disappeared from the home page as soon as I deleted the thread so maybe someone else was also active.]

Some fora require a user to have made a number of posts before allowing the posting of links – maybe that is something to be considered here.

If someone could please post a link to the Apache incubator discussion.
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DrewJensen · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:47 am Post subject:

Hi Floris_v,

Well there is something to keeping the lights turned on, don't you think.

I'll add -

oooForum it seems to me also has active, motivated individuals, such as Andrew and yourself. The site also has a wealth of 'presence' still - there is a group of files which I linked to from posts on this site, years back now, when I check my server logs those files, month in and month out, are still on the first page of downloads from the server. (They where in the top ten for a long time)

I watched the transfer of the user services forums into the Apache infrastructure, the Apache team offers a strong admin group and the sites are well positioned for the long haul. The folks who work the sites are active and motivated.

IMO this domain, with all those links in the search engines, is not something to take casually.

While yes I've read what you and Andrew and others have said about the current platform, I suppose the only thing I could comment on is simply that there are people willing to help.
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floris_v · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:49 am Post subject:

Apache mailing lists: http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/mailing-lists.html

This discussion is in the Development Mailing List.
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DiGro · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 10:21 am Post subject:

Didn't see the offencing spam but marked lots of shoes and bags of the spamkind last days.

I really can say we do the upmost to clean them as soon as we seen them.

It has been worse.

Let's keep up the good work.
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hol.sten · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:38 pm Post subject:

pitonyak · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 2:40 pm Post subject:

floris_v · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 3:01 pm Post subject:

To be sure, I much prefer that the forum stays open and active - I got one absolutely wonderful thank you e-mail from somebody whose problem was solved by a post made by me (and she could have found a similar post by almost any other active volunteer here because it was a faq). And as this forum isn't monitored by so many volunteers as the new one, I actually actually get an opportunity to answer questions before somebody else does. Wink

But I feel rather stupid when there are spammers on line who I can't stop and I keep wondering how funny they think that is.

I just checked the admin panel for the new forum and found that while you can enable/disable BBCode in PMs for user groups, it seems that you can't do the same for messages - now that's just silly.
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