The Australian Women Online soap opera drones on

Melodrama in the Discussion Forums

Posted under Site News by Deborah on Sunday 16 November 2008 at 8:33 am

The Discussion Forums became a real life soap opera this week when we discovered we had a couple of drama queens and a spy from another forum in our midst!

It all began two weeks ago when several members of a popular Australian women's forum defected to the AWO Discussion Forums in protest when two of them were banned for life. Suddenly our quiet little forum was over run by forum junkies who spent hours posting messages on topics such as, 'what did you have for dinner?' and 'what's the last thing you brought?' Not really the kind of thing we were use to discussing. But I have to admit that initially we were thrilled to have such an influx of new members in the forums. We had been struggling to attract new members to the Discussion Forums since it opened in May and even though the topic threads were lacking in substance, there was a lot of activity going on and it was quite exciting to see the message boards finally coming to life.

But right from the start I had my reservations about this group of women. Firstly, they all knew each other from another forum and often talked amongst themselves to the exclusion of others. Secondly, it soon became apparent that a few of them were carrying a lot of emotional baggage from what had transpired on the other forum. Thirdly, the group wanted to make some major changes to the AWO Discussion Forums which were contrary to our existing policy of running an open forum where there is no hierarchy of membership. And last but certainly not least, the ring leader was a major drama queen!

Shortly after their arrival another woman joined the forums who said she was from a non English speaking background. My AWO business partner and co-administrator of the forums, Danielle Hutchinson was the first to notice something wasn't quite right there. This woman claimed to be from a non English speaking background and yet the messages she posted on the forum were not consistent with her story. Danielle suspected she was from the other forum sent to spy on our new members, but I told her to just monitor the situation because we didn't want to make this type of accusation unless we were sure.

As I said the ring leader of the new members was a drama queen and when I moved some of the chat threads out of the Members Only Area to the General Chat, she threw a huge tantrum which culminated in her and two others setting up a new forum on their own. I had no problem with that until they used the private message feature on the AWO Discussion Forums to recruit members for their new forum, including one of our moderators. It was at this point the 'spy' decided to blow her own cover posting a message on the forums that only antagonised the whole situation even further. It was really quite ridiculous, a group of grown women throwing tantrums and personally attacking each other on the message boards.

Danielle and myself were finally able to calm everybody down and a few of the new members did decide to leave us. Unfortunately, the drama queen wasn't one of them and when she returned to the forums after an absence of one week, most of the remaining members deserted us - now it's more like a ghost town than a lively discussion forum.

In the middle of all of this, a few men who had objected to what I had to say on the issue of ISP filtering joined the forums just so they could argue with me about it. At one point I had to lock all new member registrations just to keep these guys out because I feared the Discussion Forums would become the battle ground for the debate on ISP filtering. Between these guys and the dramas queens previously mentioned, I tell you the soap operas on TV have nothing on the melodrama that is played out in online forums!

Poor Debs. Totally clueless and intent on being chief censor as well as managerial bottlewasher - she blames everyone else for erratic forum numbers and doesn't realise that, if she can't roll with the punches in any debate, AWO will be deserted whenever she arbitrarily locks comment (or commentators based on gender, opinion etc.) out.

I don't know of anyone who wholeheartedly relishes criticism, but unless one is willing to take it any blog (no matter how genuine or otherwise) will wither on the vine.

Australian Women Online may only survive as a pale imitation of The Women's Weekly circa 1950 is Debs keeps this up.

She may be able to survive on knitting patterns, recipes and advice to the lovelorn - I'm not sure many other readers will.

AWO forums which appear to have survived Deb's red pen can be reached here.

Crikey does community housing

In Crikey Tips and Rumours on Tuesday:

Rees Government, Dept of Housing and Office of Community Housing are allowing NSW community housing companies to raise pensioner rents this month by at least $100 per fortnight, even though they realise that anomalies in how rent assessments were produced means that many of these pensioners will be paying more than the guaranteed rent increase limit of $10 a week from their own pockets and, over Christmas/New Year will be forking out up to $79 dollars from their own pockets. At least one housing company NCCHC is telling tenants words to the effect of "like it or lump it". Tenants have noticed that this particular round of rent rises comes just four days after many of them receive Rudd's one-off lump sum payment and are wondering why Rees has decided it is alright to gouge in this way. NCCHC is telling media who ask that it will fix this up anomalies brought to its attention, but is very careful not to say this to complaining tenants thus far.

Complaints to the Australian Press Council 2007-2008

There is one thing that I can say of Australians after reading the Australian Press Council's complaints figures for the last financial year and factoring in how general readership has grown with the Internet - we are not a nation of wingers.

The rate of formal complaints received by the Press Council has fallen from 7,424 in 1988/89 to 457 in 2007/08, with complaints against regional/rural newspapers and other publications totalling 105 in this last reckoning.

Out of the 35 complaint adjudications only 18 were entirely dismissed and rather oddly 106 complaints received were withdrawn after further correspondence with the Press Council.

Do we take notice of the economists?

Over the weekend several top rated economists have come out in support of running a deficit to help rectify the problems that have been caused by the Global Meltdown.

I remember another person who did exactly the same thing in 1987, and yes he left the country with a pretty hefty debt, but in the end it was proved that he made the correct decision.

Then along comes Little Johnny Howard and his crew, got on the gravy train, paid off the debt and took all of the credit.
Someone once stated that he couldn't get his hands on the purse strings quick enough after he was elected.

He then is in power for 11 years; neglects health, education and training, the poor old pensioners, infrastructure, but accumulates a fair size surplus and then claims to be the saviour of Australia.

Do you call accumulating a surplus through neglect a good thing for the country?

Everyone now says, spend,spend, spend to get us out of the mess. Must be something in this action.

We all know where Howard is now as the people saw through him and it will take Kevin 747 time to clean up the mess coupled with the Global Economic Mess.

If it has to be a deficit to get us out of the mess so be it.

APPSIE
Clarence Valley

* GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak@live.com.au for consideration.

NASA features NSW night sky as December smiley face picture

Smile in the Sky Credit & Copyright: Mike Salway

Explanation: At sunset, Monday's western sky showed off stunning colors and dramatic clouds reflected in Brisbane Water on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It also featured the remarkable conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus, and Jupiter forming a twilight smiley face. While the gathering of the two bright planets and Moon awed skygazers around planet Earth, astronomer Mike Salway reports taking special pains to record this gorgeous view, braving mosquitos and rain squalls along a soggy shore. His southern hemisphere perspective finds brilliant Venus at the highest point in the celestial grouping. For now, a bright pairing of Venus and Jupiter continues to dominate the western horizon after sunset but the Moon has moved on and tonight is near its first quarter phase. [NASA APOD]

A News.com.au collection of readers photographs found here.

Barry Obama won't let go of the millions and other stories

President-elect Barack Obama and the Obama for America team raised oodles of money during the protracted 2008 presidential election campaign.
Reportedly Obama had a cool $750 million in donations with which to fund his run for president.
Now the $30 million which was left over is causing some concern - will he sit on it until his bid for a second term or will he allow the Democratic Party to use some of this cash during mid-term elections?
I'm betting Barack finds a novel way to sit on it. The second time around he won't have quite the same electoral charm and the current surplus would allow him to hit the ground running come 2012.

Outgoing president George Dubbya is leaving the White House at the beginning of 2009 for Sleepy Hollow er Preston Hollow in Dallas and that ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The new home "has a market value of just over $2 million, according to property records, was built in 1959 and sits on 1.13 acres. Amenities of the brick house include a wet bar and a fireplace. There is also a cabana, a detached garage and servants’ quarters. The records show that unlike the White House, the couple’s new home does not have a pool."
He's also likely to be buying the house next door for his security detail.
At least the International Criminal Court will know where to find him in future.

Official presidential race loser John McCain is continent hopping this month as he offers his on-the-spot opinion to leaders and officials in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan. 'Bout as useful as.........well you know the saying.

Failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin may be deciding to lower her public profile and manage her PR better now it seems that she may be a contender for the next republican round of presidential nominations in 2012.
Whatever the reason, she appears to be giving talk-show host Oprah Winfrey a wide berth.
Perhaps because that ever growing list of wardrobe and grooming expenses is getting kinda embarrassing.
It's now reached a whopping $180,000 give or take a designer pair of shoes or two.

Joe the Plumber aka Samuel Wurzelbacher ended his part in the US presidential campaign by promising the world a book on his 15 minutes in the spotlight as the typical American and victim of digital spying.
It looks at though this book is delayed and subscribers are a tad unhappy.

Visiting Brisbane? Then put this on your list of things to do. (And it’s free!)

Optimism

Currently showing at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) is ‘Contemporary Australia: Optimism’.

It's the first in a major new national triennial series of thematic contemporary art exhibitions.

The exhibition presents work by more than 60 emerging, mid-career, and senior Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary artists from every state and territory.

"As you would expect, many of the works in Optimism are as colourful as a Gold Coast property developer." (Richard Jinman, The Sydney Morning Herald)

Optimism has something for everybody.
Sydney artists Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy combined to produce Not Under My Roof, which is a must-see. In fact, viewers of Optimism cannot miss seeing it. It's in the gallery's main atrium.

Cordeiro and Healy found a Queenslander home in south-west Brisbane, removed everything above the skirting boards, took the wooden floor plate to the gallery and mounted it on the wall.
All nine of the building's rooms are decorated with a different linoleum - together they form a fantastic geometric design - it's both abstract AND a reminder of generations of human life.

Optimism is at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, until February 22.

Credits: Photos taken from the Gallery of Modern Art's Optimism - Media Kit

Australian Senate disappoints the New Guard's heirs and successors

Well the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has published its report into Allegations of academic bias in universities and schools.

The natural successors to former Australian prime minister John Howard's neo-fascist philosophy must be disappointed that they have been listened to and tolerantly dismissed as dummy spitters in the Standing Committee's majority opinion and weakly defended by five Coalition senators in the minority opinion.

This must be particularly galling for Liberal students and Make Australia Fair when the inquiry was dominated by Liberal Party senators whom they would have felt were their natural allies.

Here are a few excerpts:

1.3 Liberal Students' organisations, who appear to have been the main instigators of this inquiry, and some academics who gave evidence, observe that the prevailingideology in the social science and humanities faculties in universities is strongly, if not overwhelmingly, leftist. To the extent this may be true, why would it matter? The issue is whether this has any bearing on teaching and learning, or any effect on theintellectual development of students other than to open their minds to ideas to whichthey should be exposed.

1.7 The committee has had difficulty in dealing with argument that is highly subjective, and where the evidence provided to sustain the argument is either anecdotal or clearly exceptional. In neither their submissions nor their testimony did Student Liberals describe a state of affairs that suggested any significant magnitude of political bias on the part of academic staff. A number of instances were given, which like the case cited above, could give rise to concern, but the committee concludes that these are isolated instances. They do not represent the 'tip of an iceberg'. There is insufficient evidence to draw such a conclusion. Far more evident was a lack of knowledge that students have of grievance processes.

1.8 The committee also notes that such incidences occur at a time when interestand involvement in political activity by university students is generally very low. If a leftist orthodoxy does prevail, most students would either be unaware of it, or put it down to eccentricity on the part of their lecturers. It is perhaps the observation of this prevailing attitude which provokes such anger among the more politically active students on the right, and who see a need to confront the bias they identify.

1.33 First, it has not been demonstrated to the committee's satisfaction that what is being complained about is particularly significant. That is, it appears to concern only a very small proportion of the student population. Of the 69 submissions received, about 28 came from aggrieved university students. Even 50 times that number would have represented a tiny minority of students in humanities, social sciences and other fields of study most prone to this kind of complaint. There are nearly 530 000 full-time undergraduate students currently attending university. If the problem was as common as it is claimed there would be uproar.

1.34 Second, universities have a role in challenging young people who have not previously been exposed to ideas and opinions at odds with those they have grown up with. Part of the discomfort which has been expressed in submissions from undergraduates results from their encounters with tutors or lecturers, or even their fellow students, who may be blunt and forthright in manner as well as message. There can be no effective way of ensuring that a small proportion of undergraduates will not be distressed by some of their encounters with alternative views.

What appears to be high on the list of that which offends right-wing students is any derogatory mention of their god, John Winston Howard:

At my first tutorial in this unit of study the tutor opened her remarks with "well thank God the Howard government is gone".

Oh, the poor little sprogs!

Full PDF text of December 2008 Allegations of academic bias in universities and schools report here.