[Imc-web] Re: [Imc] Question about story on UCIMC home page.

[Mike Lehman]

As a follow-up to this inquiry, I found the latest version of this 
fellow's spam posted to the Local Newswire this morning:
"A PLANNED AGENDA OF GAY AMERICA ~ RUNNING FAMILY COURTS ACROSS AMERICA ???"
http://www.ucimc.org/content/planned-agenda-gay-america-running-family-courts-across-america

Since the poster has again posted to the Local Newswire -- quite 
inappropriately -- and taken the opportunity we were willing to give him 
to slightly modify his postings to conform to our very loose editorial 
guidelines, I want to make this into a permanent ban.

The fact that he's now descended into blatantly stirring up hate makes 
his postings completely inappropriate for UC IMC.
Mike Lehman

Mike Lehman wrote:
> Bill,
> Thanks for passing along the message. Questions of this nature are 
> best dealt with at the IMC-Web group address cc-ed on this reply. I've 
> added the Bookkeeper list also, as Joy or someone else on it may be 
> around during office hours this week in case they call back.
>
> Just some background on this. This is the person(s) who apparently has 
> their cap-lock key stuck and who frequently and unabashedly spams the 
> IMC network with what is often multiple reposts of the same article. 
> For some time, they were also posting this to the Local Newswire, 
> which is when I started pulling the plug on this abusive posting 
> behavior. There also seems to be an effort, despite the limited 
> timeliness and content of the articles in question, to keep at least 
> one of these articles always visible hanging on our newswire.
>
> As a poor American who sometimes requires the services if an attorney, 
> I am not unsympathetic to the issue. In this case, I do think the 
> messenger severely detracts from any credible capability to do 
> anything about the problem.
>
> Unfortunately, as far as helping Mumia or anyone else, in the most 
> recent set of messages -- because if one isn't annoying enough, you 
> might as well send two -- there was nothing more than a vague appeal 
> to send a "...A VERY SERIOUS MESSAGE OF PROTEST..." to Congress.
>
> The current article under discussion is titled "INTERNATIONAL PROTEST 
> WITH GOOGLE NEWS STORY..." but there is no link to take you to the 
> story in question, making it difficult based on the thin info 
> elsewhere in the article to even know what is being protested or what 
> should be done about it. None of this would be a problem, if it hadn't 
> already happened a hundred times or so here, as well as across the IMC 
> network.
>
> When there have been links posted in the past, they direct readers to 
> LAWYERS FOR POOR AMERICANS (sorry Bill, but you didn't listen to him 
> properly, you should always use all-caps ;-)  ), so my first 
> assessment was that this irritating pattern was some form of 
> link-pimping. Things have only gone downhill from there.
>
> If anyone hears from this person again, you can direct them to send a 
> message to imc-web at ucimc.org
> and I'll be happy to discuss how to help them knock enough rough edges 
> off to make these acceptable. After the first dozen times or so, my 
> changing the all-caps headline to a more appropriate mix of caps and 
> lower case did not seem to make a strong enough impression to effect 
> any change. That and a few other minor tweaks could solve the issue, I 
> suppose.
>
> BTW, there's no need for them to establish an account to post or 
> comment at UC IMC. This may be indicative they have problems beyond 
> being able to unlock all-caps...
> :-(
> Mike Lehman
>
> William Mullins wrote:
>> I answered a call Sunday afternoon while at Books to Prisoners.  A 
>> man from a group called Lawyers For Poor Americans wanted to know why 
>> the story his group posted to the IMC page May 30th, "International 
>> Proest of Google News Story Needs Your Support..." et cetera about 
>> the Mumia Abu Jamal re-trial wasn't showing up on the IMC web site.
>>  
>> Members of his group seemed upset that they had to create a user name 
>> and log-in to post a comment.  
>> I couldn't find the story myself.  I told him to try calling the IMC 
>> during weekday hours and also told him I'd pass the message on to 
>> whomever is moderating the web page.  (But I wasn't sure who's doing 
>> that.)
>>  
>> Sorry...I didn't get a name.
>>  
>> Bill Mullins
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>>   
>
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