Ronin

So, in other words, be *carefully* open and honest.

~ creepy.

Endlessly and detrimentally debatable.

My point has been made.

I'll be moving on.

The hypocrisy of burning martyr is too sickeningly sweet for this wanderer.

I leave you to box with your own shadows, sakpo.

beyelzu

celsus,

i made a simple assertion.

if there is/was some sort of unwritten trust, then blud metal broke that trust by lying to us.


condemning cheating is not the point celsus nor is condemning blue metal.

more to the point is that if such a trust existed, and while it did not for me, maybe it did in her mind, it was violated. so this whole unwritten privacy rule thing is moot.


and thats my point.

Celsus

Beyelzu,

Check your PMs

Joel

pug846

Sakpo said:

Did it honestly matter if I used your name in that sentence? In all honesty, I wasn’t sure how to spell your name at that moment and didn’t feel like going to look it up.

Oh please. Cry me a river. I have respect for moderators for moderating, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect anything they do. If you want to turn this into a us versus the world thread, don’t do it on my dime because I generally think the II moderators do a great job.

You’ve completely missed nearly all the substantive objections to your actions and haven’t expressed why you think your actions are any different than someone turning someone in for their homosexuality, etc. There are quite a few examples listed above that I don’t’ care to list again. You’ve also failed to address any of the concerns of stifling discussion of your actions and the potential precedent you’ve set.

You obviously don’t owe any of us an explanation, but don’t tell me there’s a lack of respect when you’ve yet to address any of those concerns. IMO, you owe the administration an explanation, but that’s their decision.

I don’t think the II should have a moderator who has employed such poor judgment in the treating of one of its members. Further, I think the II would suffer greatly if it was perceived it approved of your actions. I don’t want someone moderating a thread who feels completely fine with using any of that information to report to whomever he or she chooses at any time.

I don’t think anyone in this thread approves of cheating; I’m also a student who is graded on a complete curve, so cheating is obviously something that I definitely have to be concerned about.

This isn’t about me (and I hope anyone else) being self-righteous. I’ve often come to these boards for support and help in personal, private matters. It bothers the hell out of me that you think it’s just fine to give that information to whomever you chose.

Clutch

I would not have forwarded the links, myself. But the discussion on this thread seems a bit insubstantial so far, because little question of proportionality has been seriously considered. I mean, sure: What if someone lived in a culture in which saying "I doubt theism" was punishable by death, and had written those words on this board -- would it be permissible to forward that statement onto the authorities? (Gasp!)

Er... no. That would be wrong. But what was supposed to be the relevant comparison to the case of BM, who was transparently lying to board members, debasing the whole idea of trust that underwrites the Support forum, had already been caught at her college, could not as a matter of law be subjected to any worse punishment than seemed condign... etc?

I would rather see people erring on the side of caution, with respect to keeping board material on the board. But patently there are situations in which silence would be morally reprehensible, and situations in which "outing" would be morally reprehensible. Citing only the spectre of the latter is not to say much about a case that seems middling by comparison. I would suggest that Sakpo's actions violated some implicit, "When in doubt, err on the side of privacy" principle -- except that he is free to inform me that he agrees with such a principle, but was in no doubt. This could be partly because he views academic fraudulence as morally very weighty, and partly because he foresaw no inappropriate consequences.

My conclusions -- kindly forgive my stating the obvious:

(1) Many people on this board hope and presume that there is a powerful default assumption of privacy, a hope and presumption that it behooves everyone to respect prima facie.

(2) Because it is difficult to predict where everyone's sense of respect for this presumption will give way to their individual sense of moral principle, it behooves everyone to think carefully about what they post in public for the viewing of thousands of people, many of them of unknown disposition, all free to have their own sense of propriety.

JennaD

For the record I do not believe that Sakpo ought to be stripped of his mod duties, he was an excellent admin and is an excellent moderator.

I DO think that Blue Metal (when I read BM I think of poop!) if she knowingly cheated, deserved all the punishment she got...she just deserved to get it based on the evidence collected by her prof, not based on what a stranger overheard her say in what could just have easily been a coffee shop or bus stop.

I am not attacking Sakpo, at least I do not intend to. Simply I want to make it known that this is not a behaviour I condone and in this circumstance I feel it is important enough an issue for me to voice my opinion (which I rarely do BTW.)

Ion

No kidding.

Blue_Metal's little cheating, is what stops Beyelzu and the world from perfection:
without Blue_Metal, there is no other big wrongdoing in the world.

Let's snitch on Blue_Metal.

cheetah

EVERYONE was reprimanding Blue Metal in the original threads, so just because it isn't being done now isn't because people suddenly agree with her, it's because, duh, this thread isn't about her.

While I have always respected Sakpo's posts, I continue to disagree with him on this topic. He either fails to acknowledge, or honestly didn't know, that people treated the SL&S forum, particularly, as a safe haven and a place to vent. it's almost like the attorney client privilege in there, to most of us, I BELIEVE (I could be the wrong one). but for whatever reason, Sakpo did not ackowledge the atmosphere there. As he has stated in this thread, it is good that we are all going to be more careful now. I am glad I stumbled on this thread, then, so that I know to be more careful! I am sad though, because I enjoyed being able to vent here. Perhaps I can find a place with greater anonymity to do so.

Here's my question to Sakpo and others who would do the same: what qualifies for you? What is your moral line that people have to cross? Is any previous crime a potential thing to be reported? I just think there should be some consistency. if you are going to report evidence for one crime, you ought to report evidence for all crimes you read about. So, if you read about someone smoking pot or whatever, you now have a moral obligation, I THINK, to report that, too, because it is morally wrong to pick and choose one crime to persecute, as an outsider, and not another (aside from your moderator duties, which I think have nothing to do with these actions, but do require an upstanding character). If you are making yourself a policeman of this board (and while I didn't think you were before, your recent posts seem to indicate that you feel righteous in doing so), then you need to enforce all laws, not just the ones you like better than others. But, I just think consistency is moral...

Rusting Car Bumper

Wow!

I posted this to talk about general ethical issues and it really took off before I had a chance to participate!

Again I wanted to address the general issues and not the specifics. People going on about plagarism I duess didn't really get that point. It doesn't matter that Blue's accussed offense was plagarism. It could have been any number of things.

I am not interested in pointing fingers here. I really am interested in exploring the opinions related to the ethics and not pointing fingers and assigning blame.

I want to say all this stuff about "plagarism is a big problem" and on and on does not mitigate or LESSEN anyone else's moral obligations.

In any case, the potential problem I see here is that Sakpo did not really know Blue_Metal's intentions and nor did Sakpo know how reasonable the administrators were.

And those two unknowns, IMO, make the action of getting involved (by providing this kind of information) ethically dubious at best.

There is then the further issue of whether Blue_Metal had a reasonable expectation that her words would be semi-anonymous especially since she came here for support. (in spite of the fact that she might have been lying to herself.) Of course technically, they are public words. Any person could have done the detective work to send the information tot he proper school administrators. However, in this case, the question becomes does Blue_Metal have the reasonable expectation that the admins and moderators of a semi-public Forum will not go out of their way to get involved.

So I think Sakpo had the obligation to think about the the consequences and implications of these actions. (Thinking about obligations is part of being moral.) I think that any reasonable person who was thinking about turing information over would have gone to Blue_Metal and said, "Hey look. I am going to give this to the school admins. I won't do it if you fes up and do the right thing."

For all Sakpo knew, Blue_Metal was going to go and confess entirely which would have been a good thing and in fact would have been the proper outcome considering the poor circumstances. However, Sakpo could have jeopardized this beause he cannot predict how the information would be received, he doesn't know all of the facts, and he can't rad minds to know what Blue_Metal would have said during the disciplinary meeting.

So in general, I'd say that one ought to keep one's nose out when one doesn't have enough facts. That is especially so when one is in a position of authority in protecting what is a semi-anonymous forum. Obviously this implies one can get one's nose dirty when one DOES have enough facts and as far as I can tell that isn't what happened here.

Anyway that's a brief summary of my opinion.

DC

99Percent

Well, I think the whole point of being moral is that since its impossible to have all the facts at hand, you have to act on principles instead.

BM had violated a moral principle: you should not steal others work, ie, plagiarize.

Plagiarizing is rampant problem in the academia world of which Sakpo is part of.Sakpo was justified in reporting it, regardless of the consequences. One can never be able to determine all the consequences of your actions so another reason why morality is based on principles and not on consequences.

The absolute moral value here is: truth

Once an action is deemed wrong, it should be put to light, regardless of the consequences. The action was wrong because it was stealing. For example, would you condemn Sakpo if he reported to the police that someone here admited to driving a stolen car?