This is a question for moderators and for other members also. Would it be possible (or advisable) to establish a given number of complaints (say ie. complaints coming from 50 members or more) so if somebody exceed them he/she would be banned.

[stewart_photo]

I am appalled at the way this forum is so selectively tolerant of offensive language. A newbie joins up, and people are falling over themselves to say how friendly it is here. Yet RH posts, and is instantly lynched. The nastiness of the tone in which his respondents post is in my view completely incompatible with a friendly, civilised environment. Yet such lynchings appear to be acceptable to the moderators.

Regardless of how unpopular someone's posts are, they should either be addressed reasonably, or not responded to. I'm neither defending, nor attacking RH. I don't find his posts irritating, since I'm able to take from them the content I find interesting, and disregard what I do not. But I find the typical swarm of nasty responses most unpleasant, and its apparent acceptability equally so.

As much as I'd like to agree with you, Chris, I just can't do so when it comes to RiceHigh. I've watched his assault on Pentax, and specifically the K10D, in several forums for several months now and I've never seen anyone exaggerate, twist facts, and stretch truth as freely as RiceHigh does. My initial response was to ignore him. However, at a certain point, I realized that was very unwise.

The old saying about 'an unchallenged lie repeated often enough becomes the truth' very much applies to RiceHigh comments. While visiting a travel forum, I came across an older thread asking about cameras. In that, someone mentioned the K10D as a possible candidate, with another saying the camera is terrible. When asked for details, the second person offered several quotes and several links to RiceHigh's website as proof. With that, the thread continued on for several days without further mention of the K10D or Pentax cameras.

Clearly, if we don't respond to RiceHigh's nonsense, nobody else if going to do it for us. What irritates people, and prompts the inevitable nasty comments, is how often they have to respond to RiceHigh's nonsense. He shows up here every couple of weeks, like clockwork, after making his rounds to all the other forums. In all that, I've never seen him say one unqualified positive thing about Pentax or Pentax users. Instead, it has all been a barrage of inaccurate, misleading, or false statements designed to subtly dig at Pentax and Pentax users.

Of course, his claims of innocence ('just trying to help Pentax because I love them') are equally irritating. He has now repeated that lie often enough that some actually believe he is doing us a favor by endlessly trashing Pentax and the K10D. However, I suspect those reading his website leave fully convinced anyone choosing a Pentax camera is a outright fool and anyone actually using one is a complete idiot. Now, maybe you think creating that impression does you a favor, but I don't.

Regardless, since you don't find RiceHigh's posts irritating, easily able to take and disregard what you want, I'd urge you to do the same with the responses to his messages.

stewart

[JAZZer]

Before same time members of my photo club have some interesting comparation in local pub...



One of our members which is pro photo reporter (Canon 1D on this photo is his) tested this 3 cameras...
...and couldn't tell which one is faster!

[ChrisA]

The old saying about 'an unchallenged lie repeated often enough becomes the truth' very much applies to RiceHigh comments....

Clearly, if we don't respond to RiceHigh's nonsense, nobody else if going to do it for us. What irritates people, and prompts the inevitable nasty comments, is how often they have to respond to RiceHigh's nonsense.

I very much agree with this, and I'm not at all suggesting that false information should not be challenged.

I also understand people's frustration.

However, as I said earlier, if the objective is to challenge false information, it should be done in a credible way, and not just consist of throwing insults, otherwise the challengers do the cause no favours at all - they just come across as loud-mouthed and rude.

If what you want to achieve is for newbies not to be seduced away from Pentax by the likes of RH's pseudo-science, then you need to put yourself in their position.

Consider this:

Is someone casually perusing these forums, looking for information, going to be more impressed (however wrongly) by someone who posts in what seems like measured, technical language, or are they more likely to believe those that address none of his claims, but instead just wade in with insults?

If defence of the truth is important, and I agree with you that it is, then any such defence should work towards meeting the objective - and the rants don't do this, in my view.

I think this is all somewhat analogous to the 'Intelligent Design' vs 'Evolution' debate that seems to be raging these days in the educational system. ID is a dangerous pseudo-science that is actually quite difficult to defeat, since it has some very clever apologists, who are not at all above abusing science in order to further their own agenda. Ranting at them plays into their hands, since they take care to appear sensible and reasonable, and it takes highly qualified, technical people who have the ability to communicate, to show ID as the bogus creationist position that it is.

[regken]

I very much agree with this, and I'm not at all suggesting that false information should not be challenged.

ChrisA both you and Stewart are right. For the first time I posted to RH in this thread when he once again compared the K10D with the 5D. I called him an idiot for doing so but it was defiantly not the right thing to do. I would hate to see this forum ban RH because freedom of speech is so important. On the other hand we as a community need to respond in an intelligent way.

I don't know if this suggestion is workable but it might be worth a try. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 3 people on this forum that are intelligent, articulate, technically savvy, and calm enough to put RH in his place if the rest of us were willing as a community to stay out of the fray. May I suggest that the next time RH posts none of us respond except for Peter Zack, *isteve, and stewart_photo, if these gentlemen would be kind enough to accept the responsibility.

This would stop the name calling and allow all of us the pleasure of seeing RH's misconceptions challenged intelligently. When RH makes his next post someone could post a short note explaining the situation and ask everyone not to respond except for the nominated members.

Regards,

Ken

[bymy141]

This is a question for moderators and for other members also. Would it be possible (or advisable) to establish a given number of complaints (say ie. complaints coming from 50 members or more) so if somebody exceed them he/she would be banned.

Good suggestion, however I wonder if it will work.
One could easily register under an other nickname / email combination. It wouldn't stop persistent posters.

An option is to actively moderate each thread.
However that would imply a lot of moderating resources. Any volunteers out there?

Another suggestion: how about limiting the number of responses to a thread to 50 or so. If there are more, the chance that the thread is diverted into something completely different from its original subject is more than 80% I guess. Limiting would enforce people to start new threads with appropriate thread subjects.

- Bert

Good suggestion, however I wonder if it will work.
One could easily register under an other nickname / email combination. It wouldn't stop persistent posters.

I agree but the thing is that until he would be "unmasked", there would a short period of peace and tranquility. I dont have any problem with his comments even if find some of them simply surreal but it is clear that quite a bit of members find him absolutely annoying. I agree that many newbies might be influenced by him and hence, he might be considered a bad influence. IMO to rave about amazingly expensive lens and LBA might also be called a bad influence for newbies since it sets them into the believe that you need 15 lens to be a good photographer. I think that, in both cases, the problem is not in the member who posts but in the people who read. If grown people is not able to develop a critical and independent thinking that is not RH's fault nor LBA fans bussiness. I think that we are not here to be the Pentax's knights nor other hypothetical members protectors, we should be here to discuss as friendly as possible about photography and/or technical issues. But this is just an opinion.

[Peter Zack]

ChrisA both you and Stewart are right. For the first time I posted to RH in this thread when he once again compared the K10D with the 5D. I called him an idiot for doing so but it was defiantly not the right thing to do. I would hate to see this forum ban RH because freedom of speech is so important. On the other hand we as a community need to respond in an intelligent way.

I don't know if this suggestion is workable but it might be worth a try. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 3 people on this forum that are intelligent, articulate, technically savvy, and calm enough to put RH in his place if the rest of us were willing as a community to stay out of the fray. May I suggest that the next time RH posts none of us respond except for Peter Zack, *isteve, and stewart_photo, if these gentlemen would be kind enough to accept the responsibility.

This would stop the name calling and allow all of us the pleasure of seeing RH's misconceptions challenged intelligently. When RH makes his next post someone could post a short note explaining the situation and ask everyone not to respond except for the nominated members.

Regards,

Ken

I actually posted to this thread earlier and the tenor of my post was basically that we need not bash each other over the head when RH has another thread. I deleted that post as I reconsidered wading into this mess yet again.

I agree with Stewart and also ChrisA. The tone needs to be respectful but the opinions he posts do at least need some challenge or at a minimum put in some perspective. I don't like the idea of banning anyone unless they directly attack someone or use language I don't want my kids hearing.

My main issues with this whole thing is the attack nature these threads seem to go in. We seem to go after each other and forget the source of the misinformation. Then many seem to get defensive of the brand which frankly, can stand on it's own, with all it's strengths and weaknesses.

And Stewart I totally agree, The "I love Pentax" comments raise my blood pressure.

If someone sees one of these threads and decides to point out the errors of the data then that's great. But lets all just move on and keep an eye out for future threads. Trust me I understand the frustration others feel. I've been in a direct battle with him myself some time ago on another forum when I asked a simple question and got an answer that was Pentax bashing. I questioned it and then the fight was on.

I'm no expert in either photography nor Pentax as a brand/concept. But I will add my 2 cents when I think the data presented is wrong or somehow bias.

As Stewart said my other concern is how someone could innocently come across the blog and take that as some sort of definitive word on the brand and system. Even C/N/Sony/ Oly owners know better than that. Most with experience over any period of time know the brand and respect it. They are aware that Pentax has and will continue to contribute to this field. Pentax has helped to keep the others in line when they do things like offer a weather proof body, loaded with features at this price.

But the first time user would get very nervous spending his $1-2000 to buy a body and a few extras after coming across that blog. Unfortunately all the ranting and raving here is not going to change that much, as we're already part of the club.

Call me a conspiracy nut for thinking this, but notice the name on the original source. Any chance Richie is RH? It's the type of "test" he has done before. As Falcons said earlier, his act has gotten very polished in the past year or so. I think he would really miss all that attention he got on the other forum and would look for another way to get back on.

Here goes... hitting the submit button

[volosong]

RH has been throughly disgraced, in his methodology and results; and I just ignore him. If we all did...he would go away. It is sad that we can't get his web site closed down. That is one for the Pentax lawyers, and he is treading very close to crossing the line. I suspect that they can make a valid claim of libel, but that is their call, not ours. Perhaps he should be banned here? There is no "free speech" on a privately owned bulletin board, however much we wish it.

[ChrisA]

Any chance Richie is RH?

It's an interesting idea, but I think it's very unlikely, on the following grounds:

- Richie's use of language is very different to RH's. It's use of western colloquialisms is different from anything I've seen RH write.

- Richie cites what he claims is his website, where numerous of his actual, erm, photographs are published. Some of them are actually quite good. As I understand it, this would be somewhat out of character for RH.

[Peter Zack]

Good points Chris. I never bothered to look into it that deep. Maybe RH has a friend.

[ChrisA]

Good points Chris. I never bothered to look into it that deep. Maybe RH has a friend.

Personally I think of RH as more of a concept than an individual. Maybe that's why I don't get so worked up about it all.

There's lots of it about

And it's not restricted to the Pentax-bashers, either.

I think it's extremely common for people to make an observation, jump to some erroneous conclusion, carry out some inadvertently biased test that confirms their belief, and publish it.

The gullible believe it, the insecure fear it, and the religious burn it.

However, this is now the 21st century, and I think there are better ways

[Maxington]

At the very least Ricehigh should be banned from direct linking to his blog. Its effectively spam. Its full of inaccuracies, shaky "testing" and is pretty much just a soapbox for his own distorted rants. Most of the things on there lately are just him trawling forums and finding any anti-Pentax stuff he can, then using that as a platform for more of his warped opinions. Its not even his testing, he is just link-harvesting. You'll note he did NOT link to the original testers thread on DPReview, he linked to his OWN blog to capitalize off someone elses work, and distorted the facts to fit his agenda.

I'd be happy with his blog if there was *any* balance to it, showing the good points about Pentax. For example, DPReview's comment of K10D raw showing higher detail than the 40D caused massive amounts of posts on DPReview forums, both Canon and Pentax, but there wasn't a single comment on it from his "Pentax Blog".

I'd be equally uncomfortable with a illogical fanboy who had a blog praising Pentax and refusing to admit any problems exist.

I don't like personal attacks either, but Ricehigh has long since burned away any tolerance people have had to him, so I really can't fault anyone for calling him out.

[blwnhr]

Has anyone else noticed that the OP hasn't posted in this thread for nearly 5 pages. Mods, please lock this thread, just like all the others this will never be resolved.

[kenyee]

An option is to actively moderate each thread.
However that would imply a lot of moderating resources. Any volunteers out there?

FWIW, I do moderate a mailing list and forum on different topics) and do not tolerate ad hominem attacks...people get warned a few times and then booted (including fake aliases when I catch them