Not welcome in URCM if English is not perfect.

Iain wrote:

I am trying to work out how does one find out about this.

Follow up original references and make up your own mind seems to be
best practice.

Sadly it's not always possible becuase of lack of easy access to
research materials, lacking the science skills to fully understand
many of them, or more simply plain old time.

But there is sadly not a single authoritative source that everyone
feels they can trust. As should be evident when you look through
the Great Helmet Flame War history on urcm (extending to the
present day, even the present hour).

For a good summary start /my/ personal suggestion (which might be
biased/wrong/whatever, but you must decide yourself) is the Annex
of Tim Gill's summary for the National Children's Bureau, "Cycling
and Children and Young People". Hopefully we can assume that the
NCB don't have too much of an axe to grind except children's
welfare. You can find it at:
http://www.ncb.org.uk/dotpdf/open%20...ill_200512.pdf

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

"Iain" wrote in
:

"Percy Picacity" wrote in message
...
"Iain" wrote in
:

and what
'already discussed topics' am I not allowed to discuss or will
not appear in new topics? A relatively simple question to ask,
but no-one is listening because no-one is answering (or even
able to answer because I do not think that it has been properly
thought out).

Iain

As an observer, the answer would seem to be that you are allowed
to discuss any topic, but if your contribution to the discussion
is merely a reiteration of what someone has just said, with no
new argument or information, it may not be passed if the
moderators have decided that the thread, or a very recent similar
one, has become repetitive or bad- tempered. It has to apply to
new threads on the same topic, otherwise people will just spawn
new threads to evade the closure of the old one. That seems
reasonable, even if the execution may be imperfect. Ultimately,
you can always try it and see if a post is accepted, which is
fine as long as you are not one of those people who take a
rejected post too personally.

The impression that I get is that if it is a reiteration of
something that has been said in the past (I'm not sure how far
back that goes) it may not be passed. I can understand it if a
thread starts going around in circles - that is usual and
acceptable. It's the business of the moderators seemingly
blocking posts or being asked to block posts because it is going
onto helmets, that I do not understand. Yet within the same
thread more posts on helmets appear afterwards. There are some
criteria that are blocking some posts on helmets, yet allowing
other subsequent ones on helmets - all within the same thread.

I am trying to work out how does one find out about this.

Well I read the same thread as you, and I was quite impressed with
the moderation. A reprise of the positions on the value of helmets
was carried out over a dozen or so posts (including an accusation of
"bias" agains a web site set up to put forward a particular point of
view, which could have been naivety but appeared to be trolling, I
thought it was quite good of the moderators to allow this
considering its author. Really why anyone should think any source
of information smaller than the British Library is likely to be
unbiased is beyond me.) Followed by a statement that further
repetition with no new information would not be allowed. Followed
by a few posts allowed discussing new information on the fallibility
of the underlying casualty statistics which added to the discussion
without repetition. This all seems remarkably consistent to me.



--
Percy Picacity

On Tue, 25 May 2010 09:12:48 +0100, bugbear
wrote:

Toom Tabard wrote:

So let us again ask the moderators: how many contributors were new to
the issue and what data do you have on passive readers for whom it may
have been new and possibly interesting?

Such an argument would justify indefinite and high-frequency
repetition.

Which would appeal to "36", but no other regular posters.

BugBear



and you "know" this precisely how?

--
2008 DfT Figures: Passenger casualty rates Per billion passenger kilometers:
Killed or seriously injured: Pedal Cyclists : 541 Pedestrians 382
All casualties: Pedal Cyclists : 3814 Pedestrians : 1666
(Pedal cyclist casualties up 9% - pedestrians up 2%: Cycling is becoming more dangerous each year when compared to walking as a means of transport)

On Tue, 25 May 2010 14:52:05 +0000 (UTC),
Percy Picacity wrote:
"Iain" wrote in
:



and what
'already discussed topics' am I not allowed to discuss or will
not appear in new topics? A relatively simple question to ask,
but no-one is listening because no-one is answering (or even able
to answer because I do not think that it has been properly
thought out).

Iain

As an observer, the answer would seem to be that you are allowed to
discuss any topic, but if your contribution to the discussion is merely
a reiteration of what someone has just said, with no new argument or
information, it may not be passed if the moderators have decided that
the thread, or a very recent similar one, has become repetitive or bad-
tempered.

Additionally we try to give new members the benefit of the doubt even
if the subject has appeared in the recent past. Especially if they show
a clue which I think Iain did, to be fair, on the thread that arose out
of bents.

--
Andy Leighton =
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_

On Tue, 25 May 2010 11:07:24 +0100, Peter Clinch
wrote:

snip


And many in the past have found helmet debates sufficiently
uninteresting and uninformative that they've gone elsewhere for /any/
information.


And you know this precisely how?

"many" - eh - could you expand 5, 10, 15 perhaps 20?


It is odd that URCM had to be formed because ****wits could not use a
kill-file in URC.


It seems to me that the same ****wits still don't know how to use a
kill-file and the hand-picked moderation team are doing their best to
accommodate then - to the detriment of other old and new posters.


--
2008 DfT Figures: Passenger casualty rates Per billion passenger kilometers:
Killed or seriously injured: Pedal Cyclists : 541 Pedestrians 382
All casualties: Pedal Cyclists : 3814 Pedestrians : 1666
(Pedal cyclist casualties up 9% - pedestrians up 2%: Cycling is becoming more dangerous each year when compared to walking as a means of transport)

On 25 May, 09:12, bugbear wrote:

Such an argument would justify indefinite and high-frequency
repetition.

Which would appeal to "36", but no other regular posters.

It doesn't.

thirty-six wrote:
On 25 May, 09:12, bugbear wrote:

Such an argument would justify indefinite and high-frequency
repetition.

Which would appeal to "36", but no other regular posters.

It doesn't.

Logically, I guess it appeals to no one at all then.

BugBear

JMS wrote:
On Tue, 25 May 2010 09:12:48 +0100, bugbear
wrote:

Toom Tabard wrote:

So let us again ask the moderators: how many contributors were new to
the issue and what data do you have on passive readers for whom it may
have been new and possibly interesting?
Such an argument would justify indefinite and high-frequency
repetition.

Which would appeal to "36", but no other regular posters.

BugBear



and you "know" this precisely how?

Telepathy. Good of "you" to ask.

BugBear

In article , Percy Picacity wrote:

As an observer, the answer would seem to be that you are allowed to
discuss any topic, but if your contribution to the discussion is merely
a reiteration of what someone has just said, with no new argument or
information, it may not be passed if the moderators have decided that
the thread, or a very recent similar one, has become repetitive or bad-
tempered. It has to apply to new threads on the same topic, otherwise
people will just spawn new threads to evade the closure of the old one.

Exactly, give or take quibbles about whether its "very recent" or just
"recent" (and assuming that "any topic" means "any cycling related topic").

It's not ideal if someone who happened to first join the group just after
such a thread finds their innocent attempts to bring up the subject again
rejected, but it's also not ideal if most of the posters' reaction is
"Oh God, not again, we just did this" either (or even "why is this troll
being allowed to start this up" - we wouldn't reject a post just because
one or two people might possibly suspect it was a troll, but if it gets to
the point that general consensus is that the same arguments are being
brought up once again just to inflame, that's different).

(A FAQ might help anyone who wasn't familiar with the history understand
that reaction.)

On Tue, 25 May 2010 14:15:57 +0100, Clive George wrote:

On 25/05/2010 13:58, Iain wrote:
"Percy Picacity" wrote in message
...

Just to express a contrary view, it seems quite reasonable to me to
allow any topic to be discussed but to terminate threads that get
repetitious or bad-tempered. And, no, there isn't any truly objective
way do decide this.

I can understand that for an established topic that is starting to go
round in circles and repeat itself; but to try and define at the start
of a topic that it is repetitious is treading on dangerous subjectivity
and vagueness. That is the point I was making.

It is an established topic. It's been that way for years. Anybody who's
followed any cycling newsgroup will know that.

It's also not new to URCM.

Nor, indeed, was it new in this specific instance at the time when
moderators decided to wind it down; it had already been round the block
once.



--

;; Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundam variat