Freedom of Choice
posted on Nov 22 2008
Minekey was founded with a vision to provide a place on the Internet where people can express themselves freely. We value Freedom of Speech and preserving it is of utmost importance to Minekey.
However, in a large and diverse community like Minekey, people tend to have diverse opinions and viewpoints. We have noticed that discussions sometimes turn into a heated argument and lead to personal attacks, profanity, hate speech and threats. This disrupts the harmony within the environment and creates tension that restricts free flow of thought and creativity.
To date, over two million people have participated in Minekey. In a survey we conducted for users who were no longer actively participating in Minekey, , “Profanity and Personal attacks” was amongst the top three reasons why they were not active. Our goal is to keep the best interest of the vast majority in mind, and hence, the reason for measures articulated in our previous blog post. These measures are absolutely important for us to maintain harmony in Minekey which would enable the free flow of expression and creativity.
However, when we introduce the profanity settings in the coming weeks, users will have a choice to turn off their profanity filter if they have no objection and view all the content they used to view as usual. Our goal is to provide greater freedom and choice to our users to control what they would like to see and who they would like to interact as stated by a passionate user in her opinion yesterday.
Further, the new content rating system will provide a greater degree of power to the users to promote the content and discussions they would like to see on Minekey.
Let’s usher in an era of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Choice while respecting people and their perspectives, community mission and guidelines.
Category: Community, Community Guidelines
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 am
i think the option to switch on and off the profanity filter is great. it gives everyone individual choices to see certain content or not. it also shows alot your intentions not to bring uppon minekey censorship but a new start for a healthy environment.
all the best and thanx for your support of these users who felt to stop posting on minekey in order to get away from certain people.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:14 am
Contravenes Article 19 UN declaration of human rights I think.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:28 am
i agree with the terms provided above and once again apologize for my lude behavior..thank you for replying quickly..take care and i hope to be able to come back some time in the future!
Denyse
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:41 am
A reasonable compromise. Minekey is still a bit thin in the public relations department, but this is a good start.
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Yes , it’s very good and important to say that, thank you very much for this care , we neded to be prvented.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Your freedom of choice should not be my imprisonment.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:42 am
Thanks, that’s a lot clearer.
It would be extremely helpful if you gave us more information about how ALL the proposed features are going to work.
And no Daniel, it doesn’t contravene that article. Even if it weren’t optional it would not limit your ability to hold or express your own ideas through your own media. You don’t have the right to complete freedom when using someone else’s platform, in the same way that you can’t walk into a TV studio and demand air time, or walk into a newspaper editor’s office and demand they print something you wrote. You *can* produce your own TV show and buy some air time, and you can print your own newspaper. Likewise you can host your own website. No limits Minekey impose can possibly infringe upon those rights.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:13 am
Kudos are due to Bob Upson for coming up with the iGnore and filter ideas and convincing Minekey to implement them.
http://minekey.com/user/fb/bob-upson/list?id=1037257351
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
“Patience is bitter…but its fruit is sweet”
I have seen and read by far all your opinions and strongly feel that you Ladies and Gentlemen have all the goodness to take “MINEKEY”, to a more elevated position than just a page to correspond one’s views and ideas.
Can we all get together and set up a facility in line to helping the poorest of poor achieve what they would like to achieve in their basics “FOOD,SHELTER and CLOTHING”. let us join as a team and penetrate the areas that are required to help these same folks as ours, for these folks are also the creation of god..and it would be of no good if we as a community cant give back what we have already taken for the benefit of a few others.
As in latin they would say “ESTO PERPETUA” meaning “be THOU FOREVER”.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:04 pm
You failed to answer my questions, and these are answers that many people want to know right now.
1) None of this explains why a joke opinion I made about Sergio was removed, or why many ops are randomly being removed that are not abusive, but meant in a fun way. Have you not seen my opinion that 98% agreed with that the mods are driving people away randomly removing opinons? It is the cause of a lot of unrest in Minekey, and the reason a lot of users are unhappy.
2) How comes Martin Ciupa is still on Minekey after so many people have reported him for abuse?
November 24th, 2008 at 1:17 am
1. If a user has an avatar and a nom de plume, is that not a fake profile/account?
2.” We are working on providing greater degree of control for users to choose the content they would like to see and the people they would like to interact with on Minekey.”
*Please restore the direct link to ‘friends opinions’ (those whom we are following), so that “we can see the people we would like to interact with on Minekey.”
Alex Gault had promised to restore this facility 2 months ago. His quote on this thread:
http://minekey.com/index.php?&layout=theopinion&action=detail&pageid=4&opinionid=1162097&count=10&time_filter=
“Danny, following my negative reply to your request that we re-introduce the Friends Tab, I pow-wowed yesterday with the Minekey product crew. You will be pleased to hear that indeed we will — in time — be bringing the Friends Tab/Page back! The timing is yet undetermined, but you’ll hear about it from us before too long. My apologies for jumping the gun … believe it or not, we have so many new features on the horizon, I sometimes loose track”
November 24th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
@ Will - Regarding your opinion about Sergio - we can understand your intent might have been fun. However, the opinion and comments are over loaded with profanities which majority of Minekey users don’t appreciate. The opinion also hate speech against another user and most importantly - there is a comment that provokes violence. We can understand that user might have tried to be funny as well. However, such content is not suitable for public consumption on Minekey. Hence our moderation team disabled the opinion.
Regarding your second question - as a matter of policy, we do not like to discuss questions about another user in a public forum. We are very aware about the arguments Martin and You had and as a matter of fact our moderation team did intervene in that situation and Martin admitted his mistake and self imposed punishment even before the abuses were reported against him. Also, our moderation team sent you an email about at the intervention in this case several days ago even before any abuses were reported. Perhaps you did not check your email in the last several days. Please check your email and feel free to email us at “community AT minekey DOT com”.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
@ Danny - As clarified in our Community Bulletin - while we appreciate users using their real identity and we are putting in our best efforts to provide safety, comfort and privacy for users to use their real identities - we can understand several users may not be comfortable using their real names and pics and may use alias and an avatar. That’s a compromise we can live with.
We are certainly looking at how to better connect users with their friends on Minekey. That’s certainly a critical success factor for us and we are looking into how we can accomplish that. In fact, we released Friends’ search on Minekey - Facebook last week to help better connect users with their Facebook friends. We are aware that you have been vocal about Friends’ opinions tab. One of the big challenges so far has been the definition of Friends and Facebook Friends information is made available by Facebook for apps only with in Facebook. However with Facebook Connect we may be able to extend that to the website as well. Facebook Connect is currently in Beta and once the technology matures over the next couple months we do have plans to integrate Facebook Connect on Minekey website. Meanwhile, we will look into possibilities with in Facebook app. We’ll keep you posted.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Ok, thanx for the answer here. I just checked my emails and I have one from you. I’ll reply to you there. I have 4196 emails in my inbox….. which might explain. lol
November 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
@ Will - Thanks. Much appreciated.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
@ all users - If you have any questions of your personal interest be answered - please email us at “community AT minekey DOT com”. That would help avoid duplication. Wordpress blog (which we use) does not automatically mail out comment replies to the users. On a periodic basis we will extract questions that may be of public interest and post the answers in Minekey Community Bulletin.