Having read the Terms of site, openSUSE Forums terms and conditions I couldn't find any obstacles for a user to write a religious quote in his signature. By quoting in a signature the user is not, in my opinion, violating the forums T&C in paragraph Board Content: "In recognition of the diversity of backgrounds of the Members and in the interests of community harmony, religious or political comment is not allowed. Messages personally attacking, calling names, or otherwise harassing or being condescending to another forum Member or any ethnic or religious group will be deleted." or Signatures: "Signatures may contain up to 256 characters (including spaces) at the forums' default font size and one image. All images must be under 100 pixels wide by 40 pixels high. Links to external sites shall not contravene the clause on Advertising/Spam. Members in violation of this rule will be given an opportunity to adjust their signature within guidelines. If the appropriate action is not taken within 2 days, the signature will be removed by staff. Only trusted users are allowed to create/use signatures. Trusted user status is obtained automatically based on time in membership and number of posts." As the user is not making a comment or attacking a group. 2014-07-22 3:59 GMT+02:00 Patrick Shanahan :

* Jim Henderson [07-21-14 21:01]:

...

Giving everyone here a heads-up that we have a user who has decided to take issue with an objection raised to their signature in the forums.

In the forums, we very explicitly prohibit religious discussions and topics, because those topics are divisive and have no place in the forum community.

Felix Miata - a long-time user - has been asked by the forum staff to remove his signature, which includes a bible verse quote. He has declared that we are not permitted to ask him to remove his signature, and that if we pursue the issue, he will escalate it to opensuse-web and admin.

Our rules are there for a purpose, and that is because religion and religious topics are extremely divisive. That's why we exclude religious (and political) discourse from the forums.

We would ask that you assist us in enforcing the forum community standard and back us up on this decision.

Rules are for a purpose and support the community. Those wishing to partake of that communities fruits must abide by it's rules. It is no different than inviting someone into your house and advising them that you have a "no smoking" edict. If they cannot abide by that edict, they are banned or expelled.... It is merely common courtesy, one who does not abide is slapping your face, especially when knowling, purposly showing disrespect.

-- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-web+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-web+owner@opensuse.org

-- *verba volant, scripta manent* *pgp id 0x27549829*

Hello Felix, I've read through the discussion on this topic to date and I am struck by the following issues - The openSUSE Forums and Newsgroups are the same thing, administered by the same team, and operating under the same rules - Those rules include the provision against Religious discourse/comment - Your signature includes a Passage from a Religious scripture, which can easily be interpreted as a "Religious Comment" - The rules of the openSUSE Forums/Newsgroups do not apply to the openSUSE Mailing Lists, which operates under different rules and are administered by a different team http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette - The difference is rules between the openSUSE Forums/Newsgroups and the openSUSE mailinglists make sense when you consider the different intended audiences (our Forums are very user-centric, our Lists are very developer-centric) and the technical differences of the mediums involved. - Your comments regarding sigs being easily ignorable may be true in the mailinglist or pure-Newsgroup scenario, but are not true in the Web Forums, which are one of/the primary method of displaying openSUSE's forum content. With the following in consideration, I ask that you respect the wishes of the openSUSE Forum team and comply with their request, removing the religious passage from your signature when posting to the openSUSE Forums/Newsgroups I do not believe you need to change the Email signature you have used on the mailinglists for some time, but please be considerate that such passages could be uncomfortable for others. If you wish to discuss this further, feel free to contact me off list. Kind Regards, - Richard Brown openSUSE Board Chair On Tue, 2014-07-22 at 03:15 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-07-21 21:59 (GMT-0400) Patrick Shanahan composed:

...

Rules are for a purpose and support the community. Those wishing to partake of that communities fruits must abide by it's rules.

To do so in fact requires understanding them. The OP here apparently misreads .sigs to mean content, which it isn't by any authoritative definition on the web that I've encountered in my use of the web for over 17 years. Message content ends at the following:

--

Whatever follows it is what constitutes a .sig, not message content.

...

one who does not abide is slapping your face, especially when knowling, purposly showing disrespect.

The web in general, and to be sure including opensuse.org pages, has been espousing that that's OK for over a decade now, not in words, but in deed, by the way it styles content using CSS. It's little short of universal now that web sites either disregard user personalization of their personal computing devices via presumtively optimal browser default font sizes entirely, or set base or dominant sizes that are some small fraction of that same presumptively optimal browser setting[1].

Another matter for the instant case is that I've not been posting "in the forums" as that term is most widely taken to mean. That is, in the more widely used sense, forum means a web site, such as http://forums.opensuse.org/forum.php or http://www.avsforum.com/forum/index.php which is normally accessed via a web browser. In contrast, I've been posting to newsgroups, where users instead use news or mailnews readers and NNTP to post in same manner as they do via mailing lists. (At the end of this message are the complete headers from my latest message there copied and pasted from my news agent's file copy.[3])

To use the broader meaning of forum means not only access via browser (web) and NNTP (news), but also mailing list subscription. Using the broader meaning, The .sig I've been using has been in constant use, exactly the same, at least as far back as March 2011 (where a switch was made from a very similar quote[2] that had been in use, also for an extended period): http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2011-03/msg00826.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-kde3/2011-03/msg00099.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2011-03/msg00669.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-kde/2011-04/msg00058.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-testing/2011-06/msg00005.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-multimedia/2011-10/msg00000.html

For 2011, where the current .sig was in use less than a full year, I count a minimum of approximately 1,464 messages posted to the opensuse@ mailing lists using that .sig. For 2012 I count 1,584; for 2013, 1,592; and to date for 2014, 1,174. Those 5,814 messages over a 40+ month period with the identical .sig without complaint from list admins amount to tacit approval of it. To attempt to disapprove it now, without justifiably changing the current guidelines to deviate from similar guidelines in similar forums and authoritative RFC definition and related constructions WRT SMTP and NNTP messaging cannot be construed as anything other than arbitrary and capricious censorship.

[1] http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/defaultsize.html

[2] prior .sig head from http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2011-03/msg00705.html : "How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver." Proverbs 16:16 NKJV

[3] From - Mon Jul 21 19:37:31 2014 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000 X-Mozilla-Keys: Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 19:37:31 -0400 From: Felix Miata Reply-To: find@my.website Organization: less than infinite User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 SeaMonkey/2.26.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: opensuse.org.help.install-boot-login Subject: Re: scrambled screen References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

[4] for the benefit of lc.org, upthread archived begins at: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-web/2014-07/msg00007.html and my prior thread reply is at: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-web/2014-07/msg00010.html -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-web+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-web+owner@opensuse.org

Jim Henderson (hendersj@gmail.com) wrote:

On 07/22/2014 01:24 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

With the following in consideration, I ask that you respect the wishes of the openSUSE Forum team and comply with their request, removing the religious passage from your signature when posting to the openSUSE Forums/Newsgroups Thank you, Richard.

The purpose of our enforcement of the rule is simply that, as a private forum, anything that's included in a post that includes content of a religious nature is prohibited. That avoids the discussion of "well, you let Felix post his bible passage, but you wouldn't let me post a passage from [insert religious text of some other belief system there]!"

A semantic discussion about the meaning of the word "content" is superfluous, because we have made it clear what the intent of the rule is - to uniformly say "our forums are not a place for religious topics, discussions, or text."

The actual content of the verse isn't at issue here. The inclusion of religious material is. The way we enforce this rule is by not focusing on the content itself, but rather that it is of a religious nature.

Our purpose is to support users in the use of openSUSE. Our purpose is not to provide a forum for religious debate or discourse; there are plenty of such places on the Internet where that is perfectly acceptable.

We have had to ask users to remove religious signatures before, or to not post topics (even in soapbox) of a religious nature. Every single time they have expressed understanding as to why the rule is in place and have been fine with it because we enforce it uniformly, regardless of their religion.

Felix, your signature may be fine on the mailing lists; they've established that it is. The forums are not the mailing lists.

+1 - thanks Jim, this is an excellent post and I agree 100% with everything you say. This whole discussion is an unpleasant time sink which in itself is a good reason to enforce the rule without exception. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-web+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-web+owner@opensuse.org

Hey, On 22.07.2014 04:15, Felix Miata wrote:

It's overwhelmingly understood by long time users, and often revisited in the mailing lists, that .sigs do not constitute the content refered to in the first section quoted.

I can tell you my, pretty authoritative, opinion for signatures on our mailing lists. If I find your signature in any way offensive it is considered content :-) Henne -- Henne Vogelsang, Mailinglist Admin http://www.opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-web+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-web+owner@opensuse.org

Hey, On 22.07.2014 12:09, Adam Spiers wrote:

Henne Vogelsang (ml-admin@opensuse.org) wrote:

...

I can tell you my, pretty authoritative, opinion for signatures on our mailing lists. If I find your signature in any way offensive it is considered content :-)

I agree (although I struggle to see how Felix's signature could be considered as offensive or divisive).

That is something at the discretion of the admin. In this case they made it clear what their policy is.... Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-web+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-web+owner@opensuse.org