And this is why English teachers decry the passive voice. "It was requested" by whom? Malmouth? Mods? Polk? "It was approved" by whom? Malmoith? Mods?

The previous thread title had "alleged" in it, it was fine. Polk only got it changed for the benefit of google results.

If his latest thread gets to stay the title should be changed to "Polk presents his side of the story". It's not very fair letting him control the narrative because he's an advertiser.

:

Next person that starts another new thread on the Upswing debacle or any of the parties involved is looking at a week temp ban. Post in the existing threads.

(Um, it's not like they're going to see this comment here first?)

Mason - I'm hugely appreciative of Doug Polk's work. But letting him influence the thread title because of the google results it will generate is letting him control the narrative. It might "seem reasonable", but it's not. Why do you think he asked? Because changing it is a massive win for him and lets him control the impact/visibility of criticism against him, while others are not savvy enough to control the impact of his criticism against them. I've voiced my opinion carefully over the years and hopefully have never been out of line. So I'm stepping out here and saying you are either showing bias, or are incredibly naive in this case about the significance of letting Doug control the narrative. You should change it back.

I don't think the title should be changed back. Even if it stated the accusation was alleged, it was overly accusatory in it's nature. If people want to learn about this situation they need to carefully look at both sides, either in these forums and/or through other media, and form their own judgements and opinions from that information. Their judgements and opinions shouldn't be formulated by a poker forum title similar to what would be featured on the cover of news rags.

The title is fine. Let the discussion continue.

Between this and the CoinPoker fiasco 2+2 standards really are slipping. Buy a few banner ads, do whatever you want.

Moving on...

Those that start threads like the following or any other Polk/Jnandez topics are going to be put on the shelf for a minimum of three days and it doesn't matter if they haven't see the Videopro's comment. He was just nice enough to post a warning for those who do see it.

Nandez sold me a mutt dog he claimed was purebred.


Doug Polk owes the community 50k

Slipping. lol. Give it a break. Go add some productive material to the threads that are letting it all hang out on this topic if you really give a ****.

Allowing advertisers free reign to control the narrative on sensitive issues is a relatively recent policy on 2+2, it's perfectly fair to say that represents standards slipping. No need to get emotional about it.

Free reign? Um, what??

Before you edited your post you suggested that this isn't the correct thread for this - it's literally the thread title.

You're letting an advertiser edit the forum for their own benefit. That's a pretty major change in policy. Why not just be transparent about it?

Right, I made a mistake as I thought we were in one of the Nandez/Polk threads, and corrected it.

That's not what you said - you said we were giving advertisers "free reign to control the narrative on sensitive issues". An advertiser being granted a request that a thread title be changed (I don't believe he actually had any say in what the title became) isn't even remotely close to free reign.

No, it's not. Both advertisers and non-advertisers have had requests for title changes granted in the past. And they've also had requests denied. And sometimes moderators decide on their own that a title is inaccurate and/or unfair and change it. Nothing new here.

How much more transparency are you looking for?

Changing the title of Doug's thread to something equally neutral would be a start. "Doug Polk presents his side of the story" works.

I don't think that's related to transparency, and while I don't see why it's a problem as it is, it's certainly a request you can make of NVG moderators.

I guess by posting here, you have. But you might want to give some rationale, as the title doesn't seem especially out of line as it is.

R&R, legit thanks for the first reply (even though I disagree) but really don’t appreciate you quoting me later with some other Nandez conspiracy post bs. Don’t trivialize my post please, intentionally or not.

Bobo - no idea why you’re jumping in on the Imp and ignoring the core issue. Maybe Imp’s a jerk, I have no idea, but I’d like to stick to the issue at hand.

Mason, I’m sorry but this situation is not the “innocent normality” that R&R and Bobo are portraying. Major advertiser (who I generally favour) got you to take actions in his favour, with major impacts on others, and your team is trivializing the significance of that. If it’s no big deal, why did he get you to change it then? I’m not fishing to find something bad - that’s downright poor ethics, period. I love 2p2 and all it has stood for. You’ve made a mistake here. Fix it. I don’t give a **** about the actual thread title, I want to know you’re committed to getting this right in a bigger picture sense.

I never felt your post was trivial and I was more so referring to your comment of Videopro's post and giving an example of the actual bad threads that had been started to date. I did think your thoughts on the Polk title were were good although I even though I disagreed with them.

I'm hardly jumping on him; about the only thing I took exception to was his remark about us giving "free reign" because I don't think that's accurate.

As for the rest of your post, I know you addressed it to Mason, but I'm also going to reply as I deal with most of our advertisers (not this one), and would like to understand where you're coming from.

I'm not really trying to portray it as anything, but to make people aware this is the sort of thing that has been done in the past - for threads about both advertisers and non-advertisers, whether at their request or not. Now, if you think this particular case is a problem, fair enough - let's discuss that.

What are these major impacts? Serious question, and I'm not asking it as a "gotcha" - I'm sincerely curious what you see as these impacts.

I'd also like to know what this means to you. It sounds like you're mostly looking for a statement about future thread title changes. In your ideal world, do we never make thread title changes, not at the request of advertisers, not at the request of anyone that isn't the OP without the OP's permission, or...?

Again, I'm not asking these questions in some defensive pose (and that's not to say that I wouldn't dispute any of your reasons, but that I'm interested in your thoughts and my mind is open), but because I'd like to better understand your thoughts on this.

Fair points and questions, thanks Bobo.

I'm not exactly sure what my ask is, so I was intentionally vague about that - my goal was really to get Mason to consider what a better appropriate outcome would be, and to encourage sober second thoughts about the ramifications of the change. I hold 2p2 in high regard, almost at a journalistic standard. I appreciate that it may not be fair to place that burden, because this is Mason's space, but 2p2 has a long history of being a place where fairness and integrity ultimately reign, and the truth comes out. When I come in here to ***** about something, it's usually because I'm trying to encourage and protect that behaviour and reputation.

What I'm *not* trying to do is argue for a particular title. I agree with you the new title isn't out of line as a descriptor. The problem I have is with someone other than OP having undue influence over the title, because it sets the tone of the discussion, generates interest and views that fuel the discussion, and is the single most viewed piece of text on any particular issue. In this case, the influence is coming from an advertiser being criticized, which absolutely complicates things and makes it a much different case than other thread title changes (which I assume happen for a wide variety of reasons).

Mason thought the requested change was reasonable - and you and I agree the new title isn't 'wrong' - but what about the original? Was it reasonable? Was it wrong? Lots of inflammatory and accusatory titles fill NVG, including in threads started by Doug. If the OP's title was fair, why should the person/entity being criticized have the ability to change it? Doug isn't shy about his accusations on others, and doesn't pull any punches in his attacks, so reigning in the counterpunches against him seems supremely imbalanced. The reason Doug cares (and why I say "major impacts") is because thread titles are seen, popular threads are seen more, google results matter, and people are heavily influenced by the first few things they read on a subject. Changing the title can have a tangible impact on how this plays out for the parties in the dispute - if this weren't true Doug wouldn't care about the title, and his youtube videos wouldn't be plastered with clickbait titles in huge letters. (And I say this as a fan of his videos, haha)

cheers

I made the change, not Mason. Again, because someone reached out to me from the company and gave a reasonable explanation for wanting the change. I did not make the decision on my own.

Here's a thread title I would change if someone representing Fernando made the request:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-team-1718140/

I would happily remove "a hypocrite" from that title. But nobody representing him has asked. And on a final note, we do know the upswing guys, personally, and like them and will tend to believe their versions of events. That's the truth. On the other hand, we have no interest in covering anything up. Had they asked us to start deleting posts, that would have been a bright red flag for us. However no such action was ever even hinted at.

Hope that makes things clearer.

Hi Mat, sorry for getting it wrong naming Mason, my bad. Thanks for the straightforward response, yes that makes things clearer.

Personally I lean towards thinking it would be a bad idea to change that title at Fernando's request. It's the OP's view, isn't over the top, and doesn't seem libellous, so to me it seems ok. I understand this depends on the tone you want to allow in NVG, but if you're also okay with it remaining I'm not sure it should change based on requests.

As said earlier, I'm a fan of Doug's work. Generally I believe him too. But 'bad guys' have fooled us all before, and 'good guys' make mistakes sometimes, so healthy discussion remains vital. I want contributors to persuade their audiences via discussion and presentation of facts, not by using marketing, digital savvy, politics, or friendships.

I get it if you guys just don't buy that the title itself matters. I do, and I think Doug agrees because he doesn't want it part of the historical/google-able record.

Generalizing beyond this individual situation: Titles draws Views, Views result in Discussion, Discussion results in Pressure, and Pressure brings out information and clarity over time. Generally that's a good thing.

You're not quite getting their point. They're not saying that the title doesn't matter. They're saying the original one was overly accusatory (which it was). If anything, that indicates their understanding that titles do matter.

You also say that you "want contributors to persuade their audiences via discussion and presentation of facts, not by using marketing, digital savvy, politics, or friendships" - and they seem to want that discussion too.

That's fair. And I think the discussion is helpful.

I'm happy 2+2 is held to a higher standard, and I do think that reputation drives that. And I'm sure Mason & Mat take pride in it, and *try* to make decisions that will keep that reputation - for both ethical and business reasons.

Agreed. I guess the question might be whether it was undue influence.

But was it fair?

Here's what the thread title was:

"Doug Polk's company Upswing Poker allegdly scammed JNandez for $100k"

Now, from my take on the threads, I don't know that there are a lot of people that believe DP literally scammed Nandez out of $100,000. That said, an argument can be made that Doug is free to defend himself and let readers decide for themselves - and with most of these sort of threads, that's my stance on it. But I think we can all agree that simply putting "allegedly" in a thread title shouldn't mean that anything goes. If someone were to start a thread tomorrow that said "Bobo Fett allegdly scammed OnMyBike for $100k", I'd be pretty ****ing pissed off about it, and would not just be requesting, but demanding, a title change. And yes, it would be because the thread title matters - if I know I didn't scam $100,000, is it fair that I would have such a thread title showing up in Google searches, especially if it was my real name in the title rather than Bobo Fett?

Now, that's not to say that the title change in this case was (or wasn't) right, but to show why I believe there are going to be times when a change requested by the accused is a reasonable thing to grant. That said, Doug's a public figure, businesses and their owners are going to see criticism, fair or not, posted publicly. And I think it's incumbent on 2+2 to allow fair and reasonable criticism whenever possible. Also, it's not reasonable to solely rely on hindsight and say that since it doesn't look like most people believe it was a scam (if I'm correct about that), then the title change was right - that would be, as we like to say in poker, results-oriented thinking. But it could be an indicator that the 2+2 powers that be had good reason to think a change was warranted.

That's just my two cents (and then some) on the whole thing. I haven't spent a moment talking to Mat or Mason about this, and have no idea what went into the thread title decision. But I find the discussion beneficial, as I'm faced with similar decisions from time to time. Rarely from advertisers - probably more often from alleged scammers. Good to hear different perspectives on this.

Edit to add: One important point I forgot. I think part of the reason people were struck by this change was because there are so many other accusatory thread titles that are left the way they are. As Mat alluded to, the main reason is simply because changes aren't often requested.

@Cramble: Thanks for the feedback. I don't know if the title was overly accusatory or not. I only know what was quoted: "upswing allegedly scammed 100k" which seems tame compared to many threads. Examples:

"Fernando Habegger: A hypocrite"
"Men, The Master Cheater"
"Prahlad Friedman to Start Racially Profiling Poker Students"
"Poker Player Brad Booth stole $28,000 from Me"

Agree on your last point. I didn't mean to imply anyone at 2p2 didn't want discussion. What I'm saying is that by complying with the request they are allowing a party being accused to influence the tone, impact, and future visibility of the conversation. I don't think that should happen without very good reason.

(And in this case the accused being an advertiser exposes 2p2 to more questions about bias than normal, regardless of intent, and regardless of what I personally think.)

Edit: didn't see Bobo's post until after I hit post on this one. Bobo I'd say we have an agreed understanding of the issues. I'd suggest there should be guidelines for how to handle accusatory threads, but bureaucratizing 2p2 to the point you guys don't want to run it any more doesn't seem like a great plan either. Should the reputation and behaviour of those involved be considered? Frankly I like Doug, but jeez he sure doesn't hesitate to make strong accusations against others, so I definitely feel like he's being hypocritical, and that makes me feel more strongly 2p2 shouldn't facilitate it.

i feel for the mods. this forum is a wasteland of toxicity.