Dawoodi Bohra Forum

While this forum is a tool to express yourself and voice your opinion, experiences and feelings, anonymous forums have been shown to display far more agressive and hateful behavior than those who participate in non-anonymous online dialogues.

Let's be mindful of how we conduct ourselves while discussing difficult issues. This is not a forum to promote slander, misinformation, and frivolous entertainment. There is a separate thread for lighthearted ness and humor.

True character and integrity shows best in how you behave when no one is watching.

Valuable article to Read for all:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opini ... .html?_r=0

Sometimes, Where anonymity breeds contempt.

Please request all to refrain from spreading hatred and ill-will toward those whom you dislike or disagree.

Islam teaches us otherwise.

alam wrote:Valuable article to Read for all:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opini ... .html?_r=0

Sometimes, Where anonymity breeds contempt.

Good and informative article, thanks

I thought it timely to revive this thread with an abstract I found. anyone has access to ScienceDirect can download the full article.

Abstract
Cyberbullying is a growing concern in online communications. Cyberbullying has negative impacts such as distress or suicide of a victim. One common type of cyberbullying attack utilizes aggressive forum posts to insult or threaten a victim. Automated tools to classify cyberbullying may aid in avoiding or reducing the negative impacts of cyberbullying. One approach to produce an automated tool is to identify features of forum posts which may be indicators of cyberbullying. One feature of a forum post is the role of the author of the forum post, such as a bully, victim, or defender. Another feature is whether the forum post insults or threatens an individual (e.g., contains insults directed at a victim). Attackers may use aggressive forum posts to attack someone and defenders may use aggressive forum posts to retaliate against attackers. Another feature is whether the communication is anonymous (e.g., sending forum posts with no identifier) since cyberbullies utilize anonymity to reduce the ability of the victim to defend themselves and to shield the cyberbully from social consequences. In this paper, forum posts were labeled in an online forum for these features. Text matching techniques had some success in identifying aggressiveness forum posts including both attacks and defends. Anonymity of forum posts (i.e., forum posts with no identifier) was identified as a criterion to distinguish attackers (more anonymous relative to non-aggressive communications) from defenders (less anonymous relative to non-aggressive communications).

From <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 3211002731>

alam wrote:..... This is not a forum to promote ... frivolous entertainment. There is a separate thread for lighthearted ness and humor.

by that yardstick, critical thinker should be allowed to post only in the 'light-hearted' sub-forum. she has said it dozens of times that she only comes here for pastime and indulge in idle chitchat, treating this forum as a venue for gossip and derision.

admin, you should seriously consider this.

Admin should consider starting another section "For Chit Chat Only" like 'Bohras & Reforms', 'Islam' etc.

ghulam muhammed wrote:Admin should consider starting another section "For Chit Chat Only" like 'Bohras & Reforms', 'Islam' etc.

Chit Chat at insignificant and inconsequential forum but it will only have two people and everyone's guess is as good as mine.

A Contrarian point of view: The potential Benefit of Anonymous forums.

On the other hand, being anonymous can allow one to be more open and overcome shyness in expressing their point of view.
It has the potential to allow the person to temporarily, with the Anonymous ID, take on another completely different perspective, allow a kind of flexibility, that wouldn't be as readily accessed, being stuck in the same position.
It can also allow a person to pose as something totally different from what his/her position really is, and perhaps gain a perspective that he/she would otherwise not have.
It can also allow a person the possibility of entertaining attitudes, practicing mindsets, that are very similar to the opponents mindset.
In Anonymous ID, like an actor, may come to soon believe and play the role of an actor in his real life.

Just some thoughts.

Random thoughts on this topic and current trends in Bohra community, social media and this forum.

In ancient times armies wore masks during war. Not for anonymity by intent, but anonymity by impact. I read some research somewhere suggests that armies with masks of anonymity result in far more deaths than armies without, even in 19th and 20th century.

Even in the 21st century, the army, where strict code of dress, behavior, heirarcy, powerstructure, deference to authority are all carefully engineered systems and procedures set in place to win a war, where random individual thought and judgement is punished, and cause for discharge.... Notice how this is commonplace, and shed aside as an obvious commonsensical notion. However, Refer to Science of Evil - or some such research done by a social scientist to understand how ordinary and good people do evil.

In the Bohra world, dress code, rituals, forms of behavior and strict code of hierarchy suppresses individual independent thought. That's a given, a common sensical conclusion that is also shed aside as a cliché, under excuse of "this is my faith, this is my choice". Remember, majority of those who sign up to fight for the country, to kill and pillage, have done so voluntarily.

On this Forum, age-old habits of foul language, abuse and useless sarcasm degenerates into repeating old arguments with renewed abuse, resulting in loss of potentially worthwhile and valuable discussion when sugar-coated (yes, sarcasm here) with useless namecalliing moron, idiot, laeen, yazidi, mafia, Wahhabi, munafiq, spineless, brainwashed

All this does is the message gets lost due to the venom spitted out.

In an anonymous forum and social media with the possibility of unlimited identities, why get stuck on doing the same thing over and over again expect different results? Create a new identity, and try being brutal with your words without mockery or contempt with abusive language.