Chiff and Fipple Forums

Yes, I'm yelling...
Someone in another thread pointed out that if you click on "view more emoticons" to the left of where you post a message, you can see some additional smilies. I tried it and was shocked to find the following:

:admin:

:adminok:

:adminno:

WHY ARE THERE HITLER SMILIES ON THIS BOARD?

Who do we contact to get rid of them?

the HTML for them calls them "admin", but that's Hitler, sure as shooting! Being Jewish, I'm just a tad sensitive about this as I think most people are...

I always thought it was Charlie Chaplin...

That is definitiv not Charlie Chaplin!!!!!!!!
I'm just a few days a member but to see this is a big thing! Thats awful, terrible, horrible!

To the administrator: (Please) kick these "smilies" away!!!!

Have always considered them bizarre & wondered if and why anyone would use them. Happy to see them go.

They're meant to be a tongue-in-cheek joke on and between the administrators; a sort of slight against messageboard "government". I sincerely doubt that Dale and Rich are anti-semitic, or meant those smilies to be taken as such.

Perhaps you're just being a tad over-sensitive.

In the distant past (say, 1995) when we often had to share computers to get our work done, the system administrators were fondly known as the "Nazis" because they held absolute power over the computer system and tended to use their power in ways that only they understood. That's why if you hover your mouse pointer on the Hitlers you'll say thaty they stand for "admin", "admin ok" and "admin no".

With Glauber:

The site administrator was a dictator. Complete with a white chemist's gown and four-colour ball pens protruding from the breast pocket. Doesn't care about music, and produces about two lines of usable COBOL (or FORTRAN, depending on the religion) per day in average.

Also, with the limited pixels available for an emoticon, you couldn't tell a portrait of Stalin from, say, Pinochet, Jean-Marie Le Pen or Rumsfeld.

So--as the absolute tory I yam, I says the current set rocks! Heil Rich! :adminok:

oh okay. can't speak for those whose (WHOSE Bloomfield, ok???) objections run deeper.

There is nothing funny about depictions of Hitler. You don't have to be Jewish to be offended. You just need to be my age.

Ron

brewerpaul wrote:Yes, I'm yelling...
Someone in another thread pointed out that if you click on "view more emoticons" to the left of where you post a message, you can see some additional smilies. I tried it and was shocked to find the following:

:admin:

Well, you saw that they were all labeled "admin", right? Enough people consider forum administrators to be little Hitlers that I beat them to the joke. It's also tied into to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law">Godwin's law</a>, which originated on Usenet and is still considered to hold on web forums.

I reserve the right to make fun of myself.

--Rich

TelegramSam wrote:I sincerely doubt that Dale and Rich are anti-semitic, or meant those smilies to be taken as such.
Perhaps you're just being a tad over-sensitive.

I've been an online buddy of Dale's right from the beginning, and I have absolutely no reason to think him anti-semitic. In fact, quite the opposite. We've discussed faith related issues on a number of occasions.

However, you don't have to be "over-sensitive" to be deeply offended by "cute" little Hitler icons. This monster ordered the death of over 12 million human beings for no other reason than the fact that they were"undesirable". We hear about the 9 million Jews that were slaughtered due the unrelenting efforts of organizations dedicated to getting the word out and refusing to let the world forget. However, over 3 million other souls were lost simply because they were different. Gypsies, homosexuals, the list goes on and on.

I wasn't aware of the admins calling each other dictator, and I guess this sort of explains the presence of the icons. Still, I most strongly protest their presence and ask that they be removed ASAP.

Gotta side with the 'get rid of them' folks on this one... I've always wondered myself, why someone would have them... explanation understood, but somethings just aren't funny. Although, the harmonica and lipstick debaucle in Hitler's car in the movie "??" (I'm blank! the 'remake'ish version of 'It's a Mad, Mad World') was pretty darned funny, but partly because - no, mostly because the irony was so dead on. I will just not use them.

Hitler was no saint - we all agree on that. There were other people than Jews targeted by his minions - we all agree on that too. But ya know, there have been plenty of other ruthless dictators throughout history who killed more people if that's the yardstick. I'd suggest looking at it from Rich's standpoint, do your best to laugh it off and move on to bigger and better things.

I for one, would love to see a G.W. icon to make fun of, but how you'd get his beady squinty little eyes to show up on a smiely I just don't know.

brewerpaul wrote: However, you don't have to be "over-sensitive" to be deeply offended by "cute" little Hitler icons.

Oversensitive is exactly what you have to be.

You've been here a long time, and you've seen people on these forums call each other Nazis and worse over disagreements. I <i>regularly</i> deal with legal threats from people who don't think people here should have the ability to criticize people's whistles, music, or opinions. I spend a lot of my free time to make sure that this place has a home.

And if you can ignore all that because of an emoticon I put there <i>to make fun of myself</i> and to acknowledge the history of discussion fora on the Internet -- if you can't stop and go "Ah, a bunch of people have told me that it's a joke that I'm not in on" -- if you think that the tradition of admins being called Nazis and little Hitlers and of Godwin's law is equivalent to antisemitism -- if you think that avoiding that tradition will have <i>any effect whatsoever</i> in fighting antisemitism -- then yes, you are oversensitive.

I put a lot of effort into minimizing the chilling effects of the threat of censorship on these forums. I don't expect demands for censorship in return.

rich wrote:
I put a lot of effort into minimizing the chilling effects of the threat of censorship on these forums. I don't expect demands for censorship in return.

I guess that's the crux of it.