Guidance on libel on NSC

AmexRuislip said:

So Bellotti is still a **** though?

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Brighton Mod said:

This site will be full of 'it is my understanding', 'I am led to believe', 'it could be considered' et al

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Braggfan said:

I would have thought a better course of action would be to just deny it and say you won’t dignify it with a response, that way it stays in the realms of speculation and is never proven as fact.

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Triggaaar said:

Not only a ****, but a cheat, a con man, a thief, a fraudster, among many other things.

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Commander said:

It really is very simple. If you ever find yourself asking yourself the question "Could this potentially be libellous?", then just don't post it, regardless of the answer to the question.

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Triggaaar said:

A thread has just been removed from NSC, which I guess is due to concern over possibly libelous content.

Separately on NSC I was pulled up on something possibly libelous the other day.

Could we have some guidelines on what we are and aren't allowed to say?

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alfredmizen said:

Ever heard of common sense ?

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Commander said:

It really is very simple. If you ever find yourself asking yourself the question "Could this potentially be libellous?", then just don't post it, regardless of the answer to the question.

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Bozza said:

I've no idea of the specifics, nor if it were me or not.

However, you will not know whether action has been taken against anyone or not. When warnings etc are given to people, they are the only person who knows that. So, it could be the case that every single one of the offensive posts you believe you've read resulted in a warning to the poster. Alternatively they were never read by a moderator and no one bothered to report them.

This is similar to "I can't believe they were allowed to post that" comments I get from time to time. We can only ever be reactive. We can't stop anyone posting anything on NSC - we can only deal with it where required after the post has been made.

On the whole libel thing, it's really not difficult. If you are going to be saying something negative about someone, you should make sure you could absolutely prove what you have said is true if challenged to do so. In most cases you won't be able to, so keep it to yourself.

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Titanic said:

It is not illegal to be ugly... and it is a matter of opinion not fact anyway.

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Triggaaar said:

You don't need to deny it for it to stay as speculation. Beckham never denied the allegations against him, but as he didn't confirm them the media said that they always had to say 'allegedly'. That led me to believe that it wasn't libelous if you said 'allegedly', but I've been corrected on that front.

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