 ONLINE NOTIFICATIONS
April 24, 2006
Educational Consultants
helping parents and professionals since 1989.
Online since 1995.
"It is more important to get it right,
than to get it first."
LYING TAKES MANY FORMS
By: http://www.strugglingteens.com/news/polls.html,
and manipulated it in such a way that the person was able to vote
for one selection at least 127 times in one session. This attempt
to override the honest expressions of other participants' opinions
was designed to create a perspective that did not honestly reflect
that of the participants. In essence, this person was lying to
everybody.
In our culture, people of good will have revulsion for those who
prove to be liars. It seems this revulsion comes from an almost
universal ideal. Even a pathological liar will often be incensed
when somebody else lies to him or her. In our court system, it
often happens that a witness's testimony is completely thrown out
if it is proved that they lied on even a matter that had nothing
to do with the case. In students placed in juvenile justice or
parent choice residential programs, one of the most important issues
the staff works with are the antisocial and personal consequences
of that child's lying. Hacking is a rather despised activity because
it pretends something that is untrue, and laws have been passed
that have seen some hackers going to jail. We have even had powerful
politicians forced out of office when it was determined they had
lied to the public. Lying is one of the strongest taboos in our
culture, at least as an ideal, and the revulsion felt by those
lied to goes very deep.
Of course, we all know lying goes on all the time from little
white lies to the BIG lie. However, the liar plays a dangerous
game with potentially severe consequences if he or she is caught.
Once caught, the liar has no creditability among honest people
of good will.
The details of the manipulation of our monthly poll are as follows.
- For months, the average votes in our monthly poll have been
about 100 votes a month.
- On the morning of April 22, the vote total for the April poll
was 54 votes.
- On April 23, the vote total rose to 185 votes, with one choice
in the poll increasing by 127 votes overnight.
- A check of the site log for that page showed that 127 entrances
to the poll page in a short time had one IP number (a unique
number assigned to one computer during one internet session)
shortly before 10 a.m. West Coast Time. Only one category received
votes during that session.
- At a few minutes past 10 a.m., West Coast Time, on Sunday,
an anonymous poster on the Fornits website posted a link to our
poll page and said "Heh heh" with a copy of the poll
with the results at 173 votes, followed later by approving comments
from other participants.
- We waited through Sunday and Monday to see what more they
would do. The computer with the same IP number, and some other
computers, came to the site and brought the count up to 406 votes,
almost all for the same category. Fornits is a well-known discussion
board that is much more critical of private residential schools
and programs than public juvenile justice ones. The site allows
anonymous posters to say whatever they feel, often spiced with
profanity, vulgarity and sprinkled with four letter words.
- We are sending a complaint to the owner of that IP number,
pointing out that one of their customers had abused their Internet
privileges.
- We are freezing the poll and leaving it online for at least
the rest of the month with this explanation so the world can
see the results of this lie.
This person(s) obviously has no respect for the people who expressed
their honest opinions in this poll.
This person(s) obviously has no respect for the public who might
be viewing this poll and are interested in learning the honest
expression of the public's opinion.
This person(s) obviously is afraid to identify themselves and
be accountable for their actions, choosing to hide behind anonymous
manipulation and anonymous postings.
Results of this poll are obviously not valid, and only tell us
that some people think lying is ok.
I have one question. Do the other people who hob nob with this
person(s) on the Fornits website condone lying?
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