What is a fair witness? (II)

Mar 31 08:50 UTC 1996

Item 42 was frozen on the note that follows. In keeping with the
philosophy that users that begin Items forfeit any subsequent control
over them, it is being continued here from where it left off.

Item 42: What is a fair witness?
Entered by Richard Wallner (kerouac) on Tue, Mar 19, 1996 (21:50):
   <item is frozen>

1 new of 150 responses total.


#150 of 150: by Richard Wallner (kerouac) on Sat, Mar 30, 1996 (18:05):
   Look okay I'll drop it but I was making reasonable points, but noone
 wants to consider them.  I mean you would think with the drop in
 conferencing activity on this board over the last couple of years,
 staff would want to consider what would make regular users (as opposed to
 fw's and staff) more comfortable.

   But all I get is ridiculed.  So whats the point.  Try and start a
 genuine debate on the conferencing atmosphere and all you get is one line
 sarcastic responses from staff who'd prefer to forget the item.  Maybe
 this was one little point that I got carried away on but this was a good
 item, touching on things that needed discussing.  But since noone seems
 to care, why the hell should I....so now I'll shut up.  I'm not a villain
 and I dont want to make anybody's life miserable with my posts in this
 conf, which I thought were constructive.

   I'm freezing this item because its not worth it anymore.  And I'm
 going to leave coop for now because its clear to me that nothing can be
 discussed critically here without risking accusations of personal attacks.
 I'm one of those who you'd call a conferencing nut, I've used bbs's of
 one sort or another going back fifteen years.  I like the setup here and
 I thought the perspective I had might be of benefit.

   But the atmosphere is too cliquish here.  You wonder why some of the
 people who used to read coop dont anymore (like Sidhe for instance)  Its
 because there is a pack mentality here and its too difficult to discuss
 things without getting attacked and having your motives questioned.  The
 concerns I raised were genuine and yet I'm accused of carrying out a
 vendetta and wanting to punish other people in the process.

    That was never the case but its not like I could get any of you to
 believe I was sincere anyway.  So I'll confine myself to the regular
 confs, where I can actually enjoy my posts instead of having to defend
 myself contantly from personal attacks.  I just wanted to help make
 things better on grex but it doesnt seem to matter.

   This will be my last coop post (Hold the applause until I'm gone) 

response 2 of 115:

Mar 31 13:16 UTC 1996

This is good. There is much to learn from this discussion. As a neophyte fw
with limited time to attend to those duties, I find this helpful and
stimulating. Please keep up the discussion.  Perhaps thsre should be a
statment of reasons for freezing an item posted when the freeze is initiated
so those affected can take appropriate action, if any.

response 4 of 115:

Mar 31 20:48 UTC 1996

Easy, Rane, cut this item, sans the pastef from 42, paste it to 42,
and then kill 45.

response 6 of 115:

Mar 31 22:39 UTC 1996

Yes, I don't have any problems with this one being killed. It's entirely
redundant and was formed to correct a problem that was also corrected in 
another fashion.

response 8 of 115:

Apr 1 00:39 UTC 1996

<robh has a divine vision...

kerouac stands in front of his eight year old child

"i'm sorry, i thought at the time that you were going to be
a wonderful child, but you haven't quite turned out as well
as i had hoped, so..."

kerouac takes out a gun, shoots his child through the head,
then calls out "honey, we have to have another kid now...">

response 10 of 115:

Apr 1 00:59 UTC 1996

Heh. Good analogy. I like it.

It's similiar to why alot of parents don't like specific activity that their
children engage in. Becuase the child is *their* child, they feel that
the behaviour reflects back on *them* as the parent. They feel they
have effectively "signed their name" to the child and are therefore
responsible for all actions of the child.

Unfortunately, children, ideas, and items, rarely turn out the way you plan.

response 12 of 115:

Apr 1 01:06 UTC 1996

  ah, but greg you can try to make them turn out the way you plan!  If
a kid's clothes become torn and tattered, buy 'em new clothes.  If a kid
is bad, ground'em.  I started the discussion on conferencing for valid
reasons, reasons which I felt item 42 had started to mistreat.  Since
I cared so much for the kid, I got him cleaned up and let him get new
clothes that somebody else picked out.  

response 14 of 115:

Apr 1 02:27 UTC 1996

 We're talking about conferencing and how to improve things.  I dont see why
people should mind the poster being able to freeze an item if they dont
mind the fair witness being able to.  Nobody would complain if the fw 
decided to freeze an item for whatever reason, to keep the conf from
getting bogged down in long items for instance.

I objected to the deleting and moving of my item in AD.  Suppose because 
of religious beliefs or something that I didnt want my name associated 
with the Sexuality conf (hypothetically speaking)  The fw has the ability 
to put my item into confs that I might have real objections to, and to 
associate my name therefore with those confs.  Ethically, the fw should 
not do this then without consulting the poster.  But staff would stand 
aside and let the fw violate my religious beliefs by moving my post to a 
conf that I object to?  The fw can make someone's items appear in a conf 
that that person has not joined and may have personal reasons for not 
joining.

These are the sort of situations that are not provided for.  The job of 
staff should be not to just protect the hardware, but where possible, 
protect the users too.  After all, it is the users that make a board, not 
hardware upgrades.

The whole point of my suggestion of spelling out fw and user 
responsiblities is so that there should be no mistake that Grex is a 
cooperative board and that it is the collective intellectual property of 
all who use it.  The item I froze is a finite thing, the discussion is 
infinite, I dont own it.  The "item" is like a material object, such as a 
piece of paper.  By putting my name at the top of item 42, it is like I 
decided to host the conversation at my house.   Largely out of my own 
doing, the discussion turns sour, so I say take it out of my house and 
hold it somewhere else where I'll be on better behaviour.


Thats all this is.

response 16 of 115:

Apr 1 07:33 UTC 1996

For the record - if there is a record - I do not believe that the person
that starts an item bears any responsibility for it other than responses
she/he enters. The responders in no way are endorsing the original
proposition unless they say they are. I started this item, but feel no
responsibility for what others say here. I may not feel any responsibility
for what I say here. I shall not freeze it no matter how outrageous the
discussion becomes. (And no fw better freeze it - it's MY item!  B^\.)

response 18 of 115:

Apr 1 16:40 UTC 1996

Multiple thawing and refreezing really does lose the flavor, doesn't
it? No, its not illogical TS. I am not supporting #0 - it was just
the last response in Item 42, so this item picks up where that had 
(the first time) left off. This item *is* for the continuation of the
subject "What is a fair witness?", and more discussion on that is warranted.
The topic had not drifted in Item 42, but rather had gone off to explore
a tangent. We can continue with that tangent here, start a new tangent
on the actions of fairwitnesses.....or whatever you'd like.

response 20 of 115:

Apr 1 17:51 UTC 1996

Suggestion: New command: "Wound" -- this would temporarily disable an item
but it very well could have tha capability of reappearing at the worst
possible time and eating off your head.

response 22 of 115:

Apr 1 20:04 UTC 1996

  Actually I was thinking maybe all users should have limited ability to
use the link command, so they can link items that they posted (and only
those items) to any conf they wished.  This would effectively eliminate
some of the problems discussed.  If a user has an item he/she wants to
post, and may want to post it in more than one conf, whats wrong with
that?  I think it would be easier on fw's if they werent bugged all the
time to link this item or that item.

  In addition, why not set up a "killed and retired items" conf, so that 
all items that fw's kill for one reason or another dont disappear 
altogether, but are just relegated to a special area.  This would serve a 
similar function as the "Archive" conference.  It would be a conference 
where old, retired, killed items are stored in case anyone cares.

  These suggestions wouldnt handcuff the fw or take away any fw commands, 
but they would level the playing field a bit 

response 24 of 115:

Apr 2 01:11 UTC 1996

  No its not brighn, I never said users should be able to link other users 
items or kill anybody's items.  Just be able to link *their* items to
whichever confs they choose.  The FW would still have the same commands
and responsibilities, and be able to retire items or whatever.  The
socialist in me wants to say that FW's arent needed at all, and that
users should equally be able to define confs, but we do need some
limited policing.  However what I suggest here is reasonable and in no
way ultimately limits what the fw does.

And defaulting retired or killed items to a archival conference gives the
poster the opportunity to save or move said items, whereas right now
an fw with an itchy trigger finger can zap an item out of exsistence.  The
cfadmin could fw the archival conf (whatever its called) and scribble
any items killed or moved into it that are sensitive.  

For instance, when selena merged hsex and ad, most of the old items
from the original "sex" conf that had long since been retired, were
deleted out of necessity.  That was unfortunate because there were
some good items in there, and with a place for those to go when they
arent needed anymore in the conference or oringination, they could still
be around.  I think this is reasonable.