response 100 of 393:

Jan 7 06:38 UTC 2004

I would be glad to give Valerie permission to delete all my entries on those
items.  The items were -diaries- that she allowed other people to read and
(sometimes, when the items weren't frozen) comment on.  

We are not talking about censorship here.  Valerie didn't remove posts that
she disagreed with.  In fact, it would be pretty hilarious if we could edit
and reenter only mynxcat, jp2,  and the other complainors' posts.  Then
everyone could see how meaningless this attack is.  

We're not talking about throttling free speech either.  anyone is welcome to
start an item to talk about any issue they like.  Valerie didn't keep anyone
from starting new items.  

Any FW of a conference could do what Valerie did; it doesn't require
extraordinary root powers.  

Attacking Valerie is stupid.  What we are grappling with here is our
ever-present balancing act between you-can't-unring-a-bell and the ability
to make amends in some fashion if what you said in an item was something you'd
like to remove from the public record.  Not make people forget, just remove
the words from public display.  

We voted to allow everyone to make that decision for themselves.

The whole thing would be within our policies and non-controversial if Valerie
eliminated all her responses, and those of us who agreed with her eliminated
ours.  We could let mynxcat's immortal words remain on display, along with
anyone else who thought their contribution to the descriptions of Kendra and
Arlo's development processes was significant.  

If Valerie were the conf fairwitness, she could have done this without
violating any Grex principles.  The only real policy violation came when she
did it herself, without having the FW involved in the decision.  

Give it a break.  Troublemakers are stirring the pot again.  We are rehashing
the same issues of "permanently engraved versus able to be erased"  

I think we have come to a reasonable balance by allowing scribbled to be truly
hidden, and allowing FWs to make decisions on an item-by-item basis.  

If people want to remake either of those decisions, then let's discuss the
policies.  If people want to cause a fuss, then don't pretend it's some big
personal affront or some heroic support of freedom of speech.  Fuss about the
policies we have.  Because Valerie's actions were all allowable under current
policy.