You are not logged in. Login Now
 0-10   11-35   36-58        
 
Author Message
richard
Scribbling issue Mark Unseen   Jan 9 18:59 UTC 2004

In item #71, Valerie wrote:

"I've written a command that people can use to remove all of the responses
 they have ever made, from an item, from a conference, or from all of
Grex.
 It's running now to remove all of the responses I entered as "valerie".
 It takes a long time to run."

Something occurs to me that is a strong argument that users using such a
program as this should be disallowed by staff.

If user "abc" is a longtime user with a lot of posts and then leaves, or
simply goes away for a while, login "abc" could get reaped and recycled.
Somebody troublemaker then could run newuser and get the login "abc" and
then run Valerie's program and scribble hundreds of posts they never made.

For instance, I just noticed that my old login Kerouac is reaped. I don't
care, I don't particularly want it anymore.  But I have many posts on here
under that login. Could someone else now run newuser, get Kerouac, and
then user Valerie's program to remove my posts.  My posts, not theirs?  It
seems to me that staff needs to ensure that only the person who made the
post can scribble it, and if four users in ten users have had login "abc"
and made posts, how does a program like Valerie's tell which user had the
login when a particular old post was made?


58 responses total.
jp2
response 1 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 19:01 UTC 2004

This response has been erased.

keesan
response 2 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 19:22 UTC 2004

What I don't like about this is 'it takes a long time to run', which slows
grex down. Then everyone else has to do fixseen on every conference where the
responses were scribbled, which slows grex down even more.  I am in favor of
removing this script so that people cannot do this sort of global scribble.
jep
response 3 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 19:36 UTC 2004

Anyone could write a script like the one valerie left.  Valerie was not 
the first person who ever left Grex (or M-Net) but deleted all of their 
postings first, though she is the highest profile person to do so.
keesan
response 4 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 19:57 UTC 2004

I couldn't write a script like that and I bet most other users also do not
know how to do so.  
aruba
response 5 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 20:08 UTC 2004

Richard - Jamie is correct in #1.  If I created a new account called
"kerouac", it would almost surely have a different UID than your old
account.  And because of that, Picospan wouldn't allow me to remove your
posts.

I suggest trying it to make sure that's true.
gull
response 6 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 20:17 UTC 2004

If valerie had used 'nice' to run it, it probably wouldn't have bogged 
down the system.

Do I think it's a polite thing to do?  No.  But I don't think it's 
reasonable to stop people from scribbling their responses, and I don't 
given that I don't think we can prohibit them from automating the 
process.
gull
response 7 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 20:18 UTC 2004

This response has been erased.

gull
response 8 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 20:18 UTC 2004

I meant that last sentence to read 'But I don't think it's reasonable to 
stop people from scribbling their responses, and given that I don't 
think we can prohibit them from automating the process.'
tod
response 9 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 23:51 UTC 2004

This response has been erased.

naftee
response 10 of 58: Mark Unseen   Jan 9 23:51 UTC 2004

This response has been erased.

 0-10   11-35   36-58        
Response Not Possible: You are Not Logged In
 

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss