response 29 of 79:

Jun 6 14:19 UTC 2000

   re resp:27: no.

response 31 of 79:

Jun 6 15:32 UTC 2000

        slow on the uptake, eh?

response 33 of 79:

Jun 6 18:30 UTC 2000

Backtalk actually has code supporting item editting, not enabled here. 
It flags editted items with the date on which they were editted, so that
as part of the item header it says something like "response editted by
author on Tue Jun 6 11:32:48 2000".  The original response text is saved
to the censored log.

I don't know if editting is worse or better than erasing.  Either is a
sufficient fix to the problems we have been talking about (retracting
slanderous statements, accidental copyright violations, etc.).  The
question is, which is more disruptive to the flow of discussion?

Editing seems like it could be more easily abused, like:

   #31 by Fred Smith (smith) on Tue Jun 6 11:32:48 2000:
      I like sally.
   #32 by Joe Blow (blow) on Tue Jun 6 12:32:24 2000:
      Me too!!!

becoming:

   #31 by Fred Smith (smith) on Tue Jun 6 11:32:48 2000
   editted on Tue Jun 6 14:32:22 2000:
      I think sally is a bitch.
   #32 by Joe Blow (blow) on Tue Jun 6 12:32:24 2000:
      Me too!!!

However, if editted responses are flagged, then at least you have a clue
to what happened.

But if people *aren't* trying to be nasty, then editting can avoid
disruption to the flow, because people can erase things with greater
sensitivity and selectivity, so you might have:

   #31 by Fred Smith (smith) on Tue Jun 6 11:32:48 2000
   editted on Tue Jun 6 14:32:22 2000:
    [This response originally contained a joke about a cat and a bald
     man, which I later learned to be copyrighted material from Dave
     Berry's Book "Dave Berry Bites an Octopus" book.  Sorry for not
     checking before posting here.]
   #32 by Joe Blow (blow) on Tue Jun 6 12:32:24 2000:
     That's hilarious!

That seems substantially *less* disruptive to the flow of discussion
than just deleting the response.

So it all depends on how people choose to use things.  I've never been
on a system that allowed retroactive editting of postings, so I don't
know how it would work out. 

In practice, if we enabled Backtalk response editting Grex, we'd have
the problem that Picospan would happily display the editted message,
but *not* any warning that it had been editted.  This would be
unacceptable.

response 35 of 79:

Jun 6 23:38 UTC 2000

ooh.  *that* was a thoughtful response...  (resp:34)

response 37 of 79:

Jun 7 01:39 UTC 2000

The minimum right someone has to their own text is to withdraw it from
publication.  Allowing it is sufficient to protect the author's rights.
Copyright gives the author the right to remove their work from
publication, but it does not permit them to force someone else to publish
it for them in a modified form.  Grex, under the law, can't force the
author to allow them to continue publishing the work (unless the author
has given Grex a license, as I discussed earlier), but it can refuse to
publish a modified version of it.

response 41 of 79:

Jun 7 17:45 UTC 2000

seldon is correct (but don't tell him I said so).

response 43 of 79:

Jun 7 21:25 UTC 2000

I'm not coming at this from a legal perspective.  Not allowing people to
withdraw something they have said, at least to the degree that is
technically feasible, seems wrong to me.  I'm not shocked if the various
lawyerly types say that the law says we must allow people that right. 
It stricks me as just another case of the law making perfect sense.

Given that I want to allow people the ability to delete text, there are
lots of ways we might implement that.  Some might do a better job of not
messing up the continuity of the item than others.  Some might be easier
to implement than others.  Allowing deletion but not editing is
definitely easier to implement, and might or might not do a better job
of retaining continuity.

However, if people wanted to enable retroactive editing as well, I'd be
fine with that.  I'd use it a lot too. Seems like I find some moronic
typo in every response I enter.  However, I'm not about to push for it,
because getting it implemented right would be a bear, it would bother a
lot of users, and simply making scribble work would alleviate all my
problems with the current setup.

response 45 of 79:

Jun 8 01:23 UTC 2000

Re: 39 But you own your text and you should be able to do with it as you
please.  At least that's what I'm hearing is the best way to go.  So why
*in any way* restrict a person's control over their own text?  If they'd
rather edit it instead of scribbling and rentering, who is to say they
can't?  That seems like a pretty big compromise of some very important
rights, don't you think?  And for what, to help maintain the coherency and
continuity of the discussions?

Either you trust people to be reasonable and extend them full rights to
whatever text they've published or you are treating them like children and
not taking "ownership" seriously. 

I don't understand this half-way stuff.

response 47 of 79:

Jun 8 03:03 UTC 2000

Joe slipped in.  I was going to say much the same thing.  In fact, I
think I still will....

Oh bunk.  Not every principle needs to be taken to extremes to be valid.

It's good for doctors to try to extend people's lives.  That doesn't
mean it is necessarily the right thing to try to extend them forever.

It's good not to be ashamed of your body.  That doesn't mean you have to
walk around naked all day.

It's good to be honest.  That doesn't mean you have to tell everyone
your precise opinion of them.

Just because taking two steps to the north would be very bad, doesn't
mean that taking one step to the north might not be very good.

I can believe that people's right to control their own words is
important, without having to believe that it is the most important thing
in the universe.  There are lots of important principles.  They have to
be weighed against each other.

This whole kind of argument just isn't sound.

However, in this particular case, it just so happens that I actually
think allowing people to edit their own responses would be a perfectly
fine idea, if implemented correctly.  At a minimum, edited responses
would have to be flagged.  It's possible that when a response is edited
it should come up new again for everyone who read the previous version
(probably this should be a user configurable option).  Probably there
should be two forms of response editing - similar to the two forms of
response deletion - one where it is easy to see the previous versions
(suitable for fixing typos and such) and one where previous versions are
inaccessible (hopefully less commonly used).

Being able to edit your responses would be kind of nice, but it isn't
really that different than deleting the old one and entering a new one.
Just allowing people to delete gives almost all the advantages of
allowing them to edit, with much less work, much less sifting through
different ways of implementing it, and much less upsetting of Grex
tradition.  But if you really insist that I can't have one without the
other, I'm happy to turn the other on too.

response 49 of 79:

Jun 8 13:00 UTC 2000

I'm not being cynical here and I agree with Jan's last paragraph in #47. 
I also think if we invest in the idea of folks owning their own text then
when or if someone enters a response which includes quoted text from
another person's response that the person being quoted should be able to
ask staff to delete the quote.  I'm thinking of Usenet style posting here
where entire responses are in follow-up responses.  I mean, text is being
re-printed without the author's permission and Grex has acknowledged
ownership rights. 

response 51 of 79:

Jun 8 15:25 UTC 2000

re #49: You keep riding wild geese around in circles. Do you really expect
        us to give chase each time?