response 40 of 79:

Jun 7 15:39 UTC 2000

resp:39

Exactly!  (you go, Pete!)

response 42 of 79:

Jun 7 18:18 UTC 2000

Too bad you couldn't scribble that before I read it, eh?

(There's your second opinion, John.  Want to get polygon in here for a
 third?)

response 44 of 79:

Jun 7 22:40 UTC 2000

John, what's the timetable and status now for the vote on this?

response 46 of 79:

Jun 8 02:41 UTC 2000

The hell you don't.  You're trying a crude slippery-slope argument, because
you don't have any substantive arguments in favor of the current policy.  (Or
if you do have one, I haven't seen it yet.)

response 48 of 79:

Jun 8 07:57 UTC 2000

        I'd also add to what Jan said. There is nothing at all stopping
        you from:

                1) Extracting your old post;
                2) Wax that sucker;
                3) start a new post
                4) read in the old post and EDIT IT.

        However, this isn't what mary is shooting at. Basically, the above
        is being ignored to bolster the continually lame "hypotheticals"
        and arguments against a user-delete.

response 50 of 79:

Jun 8 14:43 UTC 2000

I like the idea of editted text as long as it is flagged as such.  That way
you prevent the hypothetical "trying to make the next person look bad".

If we don't do that, then I support the staff-only scribble log.  I've
stated my reasons enough by now in all of these items.  ;-)

response 52 of 79:

Jun 8 16:39 UTC 2000

You could do some very funny stuff if you could go back
and edit your previous responses.  Apart from that, though,
I'm not sure there would be much point to it.  If you want
to apologize for saying something mean, you should just
apologize, and maybe erase the mean remark.  But going
back and changing it to something nice would be pointless 
if there was even one offended response following it.
(If everyone agreed to limit revisions to fixing typos,
spelling errors, etc., I guess that would be okay.)

response 54 of 79:

Jun 8 17:32 UTC 2000

Hm, I think #49 raises a valid question.  'Course, in my legal
ignorance, maybe I'm wrong.  Please enlighten.

response 56 of 79:

Jun 8 18:03 UTC 2000

        I don't understand the "boggle" at all.

        1) User A defames B: A is responsible;
        2) user A scribbles defamation:
                I>  Currently, grex is responsible;
                II> Alternately, post is bye-bye & defamation gone;
        3) User B or C reposts a COPY of A's defamation:
                I>  Currently, grex is responsible;
                II> Alternately, A & B|C can fight it out there or
                        in court, as it WAS A's property.

response 58 of 79:

Jun 8 18:45 UTC 2000

I don't know what the legalities on quoted speech are either.  I know
they exist, and are complex.

We'd be allowing users to remove words they posted - this is not
necessarily exactly the same as allowing authors the right to retract
their own words, because the poster may not be the author.

One could argue that in the scenario Mary describes, it wouldn't be
Grex's problem. If the author wants quotes of his text removed from
someone else's post, then he should talk to the someone else, not to
Grex.  The responsibility belongs to the person who posted it, not to
Grex.  This is what Pete says above.

I think that argument is a lot of hooey.  Long before things got
acrimonious enough to turn into a lawsuit the author would be demanding
Grex censor the text, and when the lawsuit came around Grex would be
sucked into it, and I'd guess our attempts to push the blame off on the
poster wouldn't get much respect (especially if the poster was someone
we couldn't identify and who no longer logged into Grex).

So I don't think this would solve all possible problems or save us from
all possible involvement in problems.  But it would solve a lot
problems, and take an step toward treating posters with a little more
respect.  Isn't that enough?

response 60 of 79:

Jun 8 19:43 UTC 2000

In truth, the only reason that we're having all these debates is because it
would be *easy*, requiring no programming, to make scribble really scribble.
If there were no scribble command to begin with, I seriously doubt if this
whole "I want to be able to delete my responses" debate would have come up.
For the same reason, there is no "easy", non-programming-change way to
implement item editing, at least in picospan.  So that makes it an issue
"at the next level" compared to scribble scribbling.

response 62 of 79:

Jun 8 20:10 UTC 2000

See, Jan, I guess that's where we disagree.  I don't see this change as
solving a lot of problems.  And I do see it as a significant shift in how
we approach conferencing.  In instituting a policy where we give posters
perpetual controlling ownership over anything and everything they choose
to enter in the conferences we'd better be prepared to be consistent in
respecting those rights.  We are calling them "rights", right?  So I
really don't think staff would have any choice if asked by a poster to
edit his captured comments.  Staff has the ability to remove the comments,
the author has asked it be done, and staff has not allowed the author the
tools to do it himself.  Staff should edit the response if the re-poster
refuses to do so.  

Moving from deleting and re-entering a response to simply editing a
response is such a tiny jump that I can't see any issue with giving the
user the tools to do so.  Either way the conferencing get kind of messy, but
this allows the user the most control over his or her content. 

Is this the item where Eric is asking folks to summarize their point of
view?  I hope so, 'cause here it comes. 

We have allowed a problem to fester because we haven't been very clear
about how the scribble and expurgate commands work.  So fix that.  Disable
scribble and put a clear warning on expurgate that it only hides responses
from casual view. 

Don't go the way of extending perpetual editing rights.  Instead clearly
let everyone know, up front, before their very first entry, that anything
posted here is their intellectual property but that editing or deleting it
after publication is not an option. This policy will keep the poets happy
as their work doesn't now belong to Grex and it can't be ripped off and
made part of a million-seller anthology without the author's permission. 
I find it hard to believe any copyright law would hold Grex liable when
the author initially *agreed* to publish knowing self-censorship wasn't
allowed. 

Such a policy will also go a long way toward keeping the conferences
coherent, over time.

But here's the most significant by-product of such a policy - it will
encourage folks to think before posting. That's a really biggie.  There
will still be some really stupid things said from time to time but instead
of trying to hide it and pretend no damage was done it will result in all
involved having the opportunity to respond and maybe, just maybe, a
sincere apology, and a lesson learned all around.  How mature can you be.

But *whatever* policy we end up going with it should be very clearly
stated and consistently implemented.  Good luck, staff.