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Grex > Coop11 > #160: Scribbling and Expurgating: Is it Effective? | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 128 responses total. |
albaugh
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response 41 of 128:
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Mar 26 03:27 UTC 2000 |
Drift: Can there be such a thing as a "multiple choice" motion? If so, is
plurality sufficient, or must one of the options get a majority vote to make
a change from the status quo? If a "multiple choice" motion is not allowed,
then I can only see a series of "binary" motions to get to the heart of the
matter, sort of like an "if-then-else" cascade. Thoughts?
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mdw
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response 42 of 128:
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Mar 26 03:51 UTC 2000 |
I think it's premature to think about going for a vote.
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gelinas
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response 43 of 128:
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Mar 26 05:44 UTC 2000 |
I'm with Marcus: It's too early to talk of voting.
Mary, I've used a system which allowed people to remove responses, even
after others had responded to the response. We did not start quoting one
another's responses in our own responses. Occasionally, there would be a
meta-discussion about the apparent irrelevancy of some 'orphaned' response,
but it wouldn't last long and then we all got on with the real discussion.
The only time I saw "Usenet-style quoting" was when folks familiar only
with Usenet joined us. Someone would point out the needlessness of the
quoting, they would get more experience with the system, and we would go
on with the discussion.
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gypsi
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response 44 of 128:
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Mar 26 05:46 UTC 2000 |
Expurgate hides a response? Define "hides".
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gelinas
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response 45 of 128:
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Mar 26 05:52 UTC 2000 |
If you don't know where to look, it's gone. Just like "hide and seek".
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janc
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response 46 of 128:
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Mar 26 06:04 UTC 2000 |
An expurgated response is still stored in the item file, but has a flag
set indicating that it should not be displayed by default.
Suppose response 47 is expurgated.
To view it in picospan, do "set noforget" and then display the response
(for example, by doing "only 47" at the respond or pass prompt.
In backtalk, there will be a message displayed instead of the response
that says something like <click here to view hidden message>".
So it's not difficult to view in either system, but much less difficult
in Backtalk.
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janc
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response 47 of 128:
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Mar 26 06:04 UTC 2000 |
View hidden response.
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janc
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response 48 of 128:
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Mar 26 06:05 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 49 of 128:
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Mar 26 06:07 UTC 2000 |
The previous two responses are examples of "expurgated" and "scribbled"
responses respectively.
Actually, Backtalk calls them "hidden" and "erased" because I think that
makes more sense.
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gypsi
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response 50 of 128:
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Mar 26 12:04 UTC 2000 |
Oh...okay. Thanks, Jan.
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aruba
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response 51 of 128:
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Mar 26 14:01 UTC 2000 |
I'd like to know how davel scribbled his response (#38) without the text
going to the log.
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scott
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response 52 of 128:
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Mar 26 14:05 UTC 2000 |
He didn't expurgate and scribble, he just put the text "<expurgated and
scribbled>" in his response.
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aruba
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response 53 of 128:
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Mar 26 15:08 UTC 2000 |
Ah! Very clever.
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gypsi
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response 54 of 128:
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Mar 26 15:36 UTC 2000 |
<laughs> Very nice...
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mary
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response 55 of 128:
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Mar 26 15:59 UTC 2000 |
Re: gelanis' #43
Cool. I'd be interested in visiting that system to see
how they balance free and open access with issues
such as censorship. Were is it?
How does M-Net handle this? I know when I was last there,
years ago, it was as it is now, on Grex.
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mary
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response 56 of 128:
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Mar 26 16:00 UTC 2000 |
Ack, sorry, it's *gelinas*.
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other
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response 57 of 128:
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Mar 26 20:18 UTC 2000 |
I fully concur with janc's resp:40
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davel
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response 58 of 128:
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Mar 26 22:30 UTC 2000 |
I agree with #40, #42, & #52.
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gelinas
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response 59 of 128:
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Mar 27 04:49 UTC 2000 |
Mary, you can't; it was turned off on August 31, which led to me showing
up here.
The system was the University of Michigan's conferencing environment,
which ran first on MTS, using Bob Parnes' Confer II software, and then
on a UN*X box, using Confer U, a port of Confer II. Access was never
'free', but it was more open on MTS than on UN*X, something the community
lamented loudly at the migration.
Every conference had its own rules, but the most interesting for this
discussion was the Student Conferencing Project, which ran MEET:Students
(later Meet-Students) and a few others. The MEET:Students conference was
restarted each term, with a new set of organizers (the Confer analog of Fair
Witness). To help the organizers, former organizers (and interested others)
participated in MEET:Planners. If an organizer felt that some text should
be removed from the conference, they retired (i.e., expurgated) it and
reported the action in MEET:Planners. If the final decision was that the
material should be completely removed, then it was (although a record *may*
have been made, just in case the final decision was eventually overruled.)
A lot of these practices and procedures were formalised after someoone
created an item that made the New York Times ('twas a few months before
I started at the U, so I've only heard/read the after-action reports.)
Participants could also, and did, retire their text, and sometimes even
deleted it.
The only controversy I ever saw was when someone posted text from a
conference they shouldn't have had access to into USER:Forum, and the
organizer removed it in contravention of the USER project's rules.
The USER project had procedures similar to those of the MEET project.
I think there are few other here familiar with the UM conferencing
environment. Perhaps their experiences and thoughts will be useful here.
But as I noted early on, that was there and this is here. Different
communities, different needs, and different ways of doing things.
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jep
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response 60 of 128:
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Mar 27 19:38 UTC 2000 |
On M-Net the perms are 600; the file is readable only to cfadm. I
changed it to that back when Dave Parks owned the system, because of the
support conference (a private conference for abuse victims). They
discovered if they censored anything, it went into the publicly readable
censored log, and they didn't like that much. It's stayed that way
since.
I think it's awfully prescriptive of people to say "People shouldn't be
allowed to remove anything they posted; they should think ahead first".
It's pretty dismaying to see that kind of reasoning applied to BBS text.
There's no way to remove a posted message from everyone's brain or even
computer screen. I doubt if anyone thinks that's possible. But it is
possible to remove what someone wrote from public view. Sure, someone
else could re-post it, if they read the message and saved a copy; I've
seen that done on M-Net before. That's not under control by the staff.
But Grex tells people they're removing their posting from the system,
then copies everything that's being removed to a permanent file and
makes it publicly readable. That *is* under control by the staff. It's
a blatant deception. That's why there is a problem.
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mary
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response 61 of 128:
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Mar 27 23:23 UTC 2000 |
I like Jan's preference to eliminate scribble.
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gull
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response 62 of 128:
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Mar 28 00:37 UTC 2000 |
I agree that the current setup is wrong.
I think, however, that under the same logic that makes the current setup
wrong, if we *do* make the log non-publicly-readable we should have a
warning noting that someone else may have saved a copy of the response.
It's the same thing, right?
The option most likely to make everyone reasonably happy would seem me to be
eliminating scribble altogether.
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jep
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response 63 of 128:
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Mar 28 15:53 UTC 2000 |
I don't agree that there's no difference between having the censored log
be readable and having the possibility exist that someone may scribble
something after someone else has read and even saved it. The first is a
command that is set up deceptively. It's the most deceptive possible
way to handle the scribble/expurgate command, for that matter. The
second is an obvious possibility that anyone who uses Grex is likely to
understand.
I'd prefer to have scribble/expurgate work as designed, but if the
people who want to prevent others from removing their text are going to
prevail, then the scribble option needs to be removed.
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albaugh
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response 64 of 128:
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Mar 28 19:09 UTC 2000 |
Actually, "erase" is *not* accurate for "scribble". "Archived" or "retired"
are accurate, unless "retired" usually also means "erased".
I didn't say I was about to call for a vote on anything. So still my question
remains: Can there be such a thing as a "multiple choice" motion? If so, is
plurality sufficient, or must one of the options get a majority vote to make
a change from the status quo? If a "multiple choice" motion is not allowed,
then I can only see a series of "binary" motions to get to the heart of the
matter, sort of like an "if-then-else" cascade.
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remmers
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response 65 of 128:
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Mar 28 23:13 UTC 2000 |
Here's what the bylaws say (see Item 2 in this cf.):
ARTICLE 5: VOTING PROCEDURES
b. A motion will be considered to have passed if more
votes were cast in favor than against, except as provided
for bylaw amendments.
I probably wrote that, and was thinking of motions being aye/nay
propositions.
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