response 59 of 128:

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.

response 61 of 128:

Mar 27 23:23 UTC 2000

I like Jan's preference to eliminate scribble.

response 63 of 128:

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.  

response 65 of 128:

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.

response 67 of 128:

Mar 29 16:39 UTC 2000

Multiple choice elections are really really complex, and mostly don't
work.  Suppose three options A1, A2 and A3 are very similar, though many
people have a slight preference for one or the other.  Option B is very
different.  Just over a quarter of the people prefer B.  Just under
three quarters all like A1, A2, or A3 vastly more than B, but are evenly
divided between which of the three they prefer (since they are nearly
indistinguishable).  Hold an election and B wins, even though 75% of the
voters hate it more than all the rest.  There are complex voting systems
that try to resolve voting paradoxes like this, but they all have voting
paradoxes of their own.  It really works better to try to talk it down
to two options and vote between those (though often we can talk it down
to one option and skip the vote).  

Right now I see the popular options as (1) keep "scribble" but depermit
log and put a warning message up that says the scribbled option is
logged someplace only staff can see it, and (2) eliminate scribble.  I
don't see any support for any very different option.

response 69 of 128:

Apr 4 03:10 UTC 2000

remove scribble.

response 71 of 128:

Apr 4 13:00 UTC 2000

Re 70: Same here.

response 73 of 128:

Apr 4 20:39 UTC 2000

As I've said before, I disagree with those who believe that people
should be able to erase what what they've said in a public
discussion forum.  That amounts to being able to edit history.
I don't see "free speech" as encompassing that.

My preference would be to eliminate "scribble".

response 75 of 128:

Apr 6 20:27 UTC 2000

I'd like to see the censor log linked to /dev/null.

response 77 of 128:

Apr 8 06:26 UTC 2000

Does expurgate have the same bug?  If not, that could be another argument for
eliminating scribble.

response 81 of 128:

Apr 24 17:48 UTC 2000

That's all fine, but Grex offers scribble as an option.  The option is 
just a facade; it doesn't really happen.  It's true that, once you write 
it and post it publicly, someone might have a copy of it, and nothing 
can be done about that possibility.  It's not inevitable that you have 
to be told you can remove it, but Grex itself leaves it accessible.

response 83 of 128:

May 24 12:39 UTC 2000

(The abuses Russ talks about on M-Net were some time ago, and have not been
 imitated since.)

I don't want to repeat what I've said in your agora.cf, so here are brief
comments:

I agree that either removing the command or posting a warning message would
be improvements on the current situation; the current situation is deceptive.

I agree with the statements that removing one's own text should be one's
prerogative, despite the fact that someone may have saved it somewhere.

I think that you should also consider situations where someone enters text
that harms a third party (e.g. by invading their privacy) and then wants
to delete it to minimize that harm.  At present, that third party is
screwed twice:  once by the original poster, and once by the Grex Elders,
who have decided that every response is sacred.  As I said in agora, the
argument that the damage is done as soon as the response was entered is
specious -- damage is done every time a new person sees that response, and
being able to delete it for real would help to minimize the damage.  Even
if you think that the poster deserves to suffer for posting inappropriately, 
the third party is innocent.