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Grex > Coop11 > #160: Scribbling and Expurgating: Is it Effective? | |
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| 25 new of 128 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 66 of 128:
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Mar 29 03:22 UTC 2000 |
But if we go on long enough, a clear concensus may emerge, making the vote
a formality. :)
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janc
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response 67 of 128:
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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.
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dpc
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response 68 of 128:
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Apr 2 19:04 UTC 2000 |
I would prefer to keep "scribble" but depermit the log, with a warning
message.
And a multiple-choice motion would be a disaster.
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other
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response 69 of 128:
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Apr 4 03:10 UTC 2000 |
remove scribble.
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aruba
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response 70 of 128:
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Apr 4 04:24 UTC 2000 |
Personally, I'm just fine with the way things are now.
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robh
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response 71 of 128:
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Apr 4 13:00 UTC 2000 |
Re 70: Same here.
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scott
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response 72 of 128:
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Apr 4 14:14 UTC 2000 |
I could go with disabling scribble, or putting on a warning message. But I
agree with remmers and others about public speech being permanent.
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remmers
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response 73 of 128:
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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".
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swa
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response 74 of 128:
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Apr 6 01:15 UTC 2000 |
Mine too. A warning message would be preferable to the way things are now,
but having "expurgate" work as it does now and having "scribble" work as it
does now, but with a warning message, seems a bit redundant to me.
I, too, think being able to erase comments made in conference after the fact
is not a good idea.
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gelinas
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response 75 of 128:
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Apr 6 20:27 UTC 2000 |
I'd like to see the censor log linked to /dev/null.
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janc
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response 76 of 128:
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Apr 8 04:23 UTC 2000 |
Just to confuse things a bit more, I just noticed an interesting "bug"
in Backtalk.
In conferences where the fairwitness has enabled it (like coop),
Backtalk gives you the option of entering HTML responses (like this
one). Since we don't want to display ugly HTML directives to Picospan
users, Backtalk always saves two copies of an HTML response - it
generates a plain-text version that it saves in the place Picospan looks
for response text, and squirrels the HTML version away someplace where
Picospan won't notice it.
The bug is that if you scribble that response, only the plain text copy
actually gets erased. The HTML copy stays in the item file, where it
can be seen by anyone catting the item file.
Now, I can fix Backtalk so that it correctly erases both versions of the
response if you hit the "erase" button in Backtalk. But if you do
"scribble" in Picospan, it is still only going to erase the plain text
version since Picospan is entirely ignorant of HTML versions of
responses.
Having a readable copy of some scribbled responses hanging around isn't
too big a problem now, because there is a readable copy in the censored
log anyway. It wouldn't be an issue if we turned off the scribble
command. But if we wanted scribble to really work, then people
scribbling HTML responses would have to be careful to do so from
Backtalk, not Picospan.
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orinoco
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response 77 of 128:
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Apr 8 06:26 UTC 2000 |
Does expurgate have the same bug? If not, that could be another argument for
eliminating scribble.
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janc
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response 78 of 128:
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Apr 9 03:25 UTC 2000 |
Expurgate doesn't delete anything from the item file - it just sets a flag
saying that the response is expurgated. Works fine.
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russ
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response 79 of 128:
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Apr 24 06:30 UTC 2000 |
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russ
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response 80 of 128:
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Apr 24 06:30 UTC 2000 |
I'll never forget two things that happened on M-Net after the move
(promoted by jep) to make scribbled text "unreadable" by de-permitting
the censored log.
1.) During an election campaign, one user repeatedly grilled a
candidate about their position on one or more issues. I never
did find out what those issues were, because by the time I got
to that item in the evening, the questions had been scribbled.
Without the questions the answers were utter nonsense,
completely out of context.
Need I mention what hash this makes of political discourse?
2.) At least one BOARD MEMBER who had voted to de-permit the
censored log re-posted another user's scribbled response.
He did so from his scrollback buffer, out of spite.
The abuses of the closed censored log on M-Net prove that it's not
the kind of action to be emulated. Once it's posted, you have to
assume it's not going away. Just like in real life.
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jep
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response 81 of 128:
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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.
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srw
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response 82 of 128:
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Apr 30 19:30 UTC 2000 |
I really like having a distinction between hidden and erased responses.
Even though erasing doesn't erase all copies, it erases it in the web
page displayed by backtalk, and that's what I want to accomplish by
saying "erase" rather than "hide". So while I don't care whether we
lose the picospan "scribble" command, I don't want to see backtalk lose
its "erase" command.
I guess that probably means I would vote to keep "scribble," because we
want backtalk and picospan to stay in synch.
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jmsaul
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response 83 of 128:
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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.
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aruba
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response 84 of 128:
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May 24 13:02 UTC 2000 |
Grex is a democratic institution. Decisions are made by the membership, not
by the "elders".
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jmsaul
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response 85 of 128:
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May 24 16:47 UTC 2000 |
I've read your Bylaws. I wasn't speaking literally.
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other
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response 86 of 128:
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May 24 17:26 UTC 2000 |
resp:83
You make a good point, but it is not entirely relevant. Grex staff will
very rarely remove responses from the conferences, but in certain
circumstances it is possible. It is not an absolute proposition that any
text entered onto Grex shall remain readable there forever.
On the other hand, the threshold is very high because even though conf's
are archived and remain readable indefinitely, their actual life is
relatively short. That means that even though the words are there, there
is not a huge number of people reading through old agora responses more
than six months later. This is a public forum, and anything said here by
anyone will be taken as gospel only by those who believe that the person
saying it is truly reliable. That being the case, the potential for harm
is pretty limited. All posts are as anonymous as the poster wants them
to be, and as such they carry little factual weight.
And in regard to removing previous posts: Once you put the words out
into a public forum this way, you give up ownership and control of them.
That is the implicit agreement you enter when you post here. Because
Grex wishes to offer some flexibility, and to preserve the ability to
keep things flowing, Grex chooses to use software which allows users to
hide their posts so that casual readers will miss them. You cannot send
out a press release to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and
then later decide to retract them and actually expect to do it. You can
always send another release refuting the earlier one, but you cannot
unsay what you have said.
The point is that you should consider the impact and meaning of what you
say before you say it in a public forum. This is basic common sense.
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rcurl
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response 87 of 128:
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May 24 17:57 UTC 2000 |
I have just read this whole item for the first time. It is a MUCH better
discussion of the topic than is the one that erupted in agora because of a
specific instance of someone posting something they later regretted
writing. [Also, I'm heartened to read here support for the position I have
been taking in agora (which seems to make me an "old-timer"!) - even
though here it was mostly written months earlier - I'm almost sorry I've
taking coop out of my .cflist because it was consuming too much of my
time!]
So, here I will say only, I agree 100% with the last paragraph by other in
#86. Let the writer beware.
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jmsaul
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response 88 of 128:
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May 24 19:41 UTC 2000 |
What about the person being written about?
Re #86: So it isn't censorship if Grex staff think it's okay to remove
a post, but it's censorship if the author wants to? The official
moral position is that *staff* are allowed to exercise their
judgement, but *authors* aren't trusted to? Is that *really*
how you want to operate?
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hhsrat
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response 89 of 128:
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May 24 20:19 UTC 2000 |
Someone with more knowledge than I correct me if I'm wrong but ...
Assuming we wanted to change scribble so it actually gets rid of
responses, wouldn't it be possible to just change the routing of the log
file from /bbs/censored to /dev/null? Seems like a change that wouldn't
take very long at all to make. However, this is assuming that we
actually *want* to change scribble.
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mary
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response 90 of 128:
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May 24 20:24 UTC 2000 |
It is my understanding that staff does not censor anything other than
content that is illegal by law. If this is not the policy then it should
be discussed. Anytime text is censored there should be a comment entered
stating text was removed, by whom, and why, and this should be either in
co-op or in the item where the text was deleted.
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