response 91 of 128:

May 24 20:33 UTC 2000

In other words, staff wouldn't intervene to assist in the case of someone
who posted material about a third party unless the material included the
third party's credit card number or something like that.

response 93 of 128:

May 24 20:40 UTC 2000

Meaning, no, they wouldn't and shouldn't intervene in that manner.

response 95 of 128:

May 24 21:47 UTC 2000

I still haven't seen any argument for it beyond vague philosophical
generalizations, while there are very good specific reasons to permit
people to delete text.  You'd rather let an innocent person suffer
more and more defamation than allow one sacred posting to be deleted?
Frankly, I don't agree with your priorities.

Since I don't know if everyone is following both items, I should also
point out that there may be copyright-related issues (I wasn't going to
bring the law into this, but Rane suggested that Grex owns all postings
here, which isn't true, and that opened the door for discussion as to
whether Grex has the right to keep someone's posting visible against their
wishes, which is being discussed at some length in the agora item).

response 97 of 128:

May 25 01:07 UTC 2000

(Sorry about my part in spreading this around.  I didn't read coop, and was
 responding where the discussion was.)

response 99 of 128:

May 25 02:03 UTC 2000

Maybe i just haven't been around here very long, but i've failed to 
notice all the problems with people posting credit card numbers, later-
regretted defamations, material copyrighted by angry third parties,
etc. in the conferences on grex.  

I agree that our scribble, etc. options should let people know a bit
about their scopes & limitations. 

Note that our policy on self-censorship isn't relevant to the worst
cases anyway - staff would disable the offender's account as well as
censor the credit card numbers, cracked account password list, or
whatever was posted.  I doubt that we'd ever censor hot social gossip,
but "I'm pregnant with so-and-so's love child!"-type stuff will tend
to spread like wildfire whether censored or not. 

For the quibblers & trivia hounds, i think that i played Darth Deleter
in the last case of official censorship in grex's conferences.  Please
note that that case has *very* little bearing on the current debate -
i gave long advanced notice of the censoring, and a complete & publicly
readable copy of the "censored" material remained in the item. 

response 101 of 128:

May 25 06:10 UTC 2000

Re #95:
> You'd rather let an innocent person suffer more and more defamation than
> allow one sacred posting to be deleted?  Frankly, I don't agree with your
> priorities.  

--> Your argument ignores the question of who decides what is "defamation."
This is not a simple issue; it's at the core of many people's feelings on
this.  Once you let the censorship genie out of the bottle and say, "okay,
removing illegal items isn't enough, we're going to remove defamatory ones,
too," you've opened everything up to interpretation.  Personally, I really
don't want to go there.

response 103 of 128:

May 25 22:00 UTC 2000

Hey Joe, how about joining our community.  Then you can drop the "you" and
"your" and talk about "we", "us", and "our".

response 105 of 128:

May 25 23:20 UTC 2000

I was in #102, actually.  

On some other posts, though, I'm doing what Mark suggests.  I haven't
decided yet whether I want to become a member of this community or not; I
don't always have this much time to spend in BBSing, and I'm already very
involved with M-Net.  (Though I did buy a monitor in your auction.  ;-)

One way or the other, though, this particular policy is one I wouldn't
be able to bring myself to say "we" about.

response 107 of 128:

May 26 12:39 UTC 2000

(Anyway, I think anyone who actively participates in discussions
is a part of the community whether they like it or not.  :-)

response 109 of 128:

May 29 16:41 UTC 2000

I certainly think the current policy is broken.

The incident in Agora rather points this up.  I think Steve ended up by
going into the censored log and deleting the text in question.  I think
he acted sensibly and compassionately, but not in accordance with Grex's
policy.  Which means, Grex's current policy is neither sensible nor
compassionate.

My opinions on this have varied in the past.  I understand the
philosophical arguments, and agree with them.  But if we don't allow
people true self-censorship, then I, as a staff member, will regularly
be placed in Steve's dilemma:

   Person A says something slanderous and embarrassing about person B,
   and immediately regrets it.  As a staff person, I have the power to
   erase the response.  Do I
   (1) Stand on principle and policy, and insist on leaving the
       statement up to embarrass both A and B forever, or
   (2) Bend the rules, erase the response, and put everyone out of
       their misery.
   Note that regardless of which choice I make, people are going to be
   pissed off at me.

This is an uncomfortable position for staff to be in.  We do stand on
principle on may other issues, but I believe more strongly in those
principles.

So currently I think the censored log should be depermitted so that only
staff can see censored responses.  (I think this is better than not
keeping a log at all - staff would be expected to treat censored
responses with approximately the same sensitivity that they treat
private email, but there may be rare circumstances where being able to
reproduce what was censored may be useful.)

response 111 of 128:

May 29 17:49 UTC 2000

I'm confused about what incident in Agora Jan is talking about.  Is it
mentioned somewhere else in this item that I've missed?

response 113 of 128:

May 29 19:45 UTC 2000

I don't know what incident he's referring to either.