I have compiled a list of circumstantial evidence, if, when taken in context,
shows a very disturbing sequence of events.  Mr Wolter, login janc, when
repairing the GreX machine, happened to stumble across item 39 in the agora
conference on m-net's bbs, regarding his wife's baby diary, which he found 
very insulting. He entered a response about this; here is the header:
#211 Jan Wolter [janc] (40) (Mon, Jan  5, 2004 (07:23)):

Later on, Mrs. Mates read the same item and responded to it; here is the
header:
#217 Valerie Mates [popcorn] (4) (Mon, Jan  5, 2004 (11:49)):

In it, she alludes to the fact that the diary had been purged.  Research
revealed the diary was located in the femme conference.  However, some items
are missing.  Having a look at the bbs errorlog, we find this:

----Valerie Mates: valerie(112) pid=13463
cf=/bbs/femme  81 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 11:59:08 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 81^J
  error was:You can't do that!

----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712
cf=/bbs/femme  81 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 12:00:01 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 81^J
  error was:Deleting message 81

----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712
cf=/bbs/femme  106 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 12:00:13 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 106^J
  error was:Deleting message 106

----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712
cf=/bbs/femme  145 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 12:00:19 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 145^J
  error was:Deleting message 145

----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712
cf=/bbs/femme  142 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 12:00:25 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 142^J
  error was:Deleting message 142

----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712
cf=/bbs/femme  117 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 12:00:34 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 117^J
  error was:Deleting message 117

----PicoSpan file owner: cfadm(60) pid=13712
cf=/bbs/femme  113 ps T3.3a Mon Jan  5 12:00:42 2004
prompt="(oops)? " (prompt) cmd was: kill 113^J
  error was:Deleting message 113

I would like to point your attention to the dates and times.  Ten minutes
after responding in m-net's agora conference, Mrs. Mates enters the femme
conference and tries to delete some items.  A few minutes later, the
conference admin enters and deletes them for good.

I sincerely hope these items were not the aforementioned baby diary.  However
I have good reason to believe it was.  If so, a great and evil act of
censorship has taken place.  Regardless of the potential sensitivity of the
material, they did not merit censorship.

I demand action.

393 responses total.

I thank soup for bringing this matter to our attention.

Valerie reported her actions, but not their cause, to the Board and staff.

I see no reason to assume any wrong-doing on her part.

If I mail bombed the system, but I reported it first, would I be let off? 
No.  Neither should Valerie:  she actually censored items with HUNDREDS of
responses from other users.  That is a SERIOUS offence, and no-one but someone
fucking a staff member would be given the priviledge.

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Um, Valerie, you know it's not.  That's why people can't do it unless they
abuse their staff powers.

(Of course, we know for a fact that Valerie IS a liar.  She said in a previous
item that she'd restore my polytarp account if I fulfilled certain conditions.
I did, and she never restored the account; no PRAGMATIC harm was done, of
course, because cross eventually restored it for me, but there's, I should
think, harm done in that LIES are INHERENTLY unjust.  that's just imho,
though.)

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Right, especially ignore us when we're trying to prevent abuse of the system.

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Right, let's let Grex become a place absent of free speech, because you don't
like the a subset of the people complaining about the erosion of free speech.

#4: "It's longstanding Grex policy that the person who created an item
 can delete it."

Really?  I don't think so.

To clarify:  People are allowed to purge their own responses, but
not those of other people.  At least, that's always been my
understanding.

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It's never been the case that one user could remove another person's 
posts.  No without root power.  Didn't you notice then when you 
first tried to remove the entire items while on as valerie?

Is it possible for you to put the items back (I assume you have them 
backed up somewhere) then delete only your responses?  I know that 
would be a job, but it's the right thing to do.  In my opinion.

re 11 The only time that can happen is if that item has responses only 
by the person who created it.  Once other people respond to it, that 
ability is removed.

As you can see, it required an abuse of Conference Admin priviledges to 
delete these items.  There were several other alternatives, such as 
freezing and retiring them, or censoring her own responses, rather than 
the deletion of not only Valerie's posts, but other, innocent users.

Not to mention she hid the fact that she deleted these items.  At least 
on m-net, this doesn't happen.

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Valerie took advantage of staff powers to do something that the rest of
us wouldn't be allowed to do.  I don't think she had any ill intent,
though.  I'd have to say I think it's a bit "unfair" but I don't find it
too troubling beyond that.  If this is the most inappropriate thing Grex
staff has ever done, we're doing pretty good.

I think valerie at least owes an apology to people who posted.  If the
items can be recovered I think they should be replaced.  I'm not willing
to call for her to resign, though; as far as I know this hasn't happened
before, so I don't see a pattern of abuse here.

Your demand has no force.  

If you are serious about it, make a specific proposal in Co-op, and 
if the majority of the membership agrees with you (which I seriously 
doubt will happen, especially if the removal of the posts by other 
users is undone), then Valerie's staff staus would be revoked.

gull slipped in

Oh for Christ's sake, naftee, get a clue.  Nobody hid anything.

And this wasn't a malicious action.  I expect Valerie was very hurt by
what she found on M-net.  Why not talk about this in reasonable terms and
see if there is a less drastic "fix" before we bring out the stones. 

Maybe we should even see if folks care.  Lots of forums seem to function
pretty well with censorship the norm.  It's been a long long time since we
looked at how our fairly rigid censorship policy is working for Grex. 
I know how I feel about it, but I'd be curious how others see it. 

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If you think the welcome line should be changed, make a proposal and 
if the majority of the membership agrees with you then it will be 
changed.

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It's not childish to be hurt.  Adults get hurt.

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I've long thought the general practice here on the deletion of text to be
too strict.

The "ownership" of a collaborative work is always murky.  In the case of a
conferencing item, the responses often are worthless without the text of the
item that led to those responses.  To remove large pieces of an item is to
destroy its coherence.  It makes no sense to me to leave anything behind.

An item that is largely about one person's experience, and the reactions to
that experience, seems to me to belong more to the person being described than
to the person doing the describing.

Prose, despite the poetry, is rarely deathless.  Sooner or later, the medium
it is recorded on disintegrates.  Often, the disintegration is none too 
soon.

Let it go.

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Yes, Valerie did something the rest of us can't do.  Yes, Grex has had a long
standing policy that once you've posted something, youo can never change your
mind about having it online.  Fortunately, Grex members changed the policy
a few years ago to allow you to scribble things you've changed your mind about
so that they aren't publically available any more.  

Frankly, the things in her baby diary were things I'd m never put on the
Web/Internet in the first place.  And they involve personal informationo ab
out people too young to have an opinon about what was being done/said.

I wish we -all- had the authority to kill items we started.  Let me mull that
over, because it may be time for a member vote on a well-crafted version of
that.  The whining about free-speech is ludicrous.  As has been explained,
on a word for word percentage the content of those items was about 95% Valerie

This whole bit has me thinking we should move toward MORE ability to censor
items on Grex, not less!

I'd want to hear complaints from the people whose content was deleted, not
the usual troublemakers like polytarp and jp2.

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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss