In this item, I'm formally petitioning Grex's staff to delete every item I've
ever posted, starting to this one.  I've decided that they represent a
bizzarre doppelganger of my self, and I feel very uncomfortable with them.

To aid this endevour, I will post an approximate list of all the usernames
I've used:

polytarp
dah
plongeur
leongold
willcome

Thanks!

170 responses total.

If staff were to do this, the request would have to come from the
originating account, and would have to include the conference and item
number.  No one on staff has the time to hunt down "every item ever posted."
Further, they don't have time to confirm that the person currently using
a particular loginid is the person who was using that loginid when the
entry was created.

Which is why I think the right of removal should be implemented within
the capabilities of individual users.

So you don't care if your response #1, in this conference, which contains your
ideas, etc. , is removed by anyone at anytime.

That's shocking.

Re. 1:  Why don't you start with this item?

This response has been erased.

I disagree, Ryan.  There's an important policy issue at stake here.
If naftee hadn't raised the issue he did in Item 68, I probably would
have, had I found out about the situation.

I stand by my post long time back .. clear cut rules for any cases you can
think of now . and new ones as the case arises. 

(didn't Selena want to have all of her items and responses scribbled at 
one point?  how did that work out for her?)

As for multiple logins. What if it's a well known user who is widely 
known to use more than one login, and they lose access to one. And 
they want all their posts deleted? What do you do then? Do you comply 
just because you know they're telling the truth and you like them?

You allow censorship now, you're going to get into worse later.

It would seem that valerie's claim that anyone can have their items
removed by staff is incorrect, since I've seen at least two people ask
for it now and neither of them has gotten a positive response.  Thus I
have to conclude that valerie exercised a privilage not available to the
rest of us.

She exercised a privilege *I* thought was available to everyone.

The conditions in Response 1 above are to ensure that the original author
and, therefore, legitimate owner (in my view) of the item was making
the request.  And to limit the work-load to something manageable, of course.

The ensuing discussion has made plain to me that there is no clear course
of action for a staff member to follow.  Until there is, I won't be acting
on the requests.

She exercised a privilege that even she knew was not available to 
everyone. She tried it as a normal user, didn't work. She then 
proceeded to try it as root.

And legitimate owner in staff's view only? What if that person was 
widely known to have multiple ids, but staff wasn't participating in 
enough conferences to figure that out. Hypothetical situation. I know.

This response has been erased.

Regarding #11; Speech in a forum such as this simply cannot be owned by
one individual.  The idea of a person `owning' an item is foreign to me,
and I just don't see where you're coming from, Joe.  It might help if
you could explain your rationale, though.

Re 13>So you're saying we give staff members special privileges to 
keep them happy and interested enough in working on grex?

As for the "toads" harrassing staff to quit, in this case, they were 
not the ones who led staff to delete items to which other people had 
responded.

This response has been erased.

Hey, I don't like some of those toads, I admit it, but in this case,
they really are on to something.  At least, _I_ think they are.

Sometimes the true measure of the person is whether they can bring
themselves to agree with someone they really don't like, just because
that person is right.

Ryan, I don't see what you suggest is happenning - singling out 
staffers and harrassing them so they quit. The only resignors I'm 
aware of were cross and valerie. In both cases, the reasons for 
resigning seem to be different, irrelevant to what the canadian posse 
do or don't do. Heck cross even returned as a staffer (and very 
thankful we are :) )

The request in #0 should first be taken up with the fw's of the confernces
in which the items were posted.

Of course, soon the fw's are going to (should be) asking for a broader,
clearer grex policy about when they should(n't) be killing entire items,
either on their own or in response to an item-enterer's request.

I think Ryan has a good point in #13.  I think that there are consequences
for constant harrassment of staff, and if Dan and Valerie are the only ones
you've seen act dramatically about it, that doesn't mean it doesn't affect
the rest of us.  I find myself wondering, constantly, why I spend so much
time enabling people who really deserve to be ignored.  Eventually, it will
probably get to me.

Let me say that another way.  I think a number of Grexers choose to
participate here because they feel they can be assholes without any
consequences.  (Why they enjoy being assholes, I don't know, but it's
undeniably the case.)  But there *are* consequences, and ultimately, such
behavior will likely kill Grex, because only other people of like mind
will want to participate, and no one will want to administer a place whose
purpose has become the promotion of such behavior.  The death of Grex is
also, perhaps, what some people want - another desire I've never
understood. 

In case anyone hasn't noticed, we have a big shortage of staff already.
That's why we were able to buy a new machine, but so far haven't been able
to get it in service.  THere has been plenty of finger pointing, but the
bottom line is that a lot of staff members don't feel as compelled to
serve Grex as they did in the old days.  I think the fact that such
service results in being abused has a lot to do with it.

I understand that sentiment Mark. I agree that there are assholes out 
there who seem to be making it harder and harder for staff to want to 
continue serving grex. And I see your point that staff could be 
straining under "attacks" as they perceive it. I guess I find it hard 
to understand why what a couple of boys insist on posting over and 
over again would really affect staff's morale, especially when it's 
open knowledge that they're alone in their views. Maybe there's 
something there that I don't see. 

The case in point is a rare occasion when people have spoken up, 
because believe it or not, the Canadians and jp2 have a point. (Though 
Jamie has been yelling so much, he's given me a headache)

This also brings me to another point I've been trying to make. Grexers 
seem to be happy with the status quo. They know each other, they 
understand what other grexers are saying and the like interacting with 
them. Nice. So nice, that they've neglected to really look to 
expanding participation. So when a couple of assholes comes along, and 
attracts a couple more, and they get in a couple more, eventually you 
are going to be overrun by them. It's all very well to be happy with 
your little world, but unless you do something about expanding, pretty 
soon you're going to be run out. I know, we've discussed this before. 

re 6 I dunno, the reference that the items were deleted was buried deep inside
the m-net agora conference.
Oh wait, you're staff.  Never mind.  THEY were informed.

re 20 There is a difference between harassment and genuine concern about the
situation of a GreX policy or staffer.  If you can't tell the difference,
please avoid calling people assholes.

It makes it very hard to attract new people to Grex when the general flavor
of the conversation is nastiness.  I find it really hard to recommend Grex
to people for that reason.

But Mark, the general flavor isn't that. At least I don't see it that 
way. We have a couple of annoying characters (actually I can think of 
many, many more annoying characters, but thats what grex is all about -
 you take the good, you take the bad), but we have many, many more 
that are very nice people, and that are enjoyable to interact with. 
We're not marketing them well enough, and we let a couple of kids make 
us feel like the system is going to the dogs. /shrug

Well, I agree much is in the attitude.  But I also think there are
consequences for being an asshole on Grex.

I know where you're coming from Mark, but this one isn't about
assholes.  It's going to be a needed discussion where we fine
tune our feelings about ownership and censorship.  Grex staff
shouldn't feel threatened.

I wonder why gelinas (Joe.  Joe Gelinas.) thought there was a long standing
rule allowing folks to delete their items after other folk had posted to them.
Surely, if that were the case, Valerie wouldn't have E-mailed both the staff
and the board about it.

re 23 Hey, dude, you're the one who started swearing here.

Re #27:  Probably because he's never tried it.  Few people have.

You don't think a mail to staff and board would indicate that, at very least,
it was something unusual?

Or the fact that the items simply dissapeared, without mention? Without even
the fairwitnesses of the conference knowing about their removal?

who says the FW didn't know?

Oh, so you kept it secret too?  Immediately before I posted item 68 in coop
I posted a response in the femme conference asking what happened to certain
items (they were former baby conference items).  So far, there's been no
response.  So either you don't read anything in the conference you're supposed
to be responsible for, or you were deliberately trying to protect valerie from
her actions which you knew were wrong.

Pfft, maybe she was just ignoring you.

Re #21:  That pretty much summarizes what happened to M-Net.

Re second paragraph of 12:  That's why I said "From the account that
originally created the item."  One of the odd things about unix systems is
that login ids get re-used.  If I let "gelinas" get deleted, anyone can
claim it.  And no one can prove, definitively, that the new "jgelinas"
is the old "gelinas."  All protestions from "jgelinas" to the contrary.
So no, a request from "polytarp" to delete responses by "dah" should NOT
be honoured.

News flash, mynxcat:  YOU are one of the annoying ones.  YOU are part of
the problem.  I invite you to re-read this conference, concentrating on
the responses from "mynxcat" and consider them as a third person.  *JUST*
this conference; no need to torture yourself with your reponses in agora,
present or past, nor international.

Part of the function of the staff conference is to report _any_ use of
root privilegs.  Allow me to repeat that:  *any* use of root privileges.
So Valerie's report in the staff conference was routine, nothing out of
the out of the ordinary.

I think I have tried to use the "kill" command, and failed.  I chalked
it up as an error in implementation and went on with my life.

I don't think grex staff should be going into individual items and deleting
one user's posts.  If polytarp wants to do that, he scan go scribble them out
one by one.  Otherwise each item exists as a whole, as part of the grex
collective, and for historical reasons should not be altered.  Grex should
want its old conferences and the items in those conferences to be preserved
as they are so down the road they can be read as they are, not modified just
because somebody isn't comfortable with what they've said.  

(This from someone who regularly argues for the wholesale deletion of
conferences?  Interesting.)

Regarding #36; I disagree, Joe; I think Sapna has said some very insightful
things.

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