1 new of 357 responses total.
Well, we could "protect responses from being taken out of context" by deleting the entire item. (smiley face, OK?) The idea that everything a person says has to be kept on display forever in context to preserve freedom of speech is an interesting. In fact, when the moment has passed, so has most of the context. But getting to the point of this item.... I disagree strongly that this is an inappropriate subject for a member vote. Many people here seem to want their rules simple and absolute. We make a rule, and we stick by it, without even taking into consideration whether certain rare circumstances make the enforcement of the rule pointless or harmful. Grex's system of laws is minimalist. It consists of a very few written rules that weren't really very carefully written, and some unwritten rules that are even more vague. What JEP wants is in violation of a rule that has never been formally written, that at least a few people heavily involved in the system didn't know existed. In the real world, we have a very complete set of very carefully written laws. And you know, they aren't enforced in a totally rigid and absolute way. We routinely find cases where the rules seem to conflict, where different considerations seem to come to bear on the situation. We have a system of courts that can deal with those, where everything that seems to bear on the case can be presented, where the arguments pro and con can be weighed, and where a hopefully consistant and sensible interpretation of how the rules should be applied in different cases can be set forth. Grex lacks any such thing as a court. We have before us a situation that will likely never be exactly repeated. We don't need a policy to say what Grex should do when a particular sort of item is deleted by a rogue staffer. That would be pointless. What we need to do is to decide what to do in this specific case. To make the specific situation, there are two ways it could be done. The board could make it, or the membership could make it. I think the membership is the better choice. That's why I suggested this to JEP. When I did so, I suggested that he keep it very narrow. Just about his two items. Not about Valerie's items. Not about general policy. I thought it would be useful to make a decision on a specific case without having to worry about what we should do in all other vaguely similar cases. That gets the most emotionally charged issue off the table and allows us to consider what our general policy should be in a calmer manner, if any changes in general policy are actually need. The only precident it sets is that it says that when people think that for some reason there general policies of grex are inappropriate in their specific cases for specific reasons, then this can be used as a mechanism to make an exception. I don't see anything wrong with that.
You have several choices: